When I entered the luggage store in the mall, three or four sales people were gathered around the register telling stories and laughing loudly. They didn’t notice me come in and I don’t think they saw me wandering around. Though I found their inattention rather unprofessional at first, I soon realized that I was one of only two potential customers in the store at that moment. That being the case and it being the end of the day, I decided that the sales peoples’ disinterest wasn’t such a crime. I wondered if the store’s other potential customer was as understanding as I was.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the other potential customer was a middle-aged man wearing a plain gray sport coat. He was looking at those very popular pieces of carry-on luggage that are black and rectangular and have a long, retractable handle at one end and two small wheels at the other. I guessed the man was a traveling salesman or a businessman of some sort and I figured he probably couldn’t care less about the sales people or their inattention.

When I discovered that the store didn’t have the bag I was looking for, I began to walk to the exit. As I passed the man looking at the carry-ons, I noticed that the plain gray sport coat he wore was even plainer than I had originally observed and that it covered an even less business-like outfit underneath. As it turned out, the man was rather disheveled. His hair was a clumpy mess and he wore a pair of glasses with extremely thick black frames and lenses that magnified his eyes and eye sockets – the sort of glasses Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison or a mathematician might wear. I marveled at the never-failing inaccuracy of my first impressions and I continued out of the store.

Two other luggage stores later and with nothing to show for it, I decided to cut my losses and head home. As I walked to the escalator to the second floor of the mall and the exit to the level of the parking garage on which I was parked, I noticed the man I’d seen in the first luggage store walking toward me. I found it rather odd that he would be walking back in the direction from which he – and I – had come and that we would cross paths again. I found it even more odd that when I looked up at the man, he was looking back at me.

The blank intensity in the man’s face looked something like vague recognition and for a moment I wondered if maybe I knew him from somewhere. When I decided I’d certainly remember if I’d met the man, I turned away and continued past him. As I did, I noticed that he was slowing and turning to watch me as I passed. When I looked back, the man had completely stopped and turned around to watch me as I continued to walk toward the escalator.

At first I thought that maybe the man was cruising me. Though I couldn’t rule it out as a possibility, I could say with confidence that it was the most awkward and slightly frightening cruise I’d ever experienced. Then I thought that maybe the man thought that I was staring at him. Technically, every time I saw the man looking at me, I was also looking at him. Maybe I had looked at the man first. Maybe I was the one making this an awkward situation. Maybe the man felt as threatened by me as I was beginning to feel by him. Even though he was the one who had stopped, turned, and was watching me, maybe he was just responding to some sort of challenge he perceived coming from me.

When I turned to look down from the escalator, the man was still standing exactly where he had stopped and turned, still staring at me with that blank intensity that now seemed much more arch than any sort of recognition.

It was at this point that I first considered that I might be looking at my own personal stalker. Maybe the man saw something in my face or clothes or posture or the way I looked back at him that sparked a memory or association or feeling that triggered an obsessive episode in him. That would explain the fact that he was standing perfectly still in the middle of a mall watching a complete stranger on an escalator in full view of that stranger and anyone else who happened to look his way.

At first I found the possibility that the man was fixated on me a little exciting. This was something that only happened in movies or novels – or to movie stars or novelists – and here it was happening to me. There was something exotic and literary and maybe even a little flattering about it. And besides, how often does one come across a potentially full-fledged deviant personality out in the open? Sure, there are crazy people all over, but deviant is different. Crazy is big and dramatic and flailing and completely off the deep end. Deviant is more focused and purposeful and somehow more mysterious. At least it was to me at that moment. This stalking thing would be a great story to tell friends – or to write about.

As I stepped off the top of the escalator, I looked down again and saw that the man was still standing where he’d stopped and turned and that he was still staring at me. Shoppers walked by him in either direction, unaware that they were in the presence of a deviant. It was at this point that I first considered that having my own personal stalker might not be such a colorful experience and that it might, on the other hand, be a situation from which to extricate myself without further delay.

I was the only person walking between the top of the escalator and the exit from the mall to the parking lot about one hundred feet away. I felt as acutely alone at that moment as I’d ever felt in my life. I also realized that I’d be just as alone and maybe even more vulnerable in the parking lot I was walking toward.

As I approached the passage that led from the mall to the parking lot, I looked down one last time. The man was standing in the exact same spot, looking up at me through the railing of the second floor of the mall like a prisoner behind bars, which is what I was beginning to wish he were. It was at this point that I first considered that maybe I had let this whole thing go too far. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked back at the man so many times. Or maybe I should have confronted him and told him to fuck off, or asked him what his name was in an attempt to scare him away with kindness. But either way he might have responded, either with violence or reciprocal kindness. I wasn’t sure which response would have been worse.

It didn’t matter now, though. I was already turning down the passage toward the parking lot and I figured I didn’t have to worry about the man catching up to me because he was a level below me and at least one hundred feet further from my car. Besides, I knew exactly where my car was and he didn’t. Or did he? Of course he didn’t. There was no way he could. Still, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to pick up the pace a little and I lengthened my strides to a fast walk as I left the mall and entered the parking lot.

I was relieved to see cars moving through the parking lot and shoppers entering and exiting the mall but I got nervous again when I realized I had farther to walk to my car than I had originally thought. I picked up the pace again, almost to a jog, and looked around me even as I got in my car and locked the doors. I put on my seat belt, turned the ignition, disengaged the emergency brake, put the car in gear, and began descending to the exit of the parking lot significantly faster than the posted five-mile-an-hour speed limit.

I was happy to be safely inside my car and moving out of the mall but I continued to look around nervously. Just as I drove past the entrance to the level of the mall on which my stalker had been standing and watching me, he came walking out of the mall into the parking lot. A movie director couldn’t have choreographed the scene more perfectly. The man looked at me with the same blank intensity and I looked back with what I’m sure was at that point obvious disconcertion on my face. As I drove past and continued descending to the next level of the parking lot, the man moved slowly back toward the entrance to the mall, continuing to watch me as he walked backward.

On my way home, I wondered if I hadn’t just narrowly avoided a grisly demise at the hands of a lunatic, if I hadn’t just taken my name off the top of a future serial killer’s to-do list. If I hadn’t come to my senses and left the mall when I did, I imagined my friends and family suffering weeks of anguish waiting for the authorities to find my head in the man’s freezer and my body in his basement. I imagined the news media repeating the sensationally bizarre and tragic story until it lost all meaning. I still couldn’t help seeing the drama and mystery in the situation, but I no longer wanted to be any part of it and I no longer wanted the story to tell.

At home, although I was still disturbed by the encounter with my stalker, I made a point of taking the trash and recycling out to the bins in the ally behind our apartment. I knew a dark ally wasn’t the best place to go after being stalked in a mall, but I wanted to confront the fear and get it out of my system before it burrowed too deep.

The walkway beside our building and the ally behind it were as poorly lit and foreboding as they were every night. After tossing the trash and emptying the papers and bottles into the appropriate bins, I paused to look up and down the ally, to survey my surroundings and prove to myself that the shadows were nothing more than shadows and that the dark hid nothing but more dark. I straightened my spine and took several deep breaths, filling my lungs with the cool evening air and trying to restore some sense of calm to my pounding heart. I looked up at the stars between the clouds in the night sky and reassured myself that whatever had happened in the mall, it was over now, and whoever that man was, he was gone.

Then, just as I turned to head back to the apartment, I heard the quick fall of footsteps behind me in the ally. My chest tightened and my skin froze. I could feel the fear shooting through me like electricity from my scalp to my feet. I could see my stalker staring at me as if I were still standing in the mall but with his blank intensity now twisted into something much more wicked.

I spun around as the footfalls grew louder. It was pure reflex. I had no idea what I would do once I was face to face with my stalker but I had to turn. Just as I’d spun completely around, every muscle in my body tense, every hair on end, a little girl burst from behind a garage across the ally from our building, giggling as her father followed after her and met her by the door of their car. No stalker, just a little girl and her father.

Before the father and daughter noticed me standing across the ally, staring at them, breathless and with teeth and fists clenched, I quickly turned back up the walkway to our apartment. My fear turned to anger and shame at being so afraid. It was at this point that I first considered that I might have become my own personal stalker.