When My Stalker-Girlfriend Threatened to Kill Me

And I realized I had no escape

I

On the morning of the third day in the new school, I walked into class and found a girl sitting at my desk.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know,” she said, on seeing me.

She got up, picked up her bag, and giving me a sly look, shifted to the adjacent desk on the other side of the aisle.

I sat down and began unpacking my bag, taking out my mathematics textbook, and notes. As I was putting these things in the desk drawer, I found a corner of white paper poking out from the under-desk shelf.

I took it out, unfolded it, and began reading.

It was a poem, titled Thorny rose —a rhyming couplet about the pain of falling into unrequited love.

I stole a glance to the left; that girl was watching me, a knowing smile on her face. I raised my eyebrows, and she waved at me.

And that’s how I began dating my stalker.

This girl, Debby, was obsessed.

Debby would leave notes for me every day, everywhere. In my bag, under my desk, in the pages of my notebook.

During lunch breaks, she would sit with me and ask questions endlessly about my life before I met her.

Who was in my family, my extended family, even their extended ones?

She even started charting out my past friendships history.

How many friends have I had since childhood? How many I’m still in touch with, did I date anyone? Was I still in touch with them?

“Gosh, Debby, we’re sixteen,” I said exhausted by her constant questioning about my past.

But whatever I said didn’t matter to her.

She kept on leaving notes around me and taking notes on my life history.

II

As time marched on, and I spent more time in school, I started to make new friends.

There was Claire who was the daughter of our French language teacher; twins Kevin and Karl, and Paddy who I played Badminton with; and this girl Sabrina who was scientist smart and left me speechless with her thoughts.

Debby didn’t like it.

Every time I hung out with my new friends, it meant spending less time with her. I lived far from school, and except for a couple of days didn’t stay back after classes like others did.

Plus I was preparing for engineering entrance exams. My father had taken a loan to send me to tutorial classes and this was my only chance to get into a good college.

Debby didn’t like this either.

“You can’t be studying all the time,” she complained one day when we were at a burger joint near the school.

“Oh, I do,” I said, taking a bite of the burger.

She leaned towards me, “Or why don’t you say the truth? You are you seeing someone.”

This ticked me off.

“Debby,” I said wiping my face and trying my best to control my irritation.

She was looking at me with a straight face, eyes trained at me like lasers.

“We need to talk,” I said.

At once her eyes welled up. Next moment her lips began to tremor. Then she began sniveling.

I gulped.

Then, she burst out, wailing, howling.

“Come on!” I hissed.

I shot up and went around the table towards her.

“Nooo, this can’t be happening. How could you,” she squeezed a few mangled phrases in between the howls.

“Debby! No. Please,” I tried to hush her, patting her back while looking around hoping nobody was listening.

Everyone in the restaurant was listening.

An aged couple was standing and staring at me with disgusted looks on their faces.

A group of three young boys had turned in our direction, smiling, definitely thanking me for the good show.

A little kid with a balloon in one hand, and a plastic gun in the other had walked to our table and now was staring with the bashfulness which only little kids can show.

His mother had run behind him, now pulling him away from the bad influence (me).

“Why is she crying,” the kid kept on asking, as her mother pulled him back and said something about bad people, doing bad things.

The show had to stop.

“Okay, get up, we are not breaking up,” I said hoping it would calm her. “I was joking. Okay. I wasn’t even thinking. Please. Temporary insanity. Forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I mean it.”

Her howling didn’t stop.

“Let’s go,” I whispered, “we’ll have ice-creams.”

I knew Debby loved ice-creams. I was about to find out how much.

It turned out, a lot.

III

Debby, who had been howling like a banshee, began to calm down and the intensity of her howling began to ebb.

Her eyes were still red, tears still flowing down, and she was still whimpering.

But that was a hundred times better.

We were sitting at the far end of the restaurant, and I took my walk of shame to its exit with my head, and eyes lowered, avoiding any gazes, promising to never come back to this place again.

We went to a nearby ice cream parlor.

I got her the biggest sundae on the menu. When she asked me why I didn’t order something for myself — I said I’m full.

I didn’t specify what I was full of — her antics.

I loved this ice cream parlor and I didn’t want to put my name on its wall of shame too.

As Debby began to lick off Sundae, I took out my phone.

Before I could unlock it, I stopped when I found the point of a fork digging into my chest.

I looked up to find her leaning forward, her eyes two black beads in a sea of white, lips tightly pursed into a thin line, face pulled back into an intense expression.

“Don’t ever cheat on me okay,” she said, in a sharp voice. “I will kill both — you and that bitch,” she said and pressed fork a little more, before removing it away completely.

I was dumbstruck, confounded, and speechless.

I could only manage a nod and at that moment I realized I was scared of this girl.

Then she burst out laughing.

“You should look at your face. Do you take me for some crazy girl.”

I let out a weak smile and feigned a laugh that sounded like a whimper.

What I didn’t tell her was that’s exactly what I was thinking — that she was an utterly crazy girl.

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