I could see exactly where I needed to go. That night was cold, the sticky after storm air clung to me like a wet rag, and the fog was starting to rise. Behind me, I could hear the unmistakable sound of feet pounding on the pavement, and the deep, winded breathing of a desperate charge. He was surprisingly fast, but I was faster and more desperate. He was an out of shape, overweight, middle-aged man, and I was none of those things.

By then, he had been chasing me for about a mile through rugged woods. I also doubted he could breathe very well through that modified pillowcase draped over his head. His eyes were probably bulging from exhaustion through the holes in the fabric. I hoped he would just keel over, dead from a massive heart attack. But luck wasn’t on my side yet.

I sprinted across the two-lane road toward a community that I could see from that hill over the tree line below. My leggings were in tatters from foliage grabbing onto my clothes, my shoes had been long missing, and I had stripped my muddy socks off probably a mile ago. My bare feet were aching and probably bleeding from running across forest debris and gravel, but I persevered. I didn’t care about the pain. My life depended on escaping from this psychotic man.

No matter what, he wasn’t going to win.

I was.

He had been driving for hours with me tied up in the trunk, but I was carefully sawing at the extension cords he used for rope with a pocketknife. The trunk was completely dark, so I had to navigate only by touch. The trunk had a pungent metallic odor that I realized was the smell of old, dried blood. There was also a small leak in the trunk, which happened to be dripping on my head, adding to the torture of this hell. The car was ancient, so it didn’t have an escape button or hatch from the trunk. After what seemed like hours, the car had suddenly come to a stop.

I heard the door slam shut and then heard his feet crunching on gravel as he marched toward the rear. The trunk popped open to reveal dusk had come, and that the pillowcase psycho was back.

“Well, hello, beautiful! I just had to stop to get one last look…”

From hours of seething anger and the primal urge to survive, I leaped from the trunk, lunging for his face with that pocketknife. His eye popped like a grape -- exactly where I was aiming. Blood immediately began gushing from the wound. His face twisted in agony as he screamed a guttural roar of pain and fell to his knees.

I thought about stabbing him again, or trying to beat the shit out of him, but last second, I decided he would probably win that battle. Every hour of jogging and running in the mornings had prepared me for this moment. Not knowing how much time that had given me, I sprinted for the woods.

He soon followed.

Hours later, here I was sprinting for an unknown town through a patch of dense patch of woods long before sunrise. It was nearly pitch black, except for what little moonlight was peeking between the clouds. Earlier that day, it had rained. Before all this chaos, I hadn’t even considered how the rain could be a curse.

The mud in this part of the woods was becoming thicker and deeper with every step. It soon became obvious that I had entered a swamp. Soon, I was up to my knees in water, then my waist. It had been a while since I’d seen or heard the man behind me. I hoped and I prayed that he had given up on his pursuit.

Thoughts began to form about what I would do when I finally made it to the town. Would I run to a house and bang on the front door, hoping that someone would answer? In the trunk, I discovered that he had taken my cell phone, my wallet, and my keys, but he hadn’t checked my jacket pocket, where he would’ve found that pocketknife. Now, it was my sole possession.

I was swimming at this point. The water smelled putrid and dank, filling my nostrils with that gassy, unmistakable smell of a swamp. After calming myself and building up the nerve, I checked around again and did not see the man. He was gone. My spirits lifted, and I chuckled with glee.

That morning had started like any other. I’d wake up around sunrise, jog for a mile, shower, then I’d stop at Dunkin and get an iced coffee before going to work. But something went horribly wrong this time.

As I was jogging past a nearby park, I heard a car stop behind me down the block. The door opened and I could hear someone get out. This happens occasionally and I usually tried to just ignore people, but this time, something didn’t feel right, and I’d soon find out why.

The next thing I remember, I’m waking up in the front seat of a car. My body giving me obvious signs that I had been sexually assaulted, and I won’t give you the vivid details. The back of my head was drenched in dried blood, along with a pounding headache. The car reeked of cigarettes, and the old upholstery was cracked in a million places. The man who owned this clearly didn’t care much about it. I looked around to see if I could spot him. The car was parked in the woods somewhere. The car was parked by a very old camper, looking as if it were older than my dad. The only path out was a set of ruts in the ground that led to what I assume was this horrible man’s home.

Not seeing the man, I decided to get out of the car and hastily make my way down this path and see where it took me. My leggings had been ripped open at the crotch and my knees were torn open from me falling to the ground. The cold morning air really reminded me of all this. After making it to the top of a hill, I could see that the path led to a winding two-lane road, but I couldn’t tell where I was.

That was when I heard feet pounding up the path behind me. I could see the man charging at me like a bull. The pillowcase over his head topped a large, hefty body that was capable of surprising speed. I bolted, praying that my morning jogs would give me the endurance beyond his.

The next thing I remember is waking up in his trunk, tied up like a hog heading out to be slaughtered.

The water had become shallower after a few minutes. I examined myself and found that my body was covered in algae, mud, and reeked of that awful smell. I trudged through mud once again. The moon had been completely obscured by the clouds. It was so dark that I had to feel my way through the woods, making me move very slowly and carefully now.

I could see the lights of the town through the foliage, partially guiding my way. I was almost running, but still trying to be careful. Lining the road to the town was some very thick foliage, so thick that the lights could barely peek through. I was making my way past them. Suddenly I fell.

I had fallen into a ditch covered by those plants. My knee had snapped, and my ankle rolled. The fire hot pain shooting all through my body. Even the smallest twitch set it off. I was writhing, screaming out in agony, when I saw a car coming.

“Hey!” I shouted, “Stop! Please help!” waving my arms frantically while trying to bite back the pain.

The car slowed and pulled to the curb nearby.

I couldn’t see the person because their brights were blinding me. I raised my arm to shield my eyes. Through the radiance, I could see a figure coming my way.

It was him.

The pillowcase was once again pulled over his head. I noticed a blood stain streaming from the gaping wound where his eye had once been. His other eye glaring at me with white hot anger through the hole he cut in the fabric.

“I got you now, bitch!” he was gripping a tire iron, “You’re gonna pay for my eye!” he barked through gritted teeth.

What was I going to do against this gigantic man wielding a tire iron? He took a long arching swing at me, I rolled. His weapon struck the ground with a ringing thud. Pocketknife in hand, I swing for his neck. I missed my intended mark and stabbed him in the back of his right ear. He bellowed in pain, grabbing for the wound, blood squirting out between his fingers.

“Fucking bitch!”

He swung again, connecting with my right shoulder. More pain. More ways to slow me down. The man wrestled me to the ground, trying to force the knife from my hand. My teeth crunched into the bones of his hand as hard as I could. The taste of his blood poured over my teeth, making me nauseous. He bellowed again.

This time though, I took the opportunity to snatch the tire iron away from him and struck the top of his head with as much force as I could. He went out immediately, dropping to the ground. I yanked the pillowcase off in a fury and had the knife in my hand. I don’t know why I wanted to see his face, but when it happened, something triggered deep down inside. All the memories of everything he did to me, the faces he probably made while he had his way with my unconscious body, the sheer ugliness of this awful man, made me snap. Something primal took over then. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but the memories of what he had done to me, and what he had probably planned to do, just made me erupt in a blind rage.

I gripped that tire iron so hard that my knuckles went white. I bashed his face so many times that it barely looked human by the time my rage was satisfied. His crooked teeth were now either fragmented or gone, his fat tomato nose was flattened into a mushy wound, and both the eyes were popped now. His ugly, acne scarred face now bruised, busted open, and swollen. If he did manage to wake up, well, he’d be in for an even rougher time. I felt happy about it, and I’m still not sure how to process that. Should I be proud, should I be ashamed, or should I be afraid?

I needed to get out of there, in case he did wake up. I searched through his pockets and found his car keys. I decided to also snatch his wallet so I could identify him. I found something else too that baffled me. In the same pocket as his wallet, I found what appeared to be a chunk of my hair. I felt around my head and realized that it was.

After some immense pain and effort, I managed to drag my useless leg over to the car and hauled myself into the driver’s seat. The car rumbled to life, much to my joy. I turned the car around and drove. Luckily, I had injured my left leg, and this was an automatic shifter. This town was unknown to me, but I drove around until I found an officer.

He tried to calm me down, but the words poured out of my mouth in such a fury that it just sounded like babbling. I must’ve been a sight with mud and algae up to my stomach, clothes shredded, no shoes or socks, twigs in my hair, and the stink of swamp. He took me down to the station and brought me a cup of coffee and a blanket. The officer did his best to calm me down, and after a while, I managed to tell him the story. I remember thinking about how many showers it would take to not only clean off the swamp gunk but to clean myself of the filthy memories from that evening.

The police found him still unconscious by that ditch. He confessed to my assault and three murders, but DNA testing later pinpointed him to twelve others. All of them around my age and looked striking like me. In his home, they found boxes of demented memorabilia, like their underwear. He also collected snippets of their hair that he kept in the drawer next to his bed. You can probably guess why.

What did I learn from all this? When I got home, I showered four times that day. I did this for days, never really feeling clean again. After the ordeal with the man, I never leave the house without my pistol, a can of mace on my keychain, and an overly paranoid vigilance of those around me. Sometimes, I feel eyes watching me from behind and I walk a little faster. I also bought a house and raised a German Shepherd puppy that I named Walter, who now joins me on my morning jobs. All these things combined still don’t make me feel completely safe. Then there are also the nightmares, in which he brutalizes me and finally kills me. There is no escape from those. Therapy helps, but how can you escape your own subconscious thoughts?

But the one thing I really learned is that the worst kind of monsters aren’t imaginary creatures in movies or books, they are other human beings. Sometimes, the worst people can bring the monster out of you too.