True fear is a gift that comes straight from intuition. In my recommended reading column to the left of this blog, I recommend Gavin De Becker's "The Gift of Fear." In that book, he shares a story about a woman named Kelly who didn't listen to her intuition. Kelly has groceries and obviously has her hands full. She heads up the steps to her apartment building, noticing the door had been left open again. "Stupid neighbors. That's not safe! Anyone could just come in!" As she comes in, she latches the door behind her.
Kelly heads up the four flights of stairs to her apartment with her heavy burden of groceries. She doesn't manage to make it all the way up before one of her bags predictably gives out, and cat food cans go rolling everywhere. A charming man's voice calls that he can bring up a wayward can. She gets this feeling, this little spark of something telling her that she just does not like this guy's voice. When the man rounds the corner, he's friendly-looking and is picking up her dropped cans. He offers to help her carry the groceries up to her apartment. She refuses multiple times, but he is insistent. He claims he is also going up to the fourth floor and is running late due to a broken watch. He implies that she is being too proud, and she finally allows the man to help carry her groceries up to her apartment. "We better hurry," he says, "We've got a hungry cat up there!"
After raping her, he gets up from the bed, gets dressed, and closes the window. He starts glancing at his watch and rushing around. "I gotta be somewhere. Hey, don't look so scared. I promise I'm not going to hurt you." Kelly knew, without a doubt, that this man was now going to kill her. He tells her he is going to the kitchen for a drink of water and promises he'll leave after that. Stay right there. Don't move. She assures him she will, but then follows him stealthily from the room. He pauses to increase the volume on the stereo and continues into the kitchen. Kelly does not follow him there. She turns right and walks through her living room, hearing the man going through kitchen drawers. She slips out of her apartment and into the apartment across the hall, knowing it would be unlocked. Kelly survived the ordeal, though she wasn't meant to.
We can learn from Kelly several things about intuition and preincident indicators. "We get a signal prior to violence," Gavin says. "There are preincident indicators. Things that happen before violence occurs." [PINS (preincident indicators) will be explored further in future posts.] The very first spark of intuition that Kelly received was a profound dislike of a man's voice. With her conscious mind, she had no reason to hate a voice, but her subconscious mind had picked up on ques that put her on edge. In this case, she knew she had latched the door to her apartment building behind her, yet here was this man she had not seen on her way up the stairs. The door had also been open when she arrived, so he must have been there before her, waiting.
After allowing the man to carry up her groceries, she still had a feeling of unease. Intuition was poking in again, warning her that something was off. In this case, she knows her neighbors on the fourth floor and had never seen this man before. She hadn't reasoned through that, but her intuition had done the work for her. Instead of listening, she scolds herself and continues to put herself at the mercy of a rapist. Finally, she allows him inside, despite her hesitation (a sign of intuition). By allowing him to move her to a more private venue, she becomes a victim of a terrible crime.
But that isn't the end of the story, is it? After her intuition has been proved correct, and the intentions of the man were made clear, she escaped. She got herself into a terrible situation by ignoring intuition, and got herself back out of it by listening when it came to call again. She followed her instincts, her intuition, her true fear, and followed the man from the bedroom, gaining safety in a neighbor's apartment. Intuition told her what would happen, and before her logical mind could process it, she escaped.
Part of her registered first the shutting of the window. The three hour ordeal had occurred with the window open. Why close it now? The same reason the man stopped to turn up the volume on the stereo. He was concerned about noise. If it were truly over, and he were leaving in peace as he promised, those wouldn't have been a details he attended to. Kelly's mind put a red flag on the window closing and gave her the energy and will power to escape with her life. The man proved that intuition correct too by digging through the drawers in her kitchen. His last victim had been stabbed to death.
