Happy Goat Horror

Dark bleatings everyone!

Not all heroes wear capes, but the hero of this story is my friend Joel, and knowing him, he probably does own a cape. Possibly several capes. I can imagine him now strutting around in one, enjoying how it billows when he rounds a corner. But anyway, on to the plot of what I’m like 75% sure could have become the plot of a slasher movie, or at least a domestic thriller.

It all started with an Alice Cooper concert. The fabulous dude was playing in Cardiff, supported by Motorhead, and Joan Jett, so along I went. I had a jolly good time at this gig with my sister and my friend, who we’ll call Adrian (because that’s his name), and we went to the after party (it wasn’t with the band or anything) at a metal bar. At the time, none of the three of us actually lived in Cardiff, nor had we thought ahead about – oh I don’t know – doing something as wise as booking a hotel, or figuring out how to get home, which for my sister and I was an hour away, and for Adrian much MUCH further. We planned to just stumble drunk to the train station afterwards and wait for our trains.

We needn’t have worried, because we made friends with this cool group of dudes at the metal bar, and they invited us all back to their hotel, along with some other people, to continue drinking and partying. I have never before or since gone to a stranger’s hotel because of stranger danger, and wouldn’t have if Adrian hadn’t been with us, but everyone seemed cool, and they were. There were no implications, no pressure, not even a hint that any of them had anything in mind other than drinking cider and having a laugh. They were awesome. This was back in the early days of Facebook and the last days of MSN, so before we left the next day, we all exchanged information and went our separate ways.

Fast forward an entire year – A YEAR MIND YOU – and I had been regularly speaking to one of the group, who we’ll call Shelob, for reasons that will soon become apparent. We’d hit it off. After A FULL GODDAMN YEAR of talking for hours several times a week, he finally plucks up the courage to ask me out. We both lived an hour out of Cardiff in opposite directions, and he had an interview coming up and was planning to get a hotel the night before. He asked if I wanted to go out for dinner and then to the cinema, and maybe for drinks afterwards. He asked if we could meet earlier in the day because he wanted to get an early night so he’d be fresh for his interview. He didn’t even mention me staying at his hotel, but just in case, I thought it best to tell him upfront that I would love to go on the date but that I definitely wouldn’t be staying overnight. He reacted with surprise and offence. I apologised for being paranoid, and we laughed it off.

I got into Cardiff a bit early so I waited for him near the train station. When he arrived, he said he had to just quickly check in to his hotel and drop off his bag, and he asked me if I wanted to go with him or meet him in the bar next door. Because of his casual attitude either way, and the fact I’d already been speaking to him FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR and felt I knew him pretty well, I thought I’d keep him company. We’d just dash in and out, he said. My tummy was rumbling for the tasty dinner we were about to have – he’d been throwing out restaurant suggestions for weeks.

He was hurriedly unpacking his bag and I was just perched on a chair while I waited. I thought he was rushing because he was eager to start our date, and then he unpacked a DVD player and proceeded to hook it up to the TV. A bit odd, I thought, but to each their own. Then he unpacks beers, opens one, and hands one to me. I am, of course, unsettled.

“I thought we were going straight out?” I say.

“I thought we could just have some beers here first,” he replies.

“I don’t like beer,” comes my lame response.

And then, he puts down his beer, marches over, clasps my face in his hands and staring me dead in the eyes, whispers, “you’re so amazing.” I simultaneously leap out of my chair and my own skin, and he immediately backs off, profusely apologising. Of course, my instincts are screaming at me to run away, but a combination of ridiculous factors prevents it. For one, I’m so taken off-guard that I’m probably not thinking that logically. Secondly, he’s red as a beetroot, stuttering about how he’s so sorry for freaking me out and he makes a terrible first impression and he’s just so nervous because he really likes me, etc. I sort of believe and feel sorry for him, as someone who also often puts my foot in my mouth when nervous (though I’ve never grabbed someone’s face and whispered at them). Thirdly, that good old social conditioning that compelled me not to “overreact” or get “hysterical”. Cut the guy some slack, my mind tells me. He’s just nervous. He makes for the door, asking if we can start over, and off outside we go.

Okay, I’m outside, nothing bad happened, and I’m safe. He seemed very eager to get outside in public, and a few minutes later I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt and he seems perfectly normal again. I ask him where we’re going to eat, but he hasn’t actually booked anything, as he’d previously claimed. We end up in one of those self-serve canteen places where you go around with a tray and someone spoons food on to it. Now, I honestly don’t care about money or prestige or fancy places to eat, and I always insist on splitting the bill. However, I was quietly fuming because he’d been so assertive with ‘let me plan the date – we’re going to a nice restaurant and then to the cinema’, and everything was just the complete opposite of what he’d said. Additionally, as we sat there, he talked non-stop and everything he said was just clearly massive, weird lies to try to hype himself up. You know, the kind of unbelievable lies – the calibre of ‘I rescued puppies from a burning building’. I can’t get a word in, and he’s not interested anyway. This is all just going weirder and worse with each passing second, and I’m wondering if I can just speed along to the cinema so I can leave because, goddamnit it, I’m so worried about being rude and ditching him that at the time I didn’t feel like I could just go.

“Actually, I’ve got my DVD player, so I thought when we finish here, we can go to HMV and buy some DVD’s and then just go back to my hotel. The cinema is a waste of money,” he informs me. “I have beers.”

Oh hell no, I think. It’s at that moment – admittedly quite late for I was being a naiive idiot – that it occurs to me that there was no lack of planning on his part, as I’d assumed. His plan all along was just to get me in the hotel and keep me there. But bound by manners, I STILL didn’t feel I could just leave. And this is where Joel comes in.

I text Joel because he has never let me down, and has never ignored a text from me, and I know of all people on the planet, he’s most likely to immediately help. I text him something like ‘Please help – on a date with a guy I think wants to turn me into a lampshade. Can you call me in about half an hour with an emergency?’ Why half hour, I hear you ask? Because Shelob saw me texting and I thought an immediate phone call would be too obvious.

So we’re in HMV and I’m going through the motions of browsing DVD’s (honestly fml), and my phone rings. Shelob stares at me. “Oh, that’s weird!” I exclaim. “It’s my friend from college, I haven’t spoken to him in forever. Do you mind if I take this?” I answer the phone with my best surprised voice while Shelob stares intensely at me.

“Kayleigh, you have to come quick, there’s an emergency!” Joel says.

“You sound upset, what’s wrong?” I’m doing my very best concerned face.

“It’s Frodo. He ran out into the road chasing the one true ring and got hit by a car!” Joel wails.

I turn my back to Shelob, feigning concern, but I just don’t want him to see me laughing. Damn you, Joel! Joel continues to elaborate on the details of the hilarious emergency he’s concocted and I’m planning to kill him later because the force of holding in my laughter is making my shoulders spasm and there are tears in my eyes. Luckily for me, when I hang up and turn around, my face is streaked with the tears of repressed laughter and Shelob mistakes this for tragedy. He’s so concerned as I struggle to explain – without laughing – that my friend was in an accident and I have to go (I know I know it’s really bad to use something like that as an excuse but I was desperate and on the spot). He absolutely insists on walking me to a taxi, asking which hospital I’m going to. I think quick and tell him I don’t know and I’m meeting Joel first and we’re going together. I apologise, thinking this will be the end of it, but as I get into the taxi, his tone changes and he demands, “just make sure you come back”.

I do not plan on returning, sir.

Well, would you believe that isn’t the end of it? I promptly go to my sister’s place, who now does live in Cardiff, and I tell her of my ordeal. She calms me down and we laugh it off, and decide to go out for drinks. Then my phone starts going off. Texts, phone calls, voice mails, many of each, all from Shelob. I ignore it all and we go into this underground club where I have no signal. Yay. We emerge around an hour later and I kid you not – I will never forget this number – I have 78 missed calls, and about 30 texts. Which means that this dude must have sat there calling or texting me more than once a minute, every minute, for that entire hour. Even the memory of that intensity still chills me to the bone, honestly.

I stayed at my sister’s place that night, turned my phone back on at about 1am and it immediately went off, and I had hundreds of missed calls and a string of texts so long I couldn’t even scroll back to the first one in a timely fashion. I couldn’t leave it on because it kept ringing. Blocking a number wasn’t as easy back then and I didn’t know how. I turned it off and went to sleep. When I woke up and turned it back on, and it immediately rang, and because I’m half-asleep and an idiot, I answered it. It’s him and he’s absolutely seething.

“I NEED TO SEE YOU RIGHT NOW,” he demands. “I can’t believe you just left me by myself in Cardiff and didn’t come back.”

“You scared me,” I tell him, angry that he has the audacity to be furious with me. “You’ve called me almost a thousand times – literally.”

“Tell me where you are, I need to see you before my train leaves at 8,” he goes on.

“8? What about your interview?”

It’s at this point that he actually confesses there never was an interview but he was afraid I’d think he was a weirdo for booking a hotel otherwise. I hang up on him while he’s assuring me that he WILL NOT be leaving Cardiff until he’s seen me in person. I finally work out how to block him and go on with my day.

But later that night… when I log on to MSN, there he is. He says it’s a shame I had an emergency that ruined our date, and asks when I’m free for a second one because apparently I owe him a do-over. My flabber was so ghasted, guys. For a second, I wondered if I was the nuts one, because he was acting like nothing weird had happened. Of course, I proceeded to block him on everything.

About a week later, one of the other guys from his friend group messages me out of the blue asking if I’m okay. I tell him I’m fine but will never see Shelob again, and it’s probably best that I don’t stay in touch with the rest of the group either. He tells me that he and the boys were worried about me when they found out we were going on the date, and they considered warning me that Shelob “can be a bit intense” with girls. Out of loyalty, they didn’t, but felt compelled to check in afterwards.

This whole thing taught me the valuable lesson that it’s better to risk “overreacting” and being rude, and just bail the second someone gives you the creeps. This incident was so frightening to me, and you know what made it worse? The number of people who flat out accused me of exaggerating or being dramatic when I told them – other men, funnily enough, who had never even met this guy and were supposed to be friends with me. On the plus side, it became a funny anecdote over time, and sometimes Joel and I still reminisce about how panicked I was when I was texting him. Well, you’ve got to laugh haven’t you?

Is this my scariest date story? Lol lolll lol loll lol

No.

This, my friends, is the tip of the iceberg. This is merely the dating story I thought I’d test the waters with – this absolute disaster that, in the grand scheme, is now remembered as a minor incident, is the reason that my family have been telling me for years that my dating life would make a good horror/comedy TV show.

Joel – thanks for the save.

So, that happened….