i'm sitting here typing as usual. it's the middle of the afternoon, yet it's dark, and off in the distance i can hear thunder. everyone is gone, i'm all alone in the house, and no one knows that just a few hours ago i was sitting in the police station.

it all began a few days ago, when my friend chris had a little gathering at his home. there was alcohol, which my friend claudia took the liberty to drink. there were two guys there, named james and maurice. i had never met them before, and right away i got bad vibes from them, and decided not to drink because i didn't trust them at all.

i didn't know it then, but they were from stag hill, well they used to be, and now they lived in my town of ramsey. for anyone who doesn't know, stag hill is this place in the ramapo mountains or something, where it's said that inbreeding is practiced. before this, i thought it was moslty rumors, that people around here were bored and needed some entertainment. but now i believe. i believe in inbreeding!

anyway, claudia begins to get a little tipsy. her and james spend the rest of the night together. i had to leave, and when i woke up the next morning i had all these voicemails on my phone from chris saying that he was worried claudia was going to get raped or something. i talked to claudia about it, and she said nothing happened. she told me that she and james just talked the whole night, and that in the morning he took her to stag hill and showed her around, then bought her some breakfast, and then dropped her home. i didn't like this kid, and it bothered me a little bit that he knew where she lived. but everytone told me he was "harmless"....

claudia assured me that nothing happened, but james had a totally different story. he said that they made out for hours and that she told him she loved him. we were trying to decipher the truth. the two of them had such different stories. i wanted to believe claudia, but she had been drunk and there was a possibility she didn't remember. we came to the conclusion that if something did happen, it was only because she had been drunk, and there was no intention behind it, and she didn't like james.

most people would have been able to accept this. after all, people hook up all the time at parties. but not james.

fast foward a day.

we're all hanging out by the train station in the middle of town at night, when we see james' car drive by. clauda goes to hide because she's freaked out by him. james turns his car around and starts talking to us, and we tell him we don't know where claudia is. well, after awhile, he saw claudia hiding and got really pissed. me and three other guys jump into a car to get away, but we had to leave claudia there because he would have seen her and it would have made it worse. he starts to follow our car, and we drive in the opposite direction to keep him away from claudia. he follows us a good 3 or 4 miles, and then we pull into a parking lot, get my friend on the phone, and tell her to tell james that claudia is over there. so we do that, and everything seems to be ok. but james starts to pass by claudia's house. so claudia decided to talk to him over the phone later on that night. she tells him that she doesn't remember anything about the other night and that she doesn't want to see him again. he gets all upset.

that takes us to last night. we're hanging out in a park when we see james and his cousin maurice coming. claudia says she has to go to the bathroom, so i come with her. she's going to the bathroom, and i'm waiting outside for her when i see the two of them coming towards us. i tell her they're coming, and then i get inside the bathroom and close the door. i hear james outside talking, and then about 5 minutes later we hear the other guys coming to talk to them. we figure it;s safe to come out, and when we do, james says to claudia. "i just wanna talk to you in person, come here." claudia says that she can't talk to him right now and she walks away. i start to follow her, and then we hear things being thrown around. we keep walking until we hear chris say,"drop the rock!" i turn around, and james has this huge rock in his hand. i didn't even realize how bit it was until i saw it later on that night in the police car. it was probably the size of a baby's head. he's coming towards claudia's general direction, and he looked almost possessed. the other guys are telling him to calm down and put the rock down, but he doesn't listen to them. he's just coming at us, all slow and creepy, and we start to run ahead. then he overturns a picnic table, still with the rock in his hand. then i watch as chris puts him in a headlock. it was at this point claudia turns to me and goes, "call the cops. call them right now. call the cops." so i do. i tell them there's a guy here with a rock and he won't leave my friend alone.

there was a bunch of other people that had been hanging out there too, and i asked them if they were doing anything illegal because the cops were about to come. so of course they get all excited. three cop cars pull in, and i point them to the direction where chris is holding down james. they get james on the ground, search him, and arrest him. they ask us some questions there, and then they take me, claudia, and chris to the police station.

while we're in the police car, claudia's dad calls her. he wanted to know what time she'd be coming home, and she had to tell him to come to the police station. so of course he's freaking out, and when we get there the officer says we can't discuss anything out in the lobby. when claudia's dad arrives, he wants to know what happened, and we couldn't say anything. so then they take us into interrogation rooms and we have to fill out sheets saying what happened. it was actually kind of cool.

i heard them telling claudia that he was going to jail for the night and that they would call her when he was let out. james' grandmother was also there, and she looks at me and says, "stupid jimmy wouldn't hurt a flea. he's just so dumb." yea, sure. wouldn't hurt a flea. that's why he was overturning picnic tables and coming after my friend with a ginormous rock.

so, we all go home. my friend sam calls me later. he's known james for a really long time, and he's the one who had to drive his grandmother to the police station. when he called me he was at james' house, and the two of them hadn't come home yet. they posted a $5000 bail, which i guess his grandmother paid. everyone was telling claudia not to press charges. the police never actually asked if she wanted to or not, but claudia didn't seem to want to listen to what everyone had to say. everyone had been telling us how harmless this kid was.

what's unsettling is that james is not in jail, and he knows where claudia lives. chris told her to get a restraining order against him. i have to say this is probably one of the cooler things that's happened to me. claudia feels the same way...sort of. she was shaking at the time when she was talking to the cops, but we found reasons to laugh. it is kinda cool. i dunno. all i have to say is, don't drink when there's inbreds around. you might get hurt.