Alissa Is Watching You Read This...Right Now.

“Just calm down, ma’am, and tell me exactly what happened,” the detective sat back in his chair and clicked his pen absently. The elderly couple sitting in the vinyl chairs next to his desk clutched each other. The gesture would’ve been sweet if circumstances had been different, if they’d never met Alissa.

“She seemed like such a nice girl,” the old woman started with a quake in her voice. “Wasn’t she lovely, Chet? A little heavy, sure, but a good, Christian girl.”

“They all seem nice at first, ma’am. Let me guess. All her furniture is wicker.”

The woman gasped. Chet shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “You gotta help us, officer. This woman, she’s unstable. She’s everywhere. She calls my Rosie here incessantly. She drops by. She plans elaborate itineraries to Italy that we don’t even want.”

“We had to call from Venice and beg her to let us come home,” Rosie said as sobs racked her feeble frame. “But then it got worse. I mentioned we were getting married in passing. Chet and I were cutting the cake when we looked across the dance floor, and there she was. Uninvited. Without a date. Watching us.” Chet handed Rosie a handkerchief that appeared to be pre-war.

“Don’t you worry, Rosie. The police can stop her. She’s only one person. She has to sleep sometime,” Chet put his arm around Rosie protectively. The detective wondered if he knew how futile the gesture was considering who they were dealing with.

“She knows so much about us, Chet. She kept prying and prying for information. She knows where we live. Where we sleep. We only have a few good years left. I can’t spend them sleeping with one eye open, wondering if Alissa and her cat-companion is peering in the window.”

“We’ll do everything we can,” said the detective, signing the police report, knowing a restraining order would do little to stop someone like this. If anything, it might anger her more.

Chet says, "No thanks, little missy!"

As if Chet were reading his mind, he jumped up from his chair, nearly causing Rosie to tumble out of hers. “You know a little piece of paper won’t stop that monster.” He beat his frail old man fists on the detective’s desk. “What are you going to do about this, detective? I didn’t tear my way through Europe, dodging Krauts and The Clap to go down like this, dammit!” 

“Sir, I’m going to need you to calm down.”

“You calm down, son. You calm down!” Chet began to run wildly through the precinct, flipping desks with the strength of a much younger man.

In the end, it took several tranq darts and a 5150 to slow Chet down, the thought of losing his dear Rosie to a deranged stalker was enough to send him over the edge. The detective never saw the elderly couple again. This wasn’t uncommon in his line of work. People come and go. And yet, he always wondered, did Alissa ever catch her prey?