The Mom's Bike

I've had a few genuinely creepy experiences in my life, but this is the only one that still makes me wonder whether someone was deliberately trying to terrorize me instead of rob me. It started while I was working late at an office in an old industrial district. There wasn't much around except empty warehouses and abandoned buildings, so once the sun went down the whole area felt deserted. Out of nowhere, a rock came crashing through my office window, showering the room with glass. I didn't stick around to investigate. I grabbed my keys, ran to my car, and drove home without looking back.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized I'd made a huge mistake. My car had been unlocked the entire time. I could've sworn I'd locked it before going inside that evening, but in my panic I never checked. I searched the car with a flashlight and didn't notice anything missing, so I convinced myself whoever threw the rock had probably just been some random vandal. After a while I stopped thinking about it and tried to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

The next afternoon I borrowed one of our bikes to ride over to a friend's house. About halfway there, another cyclist came toward me from the opposite direction. As he passed, he slowed down just enough to lock eyes with me. I can still picture his face perfectly. He had this enormous grin that didn't look happy at all, it looked unhinged, like he knew something I didn't. He never said a word. He just kept smiling until he disappeared around the corner. It gave me such a bad feeling that I turned around almost immediately and headed back home.

That's when everything clicked. The bike he'd been riding looked exactly like my mom's. When I got to the house, her bike was gone. Then I looked at my car and noticed the rear passenger door was sitting slightly open. Whoever had smashed my office window the night before hadn't been trying to scare me away, they'd been getting me out of the building long enough to hide inside my unlocked car. They knew where I lived. They'd ridden to my house inside my own vehicle, stolen the bike, and then made sure I saw them riding it the next day. They could have disappeared without me ever knowing who took it, but instead they smiled at me. That smile is what still bothers me. It wasn't the look of someone stealing a bike, it was the look of someone enjoying the fact that they knew exactly how frightened I'd be once I figured out what had happened.