15x14: The Sicario (Our Airbnb Host)

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We're taking Let's Not Meet on the road again this year.

Phoenix, Arizona, I'll be at Rebel Lounge on November 17th.

St.

Paul, Minnesota at Turf Club on November 19th, and Chicago, Illinois at Beat Kitchen on November 20th.

Get your tickets at let's not meetpodcast.com Tor or follow the link in the show notes.

I'll see you there.

This podcast contains adult language and content.

Listener discretion is advised.

If you have a story to share, send it to let's not meetstories at gmail.com.

Enjoy the show.

This happened way back when I was a teen, so my memories of it may be a bit fuzzy.

When I was growing up, my family had a dog.

One night, I took the dog out to the backyard and let him run around and do his business.

I went back inside while the dog was still out there, but planned to let him back in soon.

My brother and I then heard him barking a lot.

It was typical for our dog to bark like crazy for no reason, so this didn't raise any concern or suspicion to us.

But then a minute or so later, I went back out there to get our dog and bring him back inside.

Now, the dog never went inside willingly, so I had to go outside and yell his name.

As I was doing this I heard my brother, who suddenly appeared at the window.

He was screaming at me.

He screamed for me to go back inside, so I did so without questioning.

I had never heard him sound so panicked before, so I immediately went to our room and asked him what was going on, and what he told me was something that chilled me to the bone.

He said that he had seen someone standing directly behind me when I was in our backyard.

It was then that I remembered I had left the back door open.

We went to get our mom, grabbed a baseball bat, and cautiously approached the back door.

We got our dog inside and looked out at the backyard.

Our shed door was wide open, which was unusual since we never used it.

I've never had something like this happen to me before, so I just thought I would share.

This happened a few years ago when I was bartending in college.

I was coming home down a stretch of divided highway at 3 a.m.

when I noticed a car heading towards me in the wrong lane.

I doubted myself at first and thought that the car was on the other side of the highway.

But as it came came closer, sure enough, this white Ford sedan was on my side of the highway, and they were trying to pass me at a very high speed, going at least ninety.

It's worth noting for later that I also drive a white Ford sedan.

I've grown used to seeing drunk and idiotic drivers in the middle of the night, so I pulled to the side of the road and tried to let this car pass.

I had a moment of clarity and thought to call the police, thinking that this this person could hurt themselves or somebody else.

A dispatcher answered my call, and after telling them which road and which mile marker I was closest to, they told me that they would send a car out.

The state police station was only a few exits away, so I figured that whoever they were sending would arrive quickly, and I would drive home after that.

As I headed back on to the highway I noticed some lights a few miles behind me.

I live in a more rural part of southeastern Pennsylvania, and traffic at 3 a.m.

tends to be truckers and cops.

The car gained on me as I was getting up to speed, so I stayed in the right lane and waited for them to pass me.

Instead, they flipped on their high beams, making it uncomfortable to drive, and tailgated me.

At this point, I thought I was going to be pulled over by the police.

I drove a white Ford sedan and had just called about a different white Ford sedan, so I grabbed my registration from my glove box.

Then, suddenly, the car behind me audibly slammed on its brakes and stopped in the middle of the highway.

They must have shut off their car, because the lights went out, and I saw what looked like the same white Ford sedan from earlier.

The car had a roof rack, so I still thought that it could be a police car, and I was worried since it could have looked like I had reached for a gun in my glove box or something like that.

So I panicked and called 911 for a second time and asked the dispatcher if they had sent out a cruiser to my area to investigate.

The dispatcher was a little curt with me and assured me that somebody had been sent out.

We have a trooper out to find the car, sir, the dispatcher said.

I only asked because someone is following me and acting weird, I replied.

It's so dark, and I can't tell.

But they could be a cop, and I'm worried that I freaked them out by reaching into my glove box when I was trying to get my registration.

Are you pulled over?

The dispatcher asked.

No, I replied.

If the person behind me is a cop, they didn't turn on their lights.

The dispatcher then said, Let me try to get a hold of the trooper that was sent out.

As she was talking, the car again sped towards me and stopped just inches from my bumper.

They had their high beams on again, and they slammed on their brakes.

I then told the dispatcher, I'm pretty sure this isn't a police car behind me.

The car then sped up to my bumper again and flashed its high beams.

This time, they also laid down on the horn, and the dispatcher heard it.

What's happening?

the dispatcher asked.

Did you just honk?

I replied, No, that was the car behind me, and I don't think it's a cop.

I'll try to send another trooper, but I don't think he's behind you, the dispatcher said.

For some reason, this is what shook me.

Before that, I was thinking about getting pulled over and maybe getting a ticket, even if I was going the speed limit and trying to avoid getting pulled over.

I told the dispatcher, I don't care if I end up getting pulled over, I need to speed to get away from whoever is behind me.

If it turns out to be a cop and I'm speeding, then fine.

They can put their lights on and then I'll pull over.

And with that I started to accelerate.

The person behind me kept up with me.

The speed limit was 55, and they kept on my bumper the entire time, and they were swerving.

I tried to signal for an exit and bail on it, hoping that they'd take the exit by accident, but they just stayed on me and kept following.

At the next exit, I took the off-ramp and continued onto the on-ramp, and the car behind me followed the whole time.

I thought about trying to go to Wawa, which was the only populated place I could think of in southeastern Pennsylvania at 3 a.m., but the dispatcher thought that it would be unsafe.

She was calm in talking to another person while trying to send police to me.

The other person she was talking to was possibly her supervisor, and they asked if I could drive to the state police station.

Realizing that I was one exit away, I told them that I would go there, and she said that she would have troopers meet me outside.

As I exited, the car continued to follow me.

I blew through a few red lights trying to get to the police station, and the car pulled into the other lane to try and pass me or pull up alongside me.

Once the police station was within view, I put on my turn signal, and the car slammed on its brakes again, turning off its lights and turning into a parking lot.

The story kind of ends there.

I pulled into the police station and I met the troopers.

Two of them went to find the car, and I stayed at the station with the third trooper.

I thanked the dispatcher and her supervisor and the state trooper who escorted me home after taking a statement.

I was never called to follow up or testify to anything, so I can only assume that whoever was on my tail didn't get caught.

This happened three years ago.

This older guy would come into the store where I worked every single day to get a fountain pop, and sometimes he'd come in more than once to refill it.

He was always very friendly, and me and the other girls who I worked with were never bothered by him.

He really liked Elvis, and would sometimes bring some memorabilia to show us.

On special days like Mother's Day, he would bring small presents for everyone, like stuffed animals, or a flower.

Since everyone was getting these presents, no one felt that it was weird, and no one was singled out.

That didn't last forever, though.

He would sometimes joke to me about how he was going to take me on a date.

Working with the general public, I was pretty used to older men joking around like this, so it didn't phase me at all.

Interactions like that happen all all the time at this type of job.

However, his joking really should have been the first red flag for me.

He then started to bring these presents in just for me and no one else.

A stuffed animal, an Elvis CD, things like that.

This was when I really started to feel like something was wrong.

It all came to a head one day when I walked into work and there was a beautiful bouquet of roses waiting for me.

I I had a boyfriend at the time, so when I saw my name on them, I was initially very happy.

My co-worker had a very concerned look on her face and told me to read the card.

I'm sure you can guess who the flowers were actually from.

Well, that same day, his daughter came into the store absolutely inconsolable.

He had kicked her out of the house, and she kept calling him crazy.

At first, my manager and I thought that she she was just upset, so we got her some water and tried to calm her down without thinking too much about the fact that she was calling him crazy.

When she finally calmed down, she told us something kind of chilling.

He was supposed to be taking medication.

He had schizophrenia.

However, he recently stopped.

He said the radio told him that his daughter was going to hire an assassin to kill him, and that I was his only hope for being saved from this.

When she said that, I wanted to throw up.

I know most people with schizophrenia are harmless, so I'm not trying to convey that they're dangerous at all, but combining that with everything that had already been happening, I started to freak out a bit.

My manager told me it was my fault for flirting and being too friendly.

and that he's just a loyal customer.

She was terrible.

I went home that day with the flowers, and my mom made the same assumption I did and thought that my boyfriend had given them to me.

That made me break down and I told her everything.

My mom was absolutely pissed, especially since my manager and boss weren't doing anything about it.

The next day, she went to work with me and waited.

It made me feel better to have her there with me.

She's a total mama bear who's always there to protect my sister and me.

When he came in, my mom went off on him.

She called him a creep and said that a grown man shouldn't be harassing young women, especially since he was older than my father.

She told him that if he didn't leave me alone, she would get the cops to arrest him if he was lucky.

He quickly left after this.

My manager wasn't happy, but my mom told her she needed to deal with these situations herself if she didn't want a mom coming in and doing that.

I didn't stay at the job much longer, but whenever he came in after that, I would always have my coworker wait on him, and I would go into the back.

Whenever he saw me, he wouldn't even say a word to me.

After I left that job, I didn't see him again.

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I'm turning 20 soon, but this happened when I was in ninth grade.

I was a naive 15-year-old who was just starting high school life, which was major.

I live in Hungary, so we have a different school system and such.

Please bear with me.

When I started high school, I decided that I wanted to be part of the chorus.

I chose this mostly because I had to get fifty points of community service to be able to graduate, and being in chorus gave fifteen points toward that goal per year.

During the second week of school, I met him for the first time.

We'll call him George.

This obviously is not his real name.

So everyone took turns saying their names and a few things about themselves, which is pretty typical for the beginning of the school year.

I actually didn't even notice him at first because he was sitting in the back, and he was very quiet the whole time.

Life just kind of went on after that.

I didn't think anything of this.

By the third week of the school year, I decided to participate in a school program that focused on students with good grades who had an interest in nature and related subjects, such as physics and biology.

I joined because I was deeply fascinated by chemistry and biology at the same time, and I wanted to explore as much as I could.

When I joined with a few of my other classmates, everything went smoothly.

We met on Friday afternoons in the school laboratory to study.

We would do some experiments, things like that.

About two weeks into the program, the teachers who were running it decided that they wanted us to mingle a little more instead of just grouping with our usual classmates.

This program included students from 9th and 10th grade, and the teachers decided to pick our partners for us.

I was partnered with a few 10th graders, and one of them was George.

I kind of recognized him, but I couldn't remember where I had seen him outside the program.

I knew I had to have seen him around school, but I couldn't place him.

Eventually, I realized he was the quiet boy from Chorus.

So, time went on, and eventually he reached out to me over Facebook.

We chatted for a bit.

He was shy but friendly, and I was being friendly in return since I didn't want to come off as rude.

I was aware that some boys can misconstrue friendliness as flirting, so I intentionally kept him at a distance.

We talked about who we had crushes on and things like that, but I felt like things were platonic between us.

I felt like I was a wing woman for him more than anything.

Then I got a boyfriend, which which didn't really last long, but he didn't like it one bit.

We were still kind of friends, because we were in chorus and the science program together, but our friendship never really went past that.

About four to five months later, I realized that George liked me.

I had just been broken up with, so George thought I was immediately available.

I kept him at a distance still, but he started to act weirder.

At first I thought it was because he had a crush on me, and I figured he didn't know any better.

But he kept getting weirder.

For example, he'd go to the fountain, which was located right next to our classroom for a drink, and as he'd drink he would watch what was going on in the classroom.

He would usually focus on me, in particular, as he lingered near the doorway.

He always paid attention to who I was looking at or talking to.

Then later he would look them up on Facebook.

I had guy friends at the time, and whenever he saw me talking to them, he wouldn't leave me alone until I told him who they were and if I thought they liked me or not.

Mind you, I hardly considered him a friend at this point.

He then kept following me in school and on field trips with the chorus and the science program.

One time I caught him taking pictures of me, but he tried to laugh it off when I confronted him.

Another time, he was showing me pictures on his phone, and he accidentally showed me a picture of myself.

In the picture, I was standing with my back to him, talking to my other friend in the program, and he took a picture of my body.

He laughed it off again, said that the picture must have been taken by accident, but the photo was clear and in focus, and I was perfectly centered.

This was weird.

I didn't know how to feel about it, so I distanced myself from him even more.

Around this time, he was texting and messaging me even more, but I was trying my best to ignore him and curve him softly, but nicely.

In hindsight, I should have been firmer, but we had many mutual friends, and we were still in the science program and chorus together, so I didn't want to make it awkward for everyone else.

So I continued blocking his attempts to break out of the friend zone.

Honestly, I hate even calling it that, since he wasn't even my friend.

He was still following me around, watching everything and looking up everyone that he saw me interact with on Facebook, Instagram, and whichever other social media app he was using.

He also started this little shitty game, where he would tell me what I was wearing even if I hadn't seen him at all.

He didn't have many friends, especially in my class, so no one told him what I was wearing.

I don't know how he knew what I was wearing since my friends and I were all on the lookout for him.

The worst part was the embarrassment I felt when my friends saw him.

Everybody was concerned, and they would focus on keeping me out of his sight.

It even got to the point where they felt uncomfortable by his presence and creepiness.

One time, I was wearing a knee-length skirt with a normal t-shirt and some opaque black stockings.

He messaged me and said, When I saw your outfit, I had to go to the bathroom because I almost had a little problem in my pants.

I then started to ignore him more.

I just ghosted him, looked away from him, and stopped talking to him altogether.

I was hoping he would receive my obvious cues and flip off, but

things got worse.

He began sending me the most explicitly sexual messages, and even more creepy creepy shit.

He also asked me why I was ignoring him, and he accused me of manipulating him.

Then, when my birthday was coming up, about a week before it, he sent me a screenshot of his gallery on his phone.

He had a whole folder of my pictures.

There had to be around fifty of them.

Some were images that he had screenshot from my Instagram stories, and he downloaded several pictures I had uploaded elsewhere.

After that, I didn't upload anything at all.

I blocked him, but he messaged me from another platform to ask why.

He also tried to make me feel bad, but I knew he was gaslighting me.

However, I did feel bad that he didn't have many friends, so I ended up unblocking him, which was a big mistake.

He thought that meant that I liked him back.

After that, he was entirely unavoidable.

Every day he would find a way to annoy me and my friends.

He also started spreading rumors saying that we were together and that I loved him.

I had to find a new route to the bus station because he memorized where I went, and he started to go that way as well.

This made no sense.

His dorms were in the opposite direction.

But he was doing this so that we would coincidentally meet.

Then, finally, summer break arrived.

Everyone went on break and he went home, so he wasn't in the dorms, but he kept messaging me with that usual creepiness.

I finally decided to post something after not posting for months, and I posted some pictures after I went on a motorbike ride with my brother, who was around twenty two at the time.

George downloaded the picture and sent it back to me with the caption

I want to have a motorbike so that I can visit you every day.

He also kept hinting at the place where I lived, but luckily he he didn't know where I lived exactly.

He just knew the town that I was in.

At this point, he was messaging me multiple times a day, and he wouldn't leave me alone.

I never messaged him back.

I just ignored him entirely.

I then started a summer job and reconnected with an old friend.

I told her everything about George, and she mentioned that her best friend was a fit guy who liked helping girls scare guys who were giving them unwanted attention.

Well, I agreed to recruit him.

I was desperate to get George off my back.

I also considered asking a guy friend of mine to pretend to be my boyfriend, but I met my friend's friend instead.

And then, about a month after we met, we started dating.

I told him all about George and showed him everything, and he was absolutely disgusted by him.

When summer came to an end, we went back to school.

My boyfriend went to a different school in the same city.

The entire chorus went on a trip, and we went to the school's official lake house, which was more like a little run-down cabin.

George was on the trip, of course, but luckily I surrounded myself with friends who were very upfront.

I tried my best to ignore him and pretend that he didn't exist, and my friends tried to keep us separated to the best of their abilities.

But then, one evening after a chorus meeting, he lingered and waited for the opportunity to catch me by myself.

When my friends went to the bathroom, he cornered me.

I was freaked out, but I had nowhere to go.

He then reached out to me, and in his sweaty hand, there was a ring.

He said that he bought this ring for me.

I told him to save it and give it to another girl who actually likes him back, but he wouldn't let up.

I was getting increasingly anxious, thinking that he wasn't going to let me leave, but I stayed calm and waited until he moved a bit, and then I slipped past him and bolted upstairs to the room I was sharing with my friends.

Then I told them what happened, and after that we increased our already high efforts to keep him away.

After we returned from the trip I told my boyfriend everything, and he told me that he would have a talk with George before our next chorus trip to Poland.

My boyfriend did as he promised, and George said that he would back off and he apologized.

But then he just continued with his shit.

He glued himself to my group of friends during our next trip, and he wouldn't leave us alone.

Luckily one of my friends was a bit extra, so she always positioned herself between me and George, and I am extremely grateful for her.

But he kept lurking around, waiting for me to be alone so that he could talk to me about my boyfriend and ask me why I was letting him dictate our relationship.

After we got home from that trip I told my boyfriend everything, and he went to talk to him again.

Even after the second conversation with my boyfriend, George continued with this shit, so I told him I was going to have my boyfriend talk to him again.

George then left to supposedly go have a conversation with my boyfriend, even though I hadn't set it up yet.

Then he told me that my boyfriend didn't show up to have this talk with him.

I laughed laughed because my boyfriend was sitting right next to me, reading this message with me.

He then really wanted to have a chat with George, and after an excruciating half hour, we left.

My boyfriend told me that his chat with George went well, so then I went on thinking that maybe things would finally be good.

But then that night, George messaged me and told me that he needed me to be the one to tell him to leave me alone.

He said he thought that my boyfriend was manipulating me into hating him, which made me so mad that everything I had been feeling for the past year came flooding back.

So I chewed him out, and then I blocked him.

He didn't try to reach out after that, so I felt like everything was going to be fine.

Was this the end of it?

No, of course not.

About five months later, George messaged me again.

He told me he was sorry, admitted that he had been treating me inappropriately, and asked for another chance to be my friend.

I warily accepted, hoping that he did change, which I do realize was naive of me.

He said that he had a girlfriend, but he made her up so that I wouldn't think he liked me anymore.

He also kept trying to get me into his dorm to quote-unquote playpool.

I declined, and he got mad, so I chewed him out again.

I told him that he clearly didn't change, and he needed to leave me alone since I didn't want him in my life.

I told him he needed to fuck off, like he did for the previous five months.

Then he blocked me on Facebook and left me alone, but only for a week.

When he resurfaced after that week, I stood my ground and told him he needed to leave me alone, and after that, he stopped trying, since he had a new target.

The new girl that he set his sights on looked exactly like me.

She had the same hair and eye color.

Even our height and general styles were very similar.

She was also in Chorus.

I then left Chorus, and the science program ended, so all of his previous ties to me were gone.

Things were quiet for about a year, but then he started showing up at the store that I went to on a daily basis.

He always showed up at the exact time I was there.

I was there in the checkout line, and he got in line right behind me.

He didn't even talk to me.

He just looked at me.

This made me so mad I decided I wasn't going to go to that store for a while.

After that, I noticed that when there was a school function, he would look at me multiple times, but he'd quickly take his eyes off of me when I looked over at him.

He eventually graduated and moved to a new city about 100 kilometers away.

I still keep him blocked, but he still checks out my Instagram profile with a secondary account.

I know that he does, since he accidentally clicked on a button to request to follow me, but he quickly rescinded the request.

I blocked that account as well, and things have been quiet ever since.

So to my ninth grade stalker, George, please let's never meet again.

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This happened to me around a year ago,

It was the middle of the week, but I was on vacation, so I stayed out pretty late.

On this particular night, at around 1 a.m., I got into my car to head home.

I live about a 30-minute drive from where I was at the time.

I live in a small German town.

My home is on the main street, but the area isn't very busy.

At night during the week, there's barely any traffic.

I see cars now and then, but that's about it.

Coming from the direction, as I was driving, I could see down the road for quite a ways, maybe 600 to 700 meters.

I rent a parking spot in an underground garage, which is shared with ten or so other tenants.

The garage entrance is tucked away beside the building and somewhat hidden by the surrounding houses.

The entrance isn't visible unless you're standing right in front of it.

Anyway, after I made the drive, everything was normal.

I pulled into the driveway and stopped for a moment so that I could open the garage door with my remote.

Then I pulled into the garage and reversed into my parking spot, which faces the entrance.

After I parked, I left the engine running as I rummaged in the center console.

I can't can't even remember what I was looking for, but when I looked up, there was suddenly a stranger standing right there.

A man who appeared to be about 45 years old was just about three meters in front of my car.

He was just standing inside the parking garage, staring at me.

I was terrified.

Reflexively, I hit the lock button on my car.

He then shouted that he needed to use my phone since his car had broken down and he had to make a call.

But I hadn't seen any broken down cars or flashing hazard lights anywhere on the road.

I had just driven along the road where he said he had broken down, but there was no car pulled over or anything.

I was frozen in shock.

I just stared at him.

He seemed to notice how confused I was, so he even told me that the breakdown actually happened the next town over, which, by the way, was an hour's walk away.

Then he asked me to give him my phone again, and he was louder and more aggressive.

That was when I looked at him in further detail and realized what he was wearing.

He was only wearing knee-length checkered shorts.

He had no shirt on.

It was springtime, so it wasn't freezing outside, but it definitely wasn't warm enough for him to be standing around half-naked.

I yelled through the still closed window and said that I couldn't help him, and I asked him to leave.

Growing even angrier, he said, you don't need to be afraid of me.

Just come over here.

Give me your phone.

I stuck to my guns, though.

I told him I was sorry and repeated that, no, I wouldn't be doing that, and he had to leave.

He continued to stand there, staring at me for just a moment longer.

Then he angrily walked out of the garage.

I stayed put as I watched him walk away and waited for the garage door to fully close.

Only then did I finally turn off my engine.

I wanted to call a friend, but I didn't have any reception in the garage, so I grabbed my keys and every bit of courage I had and sprinted to the door leading into the hallway that leads into my apartment building.

The door from the garage to the hallway is a heavy door, and it sometimes jams, but thankfully, it was fine that night.

Even though the man walked out and the garage was closed, I felt like I needed to sprint to the door leading to the inside, since there was also a back entrance to the garage.

I wasn't sure if that door was locked, or if the man even knew about it.

Once I was inside, I ran to my ground floor apartment.

The windows are somewhat shielded by a hedge leading to my terrace, but technically it's still accessible from the street.

Once inside, I locked everything, shut all of the blinds, and sat there for several minutes before calling a friend.

Now I debated calling the police, but ultimately decided not to.

I figured that they had more urgent matters to deal with, since, ultimately, the man didn't do anything besides become aggressive.

Looking back, I realized that I should have called them, but honestly, I was just too rattled.

I'm usually someone who's happy to help people, but he could have easily flagged me down outside of the garage and asked me to call someone for him, or he could have at least knocked on one of the many doors elsewhere in the neighborhood.

He should have done anything other than following a young woman into a parking garage late at night, half naked.

That was just way too sketchy.

Thankfully, I haven't seen him since that night, but ever since this happened, I hate parking there.

I never get out of my car until the garage door is fully closed, and even then, I'm always on edge.

I'm so grateful that I kept the car running and locked the doors.

I'm also grateful that my parking spot is right across from the entrance, so I had a clear view.

Lastly, I'm grateful that I hadn't gotten out of the car earlier.

I really don't want to imagine what could have happened if I had.

I'm a male in my late twenties, and I've never had anything in this manner happen to me.

I had just arrived in Florida to visit family, and I took my father's car for a drive in the towns just south.

I ended up stopping at a nearby empty parking lot by a very big lake to see if I could spot a gator or two.

The second I pulled in, I noticed a small early 2000s Ford at the end of the lot, with a man in the driver's seat.

He looked to be in his late 60s or early 70s, and he was staring right at me through his coke bonnel lenses.

I found a spot closest to a dock, and the second after I exited the car, this man was pulling into the spot directly left of my car.

I was still standing there by the driver's side door, and he didn't give me the time to move out of the way.

He just hastily pulled into the spot.

This struck me as strange right away, but at the same time, screw this guy.

I wasn't going to let this junior soprano lookalike interfere with my experience at the lake.

So I walked past this guy, acting like I wasn't thinking of his presence as odd, and then I walked out to the end of the dock for a bit to see if there were any gators.

I saw none.

All the while, I saw that this guy continued to fixate on me, even when I stared back at him.

I then started to walk back to the dock towards my car to get a view of the shoreline, and the man started his engine.

I wasn't ready to leave, so I turned back towards the end of the dock again, and he turned off his engine.

After spending some time trying not to let this guy bother me and enjoy the views of the lake, I decided to leave.

Once I appeared to be heading back to my car, this man again started his engine as I was walking back from the dock.

His window was wide open, and he was still very much fixated on me.

With my body language, I tried to show this man that I wasn't anyone he wanted to talk to.

As I passed by his car to get to mine, I decided to feel this guy out by saying,

Beautiful day to look at the lake, huh?

He replied, I'm taking bets, no questions asked.

Then proceeded to laugh with the biggest grin across his face.

I ignored this reply and got into my car.

car.

Even when I was back in my car, he was still looking right at me, so I pulled out and he pulled out right behind me.

But I'm a fast driver, so I managed to pull into traffic without allowing him to get behind me, and I quickly lost him.

I'm glad that I wasn't a kid or someone more vulnerable in that situation.

Other than kidnap and murder me, the only three things I thought he could have been trying to do were sell me drugs, take bets because he seemed to be a bookie, or hope that I was gay and he could pick me up.

If the latter was true, he had terrible game.

Maybe I was unknowingly doing a universal sign indicating that I was looking for sex.

I was just looking for gators on a dock, so was I accidentally signaling something?

Florida?

Does anyone know?

I certainly don't know, but it was really strange.

In hindsight, I suppose I can consider myself lucky since he didn't put a gun in my face or try to force me into his car.

However, I still must report that Florida man is very real.

I was glad that the state lived up to its reputation on that one at least, so thank you for the bizarre experience, Florida.

The state is crazy.

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I'm keeping some of these details vague because I don't seriously want the host of this place to find out that I shared this story.

I don't think that they would approve.

That being said, I'll try to make this as comprehensive as possible.

I spent a year studying in Mexico recently.

And as you do on an exchange, I tried to travel as much as I could in my free time.

Between the semesters, there's a big break, and I decided that I'd spend the break by taking a longer backpacking trip through Mexico with my buddy, whom I spent most of my time with during the exchange.

We had a rough plan on where to go and what we wanted to see, but we didn't book our return flight prior to the trip since we weren't sure of where we would be flying out from.

We wanted to keep it flexible.

We had an amazing time, and a few days before our trip ended, we finally decided that we would take our flight from a city that was close.

The city's airport had really cheap flights, but this city itself didn't really have anything to offer.

We found a room on Airbnb that was very close to the airport.

It was in a house with a pool, and we thought that we would treat ourselves to a relaxed pool day at the end of our trip.

It turns out that the hosts were a family.

The husband was Mexican, the wife was from Europe, and she spoke our native language.

So we booked our room and arranged to take a bus to the airport, and they offered to pick us up from there.

When we finally arrived in the city, it was already dark, and the bus driver refused to drive us to the airport since it wasn't directly on his route.

So he just straight up dropped us off on the highway.

We were left standing with our backpacks at the side of the the road in the middle of nowhere in a not-so-safe city in Mexico.

So this was already a pretty shitty situation to begin with.

I felt like we were out of options, so I called the hosts and shared our location with them, and they said that it was no problem, and that they would come and get us where we were.

So the husband came to pick us up, and let me say, it was very uncomfortable getting into a car with a stranger at night in the middle of nowhere.

It also didn't help that the guy looked like Danny Trejo without a mustache, and as I tried to make small talk with him, he just gave me these short answers, or just flat out ignored me.

Well, he's not a big talker, I remember thinking, as I hoped that we would arrive at the Airbnb soon.

Looking back, I can see a million red flags, but for some reason, at that time, we just didn't see them.

I'm not sure if my buddy and I were tired or what.

Honestly, I think we figured we didn't really have any other choice other than going along with him.

Anyway, we arrived, and seeing this place should have immediately set off alarms for us.

We were in the middle of nowhere.

There were fields with sheep and goats all around.

And all of a sudden, a gravel road branched off from the paved road, and along that gravel road, there were about six huge mansions.

Each of them had a gate with a two-meter wall wrapped around them with NATO fencing at the top.

There were at least two gigantic guard-dogs per house.

When we arrived and entered this house, we were greeted by the wife, a bubbly middle-aged woman, and she was very talkative and pleasant.

She had cooked us dinner, so we ate while exchanging small talk.

The husband just sat at the table not saying a word.

After dinner, we went directly to bed because it had gotten late and we retired from a long day.

The next morning we saw that the weather was not that good, so we decided to go into town just to see the few touristy things that it had to offer since it wasn't a nice enough day to spend at the pool.

By the time we came back it was already dark, but we decided to jump in the pool anyway, to cool off since it was kind of hot and humid.

The wife joined us, and at some point, when she did, my friend made the mistake of asking how they're able to afford such a house.

After deflecting a bit, she said that her husband was very handy because he had grown up in the streets, and he basically built the house himself.

We then realized that it may not have been the best topic of conversation, so we moved on from it after that.

Now, that was the last day of our trip, and we had our flight back home early the next morning.

We still had some weed left that we brought on the trip, and we thought that it would be nice to smoke one out, since it was our last night.

But as this was a family home, and they had kids around, we thought that it would be better to speak to our hosts and ask if they wouldn't mind.

So later in the evening, we asked the wife if it would be okay if we smoked on the terrace, which, for some reason, she found quite amusing, and started laughing.

She called out to her husband, who was lying on the couch watching T V and asked, My love, the boys asked if it would be okay if they smoked some weed.

What do you think?

He just laughed in response, but he didn't give an answer.

We looked at her with a dumbfounded expression, and she finally clarified, Sure, go ahead.

Then we went to the terrace and started smoking our joint.

Later they joined us, and we had a chat.

This is when things got really fucked up.

For some reason, they asked all kinds of questions about the weed, where we got it, how much it was, who we got it from, and how much we would have to pay for that back in Europe.

They seemed way too interested in the weed, and at one point, the wife nonchalantly revealed, Yes, we thought about doing that as a source of income, selling weed, but too many people die doing that since the cartels don't like it.

My husband actually used to kill people for doing that, you know?

Any buzz that I was feeling from that joint was instantly gone.

I immediately felt sober.

Did she just say what I think she said?

And as if he read my mind, her husband added, Yes.

When I was 16, I killed a lot of people for the cartel for money.

He said this in a tone as if he just said that he used to mow lawns when he was a teenager.

I still thought I must have misunderstood, so I messaged my friend who was sitting across the table from me, trying not to make eye contact because I knew that we would freak each other out.

He confirmed that I had indeed understood what was being said correctly.

We discussed what we should do and agreed that there was no immediate threat, so we decided to just stay.

We didn't have anywhere else to go anyway.

It was already late.

But then things got crazier.

We tried to keep our composure and not completely freak out while still making conversation with our hosts.

A few minutes later, though, the husband got up and went inside to get something.

He came back with a literal kilo of weed pressed into a brick.

He proceeded to break bits off of the brick and roll them up into a joint that would have probably knocked Snoop Dogg out.

It was about the size of my thumb, and if I had to guess, it probably had two grams of weed in it.

Of course, he offered us this joint, but we politely declined, saying that we were already stoned.

He seemed offended, but fortunately he accepted our excuse.

However, then it got worse.

A few minutes later, we heard a couple of loud bangs.

The wife became a bit uneasy.

What was that?

she asked.

Nine millimeters, the husband calmly replied, confirming my suspicion that the noise had indeed been shots.

I would say it was around seven or so shots.

They were fired pretty quickly, one after another.

The wife became nervous and asked if we should go inside.

And then she said,

What do you think they're shooting at?

The air, cows, people?

The husband shrugged it off, and we just stayed outside.

A few minutes later, again there were more more shots, but this time they were even closer.

The wife was getting more upset.

She asked, Should we maybe go inside?

What do you think they're shooting at?

Should we?

I don't think I'll ever forget what the husband said in response.

In the calmest way imaginable, he replied, No, everything's okay.

I don't hear any screams yet.

I don't know why, but the way he just calmly said that really freaked me out.

Honestly, just thinking about it still makes my heartbeat quicken.

After that we quickly excused ourselves and went to our room.

When we were finally able to talk amongst ourselves, my buddy and I basically both lost it and panicked.

What were we supposed to do?

We were locked in a house with a contract killer in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

And there was an active shooter, maybe shooters, shooting at who knows what outside.

We still decided it was probably our best bet to stay since we figured we were his guests.

It seemed unlikely that he would harm us.

At least, we hoped it was unlikely.

We also figured it was better to be somewhere where there were walls and guard dogs, and a serial killer in between us and whoever was shooting out there.

So we barricaded ourselves in the room and didn't sleep a second until the morning came.

Then we got out of there and went to to the airport.

I was never so happy to be patted down at security in my whole life.

Stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode.

If you want to get access, go to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to sign up and support the show today.

You'll get access to ad-free versions of all of the episodes, plus bonus content every single week with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

If you have a story to share, send it to let's not meetstories at gmail.com.

Don't forget to get tickets to the live shows at let'snot meetpodcast.com/slash tour or click the links in the show notes.

Again, I'm going to be in Phoenix, Arizona, St.

Paul, Minnesota, and Chicago, Illinois.

I hope to see you all there.

And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails and the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash crypticcounty.

This week you have heard Stranger in My Backyard by Colk Bear98.

When you're getting followed at 3 a.m., you hope it's a cop by Pierre Manslappy.

His radio told him by iHeart285.

My ninth grade stalker by Buy Terror on the Loose.

I'm So Glad I Stayed in My Car That Night by M Rossaurus.

Central Florida Beware by Michael Scott's Chin.

And finally, our Airbnb host, The Sicario, by Elo May Then.

All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective author.

Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast, is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online.

Again, if you have a story to share, send it to let's not meetstories at gmail.com.

We'll see you all next week for a brand new episode.

Everybody, stay safe.

My story happened a few months back during the first days of spring.

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