Let's Not Meet Again

Kenny

I feel I should preface this story with a bit of back-story:

My girlfriend and I were having a discussion about some of our past relationships one night. I told her about an ex of mine that tried to bash my head in with a frying pan for no reason what so ever. She then told me that she had an ex that wasn't really all there. I asked her what she meant.

She told me that her ex, who will be referred to as "Kenny", wasn't exactly step-father or boyfriend material. She proceeded to tell me that he would verbally abuse her only boy child, and once picked up the oldest daughter by her throat and pinned her against the wall. She was only 6 at the time. She then told me one night, she wanted to get a little romantic, and she suggested he stop playing video games and come to bed. Rather than oblige, this asshole threw a fucking ashtray at her head and screamed like a man-child that he wanted to play his game.

As you can clearly tell, the relationship didn't last long. She then told me that he was stalking her not too long after they got out of their relationship, but she got the cops involved, and never heard nor saw him ever again. Now, onto the story.

So it's a little over 2 months into our relationship after our discussion, and we make it public over facebook that we are dating. Because, ya know, it's not official until it's facebook official, and all that jazz. Well, not even an hour after it goes public, while weeding through the "congratulations" comments, she gets a notification saying she has a pending message request. I'll give you 3 guesses as to who it is. If you guessed Kenny, you'd be right.

His message said something along the lines of:

"Hey. I still love you. I need to see you again."

Of course, creeped out, my girlfriend shows me the message. I told her to just delete it, and not respond. The next day, she has 17 new messages from him, pretty much saying the same thing over and over again. This went on for the next 2 days, before she got the most disturbing message. My girlfriend was hysteric over this, understandably so.

It was a picture of her, myself, and the 3 kids. And it was taken not too far from the kid's school. Immediately, we call her mom, and the cops. The cops said they would personally be escorting us and the kids home from school every day. Her mom gets in touch with her lawyer. The police tried to track Kenny down, but no one can seem to find him.

About 3 weeks later, we hadn't heard from him at all, so we figured he had finally got the message through his thick head. Later on in the night, the oldest comes into mine and my girlfriend's bedroom and wakes me up.

Me: "What is it, honey?"

Alice: "Were you just outside?"

Of course, I'm puzzled by the question. I had literally just been asleep.

Me: "No, sweetie, I've been in bed. Why do you ask?"

Alice: "Because I saw someone walk past the kitchen window and wave at me."

My heart dropped. I knew it had to be him. It was the only logical conclusion.

I look over at the clock on the night stand, and it says 3:37am. I knew that anyone out and about at this time of the night couldn't possibly be up to any good. I set my step-daughter on the bed where I was laying, and told her not to move. I woke up my girlfriend, gave her the quick story, and told her to stay back in the bedroom with the kids.

I quickly shut off all the lights in the house, just in case he tried looking in again. I grabbed the other two kids and put them in our bedroom as well. With all of them in the bedroom, I go to the closet, which has my gun safe in it, and I get out my .45. I grabbed it for protection, just in case he broke in before the cops showed up.

The cops said they would be there soon, and for me to stay on the line. I heard someone fiddling with the back door, so I waited there in the darkness, crouched 6 feet away from the door. But before he could break in, the cops arrived and arrested him. They found a large knife on him, as well as some rope and duct tape. They asked my girlfriend to make a positive ID on him. Sure enough, it was Kenny.

You read a bunch of these stories on Reddit, or in the news, and think "Oh that could never happen to me.", and then it does. It's the definition of surreal. I think back and shudder at what would have happened, hadn't my eldest step-daughter been awake at that time.