The Whistling Man

The first time I encountered the whistling man, I was shopping with a friend. I heard a strange whistle several times while walking through the aisles of a toy store. At first I assumed it was a phone notification, but the sound kept getting closer.

Near the exit, I turned around and found a small, thin man standing directly behind me. He had long hair tied back, a worn black shirt, and a bulging backpack. He smiled broadly, but the expression never reached his eyes.

He said he had noticed me in the store and asked for my opinion about a doll in a crumpled advertisement. I pointed to one without really looking. He immediately began asking personal questions, including where I went to the gym and whether anyone had told me how pretty I was.

Before I could leave, he said that friends take pictures together. He held up an old phone, leaned close to me, and took a photograph without permission. Then he smiled at the screen and declared that we were friends. He continued asking where I was from, where I was going, and what I liked to do.

My friend touched my arm and I finally broke out of the frozen, polite response I had been giving him. I said that my father was waiting and that we had to go. We turned away and ran as soon as we were far enough from the store.

Much later, I was traveling to school on a crowded bus when I heard the same whistle beside my ear. A hand closed around the pole just above mine. When I looked up, the same man was standing there, wearing the same wide smile.

He greeted me as his friend and asked whether I remembered him. I tried to move away, but the bus was packed. He became angry when I denied knowing him and said that he had my picture. He pulled the old phone from his backpack and began searching through it.

I worried that he would see me get off at my usual stop and learn where I went every day. He asked which school I attended, so I gave him the name of another school. When the bus reached my stop, I waited until he was distracted by the phone, then disappeared into the crowd and ran to class.

For the next several weeks, I changed my route and asked someone I trusted to accompany me. I did not see him again for a long time.

Years later, I was riding home alone after an evening out with friends. I heard the same whistle and stepped off the bus at my stop. It was dark, and only one other passenger left the bus.

From behind me, the man called out and asked whether I remembered him. I recognized the voice, the whistle, the tilted head, and the unnaturally wide smile. He was wearing a backpack across his chest.

I said no and began walking faster. He followed me, then started running. His hands were inside the backpack, searching for something I did not want to identify. The smile disappeared, and he shouted angrily that I had chosen to treat him badly.

I ran all the way home without looking back. I never learned what he wanted, how he kept finding me, or why he considered a photograph taken without my consent proof that we were friends.

To the whistling man with the backpack, I was never your friend. Let us never meet again.