A very scary experience I had this week.

It's Sunday, the 19th. I disembark the bus home from Emu Park to Rockhampton, and I'm walking home from the stop as I go up Farm Street. Midway through that street, a guy sees me from across the road and beckons me over, literally with the hand signal. I'm immediately confused and surprised as almost nobody seems to do that anymore; meanwhile I can't cross yet anyway due to traffic. So he now sings out to me "Hey, mate!" Once the street's clear I hesitantly cross over to him and we start talking. He firstly praises my Millennium Falcon backpack, saying it makes me look like someone from Comic-Con. I thank him for that but secretly think he's just trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Over about the next ten minutes I learn his first name is Carl and we make small talk and I try my best to be polite but I repeatedly tell him I have to be getting home. Every time I say that he offers me a lift home but I decline that, although he just won't leave me alone. He also has the exact appearance of an underworld figure (as stereotypical as I know that is to say, it was utterly true here), has been drinking this afternoon and claims to have some memory problem because of a brain operation for which he even shows me his scar, which is disturbingly macabre. Again now he offers me a lift and, seeing no other way of jettisoning him, I very reluctantly accept this time.

That's only where the terror starts, it turns out. When I get in I'm unsurprised to see empty beer cans all over the floor and he drives like a hoon. Then, as we approach my street, he even asks if he can come into my place! Obviously I say "No" and he then whines, "I can't?" Now, as we enter my unit estate he then actually says he's coming in but I still don't let him. Now we're stopped and I'm afraid, but that fear then spikes when he opens the compartment between the seats - meanwhile, I'm looking around to see if he has a weapon stored anywhere - and I can only think he's about to produce a gun to shoot me with. Instead, however, he just pulls some paperwork out to show me. Nonetheless, I'm too frozen in terror to even register what he's saying much less what the paperwork's for. I can't even talk, in fact. Thankfully and luckily, though, he then seems to notice just how terrified I am and he reluctantly lets me go by myself, and then drives off.

By now it's almost 6pm, and it takes me most of the night to calm back down. But all the while, I still hope he forgets about me and that I never see him again.