ST of how I was held hostage against my will at 17
I’d like to preface this by saying it’s gonna be a long story but every detail just adds to the insanity of this experience.
When I was mid teens we moved to a nice neighborhood for my dad’s work. Our neighbor across the street would always come to our yard to talk casually. Let’s call her Kate. Kate is an older lady and over the years she became more than just a neighbor but like a grandma (she’s 50-55 ish). She was nice and would invite us over on Christmas Eve to spoil us with gifts because she lived alone so we would keep her company. She was always eclectic; sometimes she would go on rants about religion and the government and she would identify with a bunch of different religions. The first time she was a little more than just a little cooky she came over to our house smelling of vodka and talked really loudly about Jesus with her arms spread out. Weird, but ultimately just passionate and maybe a little tipsy. I was homeschool so I would walk over to her house sometimes and we would talk and she would tell me cool stories of her life. Well, she tells us a few years later she is retiring and moving to a beach house with a pool and we should come visit. We stayed with her twice and my Uncle and his family even stayed with her one time because their AirBnB fell through. 2 ish years after she moved I was 17 and got my license so I asked my best friend at the time if she wanted to spend a long weekend at my family friends beach house. Everything was set up and we planned to drive the 3 hours to Kate’s house and stay with her Thursday- Sunday. When we get there, Kate has our room set up and got us baskets of our favorite treats, soda, and snacks. We spend Thursday- Friday afternoon talking by her pool and everything is amazing. Friday night she tells us we are gonna do a movie night. Me and my best friend are watching the movie but it’s kinda boring so we go on our phones. Kate didn’t like that. She made comments about how we weren’t paying attention or she was gonna “quiz us at the end”. At one point she grabbed my friends phone and powered it off. It was awkward but again we just thought she was a little crazy in like a cute cat lady type of way. Saturday rolls around Kate wakes us up saying “you guys are at the beach you should be making memories and telling me all your fun stories when u come home”. Remember me and my best friend are home schooled… we don’t go to beach parties with people we don’t know (rarely with people we do know😂) we brush it off but she makes us get up and get out of the house to find something to do. We get back around 5pm Saturday and Kate takes us to the boardwalk on the beach and tells us “I’m gonna walk my dog around a little. You guys explore. Try to get some alcoholic beverages at the bar over there” neither of us were legal drinking age and we are too smart to get drunk somewhere we don’t know. We go back to Kate’s house sober.
Me and my friend both decided we wanted to go home early Sunday morning instead of Sunday night to rest and because Kate was being pushy about “making memories “ we get all packed and I text my mom asking for her to make up an excuse of why we should go home early. It’s now 10pm Saturday and my mom sends Kate the text right as me and my bff go to get Taco Bell. Kate must have seen my mom’s text right after we left. We get back to Kate’s house around 10:30pm. I say “goodnight Miss Kate, by the way I think we are gonna leave around 7am tomorrow morning per my mom’s request “. Kate starts TWEAKING. Not sad tweaking but screaming, scratching her face and arms aggressively and getting in our faces. She was completely different from when we left to get Taco Bell; differnt like she was on drugs it seemed so un natural. This whole time she isn’t mad at us but mad at my mom but taking it out on me. Gettin in my face saying my mom treats me like her slave and I let her do it. I’m trying to deescalate the situation by saying “aha no no it’s okay I wanna go home anyway” then she starts saying she wants to hurt my mom. I no longer think this is something I can brush off. I say “Kate that was not ok to say. You will not put ur hands on my mother” then she pushes me against the wall and screams in my face “I will and I’ll go through you if you try to stop me.” I starts sobbing uncontrollably and lock myself in the bathroom but through the wall I hear Kate yelling at my bff. I walk into the room they are in and Kate has my friend backed in the corner, yelling at her WHILE STABBING A POT OF FLOWERS on the dresser. Im scared. My friend is scared. This 55 year old lady is obviously on something, possessed, or going through a mental break. I say “Kate we are leaving now” and Kate didn’t like that. She locked us all in the room and barricades the door. (If you are wondering why I didn’t just fight this old lady; SHE WAS HOLDING A KITCHEN KNIFE). At this point I’m so overwhelmed begging her to let us leave and she is just screaming more and then she starts speaking in tongues. Like actually. Hands stretched out, eyes rolled back, speaking in tongues/ making sounds. I don’t go into fight or flight but freeze. She comes over to me and holds me so tight I can barely breathe but she is saying stuff like “I know you are crying because what I’m saying about your mother is true and I’m so sorry you are going through that.” And she starts stroking my hair/head so aggressively chunks of my hair is falling out. I push her off me and grab my phone to dial 911. Kate freaks and says “you dial them, and I will make sure you don’t ever see the red and blue lights pull up.” Then she runs out of the room and I think she’s grabbing a gun. Me and my friend grab our shit and try to find my keys to get tf out of there. KATE HAD TAKEN MY KEYS. She gets back in the room and she says “you aren’t driving in this state. It’s dangerous to drive while crying” and I’m just screaming to let us out. Eventually I get a change to call my special forces father and he tells me to let Kate talk to him. Idk what he said but I’m sure it was scary because Kate swings the door open and tells us to get tf out. I get all the important shit and RUN to my car. My friends says she left her phone inside but Kate has locked the front door. It’s 1am at this point and I’m BANGING on her door screaming telling her to let me get the rest of our shit. We finally get in the car sobbing, half naked with only tshirts on, BUT alive. I hang up with my dad and call my bf at the time AND HE HANGS UP ON ME TWICE because I’m “being annoying pranking him” (safe to say i broke up with him the next morning). Anyway. We are 3 hours from home at 1am, no gas in car, Kate blowing up my phone. The first gas station I see has cops outside. I pull up to get gas but I’m so disoriented I’m on the wrong side so I just run over to the cops and between sobs I tell him what happened. We make a report and I give him Kate’s address and name. He looks at me and says “that’s not the name registered for the house”. I only find out later that “Kate” was one of MANY alter egos that this lady had gone by.
The next week I wait for a call from the cops so I can press charges. They called my friend first and she had told them that she didn’t want to press charges because most of the physical, mental, and emotion abuse was directed to me. So because she didn’t want to press charges, the cops just never called me and I was too scared at the time to look at the gas station cop cars and see what department they were. By definition I was kidnapped and held against my will because I was 17 and I absolutely would have prosecuted if given the chance.
So now, two years later, I’m 19 and do not plan on pulling my punches no mater how old someone is.