I Rent a Room from a Stranger

Throwaway account just in case this dude ever finds this post, but this happened in the mid-90s. Didn’t know how to afford rent after my dad kicked me out, so I rented a room for $350 a month.<br><br>I was about 22 years old, and just out of high school and living on my own for the first time. The room was literally a guest bedroom in a tri-level house. This house had a basement. And the basement was literally a light and a concrete floor with some concrete walls and a toilet. And not a working toilet. Or a shower. I had to use the main house for anything else, including my bedroom. - With a door. I had to come and go through a single door in the front that was shared for both basement and main house. Like most houses.<br><br>This guy seemed nice enough. He had a finance job and was older ( maybe fifties) but married with a teenage daughter. His wife was actually very nice - almost too nice. I was allowed to do my laundry, cook, watch tv, and generally access the entire house, but the basement was off limits. The daughter however, would avoid me all the time.<br><br>I mentioned to my mom that his wife seemed overly nice, and my mom said that maybe that’s just how they are, and maybe she’s a good Christian woman. I didn’t think too much about it, but I had a bad feeling about it.<br><br>One night I came home from a 3rd shift job and the lights were off. I assumed that they were all asleep, and they had turned off the exterior lights, so I had to feel around in the dark to find my way to my room. Suddenly, I got grabbed from behind and a burlap bag was placed over my head. I felt my wrists and ankles were restrained and I was being dragged by my arms down the stairs to the basement. I had no idea where I was going, but everything hurt. I was pretty skinny back then, but this was still very painful. We got to the bottom of the stairs and I found myself in the dark. I heard a door close and then footsteps going back upstairs. That’s when I realized that the only ways out were the stairs, or two windows that I had never tried to test. I decided that it was better to wait and observe, but I was scared to death. I think I cried for hours, but I have no idea. I had no way of telling time, and my phone was dead.<br><br>I don’t know how long I was down there, but at one point, I heard the stairs creaking and cloth hitting the floor. It was a wool army blanket. Ugly green thing. It itched like hell but I was cold and tired and I needed a blanket, so I used it.<br><br>That thing saved my life. I was able to use the blanket to create a makeshift rope that I could swing to the window that was within reach. I had to yank on it for a while, but I finally managed to break the window. I don’t know what the weather was like outside, but it was warmer than the basement and it was nice. I crawled out the window, and was met with a bunch of trees. I had no idea which direction to walk, so I wandered around in the dark, literally tripping over roots and rocks and branches.<br><br>Finally, after what seemed like hours, I saw a light. It was a house, but I had no idea how far that house was from my location relative to civilization. I’m not kidding, I might have walked a half mile. But I walked to that house, and it was a little old lady. Her husband was a WWII vet, and she invited me in when she saw my blanket and window cut up hands. Her husband was an alcoholic vet who spent most of his life on a couch. He didn’t care. They listened to my story, gave me a sandwich, and took me to the local police department.<br><br>Long story short, the guy was arrested, along with his wife. It turned out that they were part of a network of people who were kidnapping and trafficking people, and that their daughter was also a victim. That’s why she was avoiding me. They had a bunch of hidden cells in the neighborhood where they were hiding people, and they were selling them to be killed in some pretty heinous ways. I don’t want to go into the details, but what they were going to do to me was pretty fucked up. I do know that I wasn’t the only one, and there were several other victims.<br><br>The wife was sentenced to life in prison. The Husband was deemed to be suffering from a mental illness, and got 15 years in a mental institution, but was released after 10.<br><br>I have no idea if the daughter is still alive, but I do know that she was placed in foster care and went to therapy. I hope that she’s doing well. I never got to say thank you to that kind old couple, but I think about them from time to time, and I always pet stray cats because they had a stray cat that wandered into my lap when I was eating that sandwich.