Work Text:
Statement of Mary Medoro concerning the physical harm inflicted on her by her stalker. Statement originally given September 2nd, 2008.
I don't remember when I first realized he was following me. I don't remember the last worry free day I had, without the thought of him in the back of my mind and a painful crick in my neck from looking over my shoulder too many times.
But I think I took notice of him sometime during the start of my second semester. Sometimes when I would walk home from work the street lamps and occasional headlights were the only light for me as I walked through the brown, slushy snow, I would feel him. Not see him, not at first. But feel him.
You know that feeling when you know something is wrong? That knowing sickness in your stomach before you get that terrible phone call, when you know that a car accident is going to happen seconds before the collision even occurs, or when you can feel the eyes of an ill-willed stranger on you? I felt him. I felt him.
And when I felt him, I knew he was following me. I didn't make it obvious. I didn't look over my shoulder to look around for the person who I knew was staring at me. I was cautious, careful. I was always taught that if you were being followed to never let the person know you knew about their presence. If you did, they might attack you. You were safer to get on the phone or to enter a crowded shop.
I looked into a dark store window as I walked and looked as far behind me as I dared. I saw his reflection. He wasn't close to me, but not far enough away that I felt like I could outrun him if I needed to. I saw the outline of his body, lit up from a faint and flickering halo from the overhead street lamp. I saw his brown suit jacket and his matching checkered pants. I saw it all except for his face. Aside from the outline, all there was was black where his face should have been. It was too dark and too far away. I only hoped if he tried anything that I would be able to get a better look at his face to give as a description to the police if I needed to.
But I walked on. When I turned the corner to get to my flat, I quickly looked over my shoulder and saw that the man was gone. I felt relieved. I thought that maybe I had just imagined the seriousness of the situation. It wouldn't have been the first time my mind ran away with something and turned an ordinary situation into something dark and dubious.
I went home, and I think I even forgot about the man eventually. But all too soon it became apparent that I'd never be able to forget him.
I started seeing him again. Not everyday and not in the same places, but it wasn't a coincidence. I knew it. He was just there and always wearing that brown suit. I never saw his face… I miss not knowing what his face looks like.
When he did follow me home from work, he did it for longer than he did the first time. Sometimes he'd get closer to me or sometimes he'd walk faster. I don't think I ever heard his footsteps though. And he'd always disappear before I returned to my flat. He'd be there one moment, and the next he'd just be gone.
I remember, one day I saw him whIle I was on the bus to my friend's house. I looked out the window when the bus was at a stop and there he was. I only recognized him by the outfit he wore. He was facing away from the bus so I couldn't see him, but I just knew that he knew I was there. I was so shaken. I was terrified he'd get on the bus. He began to turn around, but before he could and I could see his face, the bus pulled away.
There were also the times when I would see him from my flat window. My flat was pretty high up, I always said I'd never live on the ground floor for my own safety, so he shouldn't have been able to see me through my window. That didn't stop himself from positioning himself at the street corner below, facing my window exactly. I kept my blinds shut the first time I saw him there, and made sure my window was locked even despite the height of my flat.
I could've called the police. I don't know why I didn't. Probably because I knew they wouldn't do anything. That they wouldn't be able to take my vague description of a man who wasn't even breaking the law. They wouldn't be able- no, they would choose to do nothing and I knew it.
I did what I could. I put a screaming alarm on my key ring and I always called my best friend during my walks home from work. Crazy enough, I even thought about getting a dog to deter the man in the brown suit. Though, I don't think that would have helped. After what happened, I would hate to see what he would've done to a poor dog.
It was July. I had been terrorized by this man for half a year. It's stupid, but at that point he had just become part of my life. A scary obstacle if you will. I guess I had just gotten so used to him being there and not doing anything that I didn't think he'd try something. Maybe that's what he was waiting for. It's stupid. I should've never been so careless.
It was the 18th of July, or I guess the 19th. Late either way, and dark as hell. I had been drinking with my friends at a pub not too far from my flat to celebrate one of them getting engaged. I wasn't too drunk and the place wasn't terribly far from my flat, so I thought I'd be fine walking home. It had been days since I saw the man in the brown suit, and the thought of him didn't even cross my mind as I slowly walked home.
The streets were empty, and I felt good. Happy. Full of alcohol and still so excited that one of my mates was going to be married soon, I didn't even feel him there. I didn't feel him following me, nor did I hear him. But I've never heard him. Makes sense now.
I walked home, blissfully unaware. When I arrived at the door of my complex I reached for the handle, but someone's hand moved from behind me and grabbed it before I could. Slow with all the alcohol on my brain, I stared at the hand, not really understanding what was happening. It was black, not black like skin could possibly be black, but dark like ink or leather. I remember thinking it was too warm for someone to be wearing gloves, because that's what I thought it was- a gloved hand.
I looked behind me and saw the man who had been following me all these months. Still in the brown suit, I saw his head and ‘skin’ the same colour as what I thought was his glove.
I don't know how to say this, but his head was fake. It was the head of a mannequin. Black and plastic like his ‘gloves’ and probably the rest of his body. Where his featureless face should have been, someone had roughly carved it away, leaving jagged and sharp jutting pieces of plastic and a hole to the very back of his head. At the back of his head I saw for the first time the face of my stalker.
It was skin. Not plastic, but real human skin. It looked like it had been sliced off of someone's face. But the cuts were smooth and clean. It had been removed carefully, lovingly. Or at the very least precisely. It was not haggard and ruined like the plastic shell of a head that housed it.
It almost looked fake, the skin. Like something out of a gross and bloody horror film. But it's pale lips sagged downwards and between the slices of skin where there should have been eyes, there were glassy marbles, like those used in taxidermy, that forced open the lifeless eyelids open.
I will never forget that face. That ugly, ugly face. I don't know how long I stood there, my hand still hanging in the air and reaching for the door handle. I don't know if the delay in my reaction was because I was drunk or because my brain just didn't understand what I was seeing, but once I realized the situation I tried to scream.
I don't remember much after that. I think he slapped his other hand over my mouth to stop me, and I remember my head hurting… I think he may have slammed the back of my head into the door.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my own bed with the worst hangover I had ever experienced. It took a few seconds of being awake for me to remember the man, but once I did I immediately felt scared and then relieved. It had to have been a bad dream, that's what I thought. A horrible nightmare brought on by the stress of having a stalker and just a bit too much to drink.
Telling myself this only made me feel less scared, it didn't do anything to help the all encompassing pain in my head from the hangover. So I braved the horrors of getting out of bed and went to my bathroom to take something for the pain.
In the mirror I saw it. The face of the man staring at me. I stumbled back and fell against the wall, my eyes were locked with the eyes of the man under the flaps of skin. But they weren't his eyes.
They were mine.
I stared and stared.
The skin around this new face was angry and red, almost infected looking. I tried pulling at this new skin but was only met with pain. The skin was sewn onto my face. With sutures so precise and skilled I didn't even see them under the inflamed skin at first. The flesh was swollen, almost as if it was trying to remove itself from my body. Or if my body was trying to remove it like any other foreign object.
Despite the initial pain that came with me trying to tug at the skin, it was nothing to the pain that was in my entire face. I knew then it wasn't just the pain of a hangover. I took a breath to steady myself and dug my fingers in the small spaces between the stitches that held the skin in place. It was so warm, so hot to the touch.
I tried ripping the face off again.
I have never felt a worse pain in my life than I did then. While the silk stitches pulled through the skin, I tried forcing it off my face. My fingers dug deeper into the hot, raw mass of skin and I could feel my own blood pouring down my face. It cooled my face like sweat as soon as the air hit it and quickly grew tacky.
I tried. I tried so goddamn hard to rip that skin off my face. I managed to pull up just about an inch of it, too. But what I saw made me stop. Underneath the skin that had been so grossly sewn to my own face, was nothing. I had expected this face to be sewn over my own, but I was wrong.
My stalker had removed my skin and replaced it with the skin he had been wearing.
The raw and bloody nerves under the portion of skin I managed to peel off screamed in pain. I think I screamed too. I don't remember.
I only remember one minute I was trying to remove this blemish and then the next I was on the bathroom floor crying into my bloody hands. The tears leaked into my stitches and their salt burned the fresh wounds on my face.
That was two months ago.
I still have this face that is not mine. I removed the stitches a few weeks after the incident. It scarred just as much as you'd think it would. Which is to say badly.
I quit my job and moved as soon as I didn't look like a horror film extra. It was hard, I don't exactly look like my ID or passport photo anymore. But I couldn't stay there where that thing knew where I lived. I couldn't stay where people knew me, either. I couldn't face them like this, with this face that isn't mine.
That goes to say I haven't seen my friends. I've declined all their calls and even blocked their numbers. How could I see them? How could I face them with this face? I could never explain it to them. I don't want them to see me like this. It's best if they remember me how I'm supposed to look, how I used to look.
When I moved I found this place, this Institute. I would never be able to tell what happened to me to any real person, so I thought I could tell it here. I think it made me feel better. A bit. Not enough though. Nothing will ever make this feel better.
At least I haven't seen that man since it happened. I'd rather kill myself than have to see him with that face, my face. Or maybe I'd kill him and take it back myself. Maybe that would make me feel better.