Creepy

I had a real The Shining moment the other night as I was leaving my apartment.

I feel that, to get the full scope of what I saw, you should understand the layout of my building. The front entrance has glass doors and mailboxes. This room acts as a foyer of sorts. Beyond this is a hallway containing an elevator on the right and a stairwell on the left. Do you have the blueprint in your head now? Well, it'll have to do. There's not a lot to work with as it's a pretty dull entryway.

So I was coming down the stairs that night. I refuse to take the elevator if I'm going downstairs. I figure that's one of those small things I can do to get a little exercise in my day. Also the elevator takes forever and I'm just too darned impatient.

At the bottom of the steps, I opened the door and turned to the right and was met with an odd sight. Through the glass door I saw a little girl holding a very tiny dog. She was staring directly at me, as if she knew where my eyes would be as soon as I rounded the corner.

I'm sure that we only made eye contact for half a second, but it felt like a very eerie eternity. I wondered if this is what the kid on the tricycle felt like when he ran into the dead twins in the Overlook Hotel. "Come and play with us Danny. Come and play with us forever."

Yeah, it was a little scary. The moment passed much quicker than I perceived it. It was just a little strange to see a 6-year-old girl standing alone in the foyer. It was stranger to make direct eye contact with her as soon as I came out of the stairwell.

I think she was more scared of me than I was of her. She ran back outside as soon as I started walking toward the door. When I left the building, I saw her with some other people, whom I can only assume were her family.

These are things we need to remember about little kids and wild animals. They really are more afraid of us than we are of them. But if you show even a hint of that fear, they will attack. I've seen it a hundred times.