He could be an underwear stealer. My roommate and I do not think he has ever come into the house though. There are not any signs at least, like sticky seamen footprints stamped across our wood floors. We do not walk into our house, throw our keys on the coffee table and announce, "Smells like stalker in here." But there is no way to be sure.

What we do know ÷ some man has been creeping around our house late at night. A couple lives in our backyard in the guesthouse. Supposedly, he sneaks in and out of the gate by their front door. They say they have never heard him. They say even the dog does not always hear him. It makes me wonder, not if, but how many times we have not heard him.

My roommate has seen him, as much as the dark space between two houses will allow, scampering away twice.

"He has broad shoulders, and is as tall as that guy over there. Maybe he was wearing a baseball cap."

We have nothing. There is no description. She stated to the cops that no, she would not be able to identify him.

It has been over a week since we called the police. It was last Sunday when I woke up from this dream: I am outside, looking at my house in the dark. The only light is raked out of our cheap blinds. It makes the house look vulnerable, like it is an underwater cage and all the windows and doors are shark bait (as if we are in the predator's territory). Then I see him trotting up to the front porch. He is on horseback for some reason. He is heading for the door, when I get on my phone and call to warn those inside. All of a sudden, this nutso knight is behind me and I am obliterated before the call can reach anyone.

Laying on my futon, I was too scared to run and hop into bed with my friend. A door away, she felt like she was on the other side of a mine field. But then the door opens, and she is the one that comes running to my bed.

"He's back. He's back," she says.

I do not wait for her to tell me how scary it was before I am on my phone dialing for help.

His body was right outside her open window. But the fact that this man has a body, a body that spins a web around our house at night, does not seem to trouble us the most. It is the time and space of our days when he exists as something else. Fear. Paranoia. He is stalking us even when he is not around. And he is not the only psycho now.

My roommate says she feels like a stalker. Instead of looking in our windows, we are looking out our windows every 30 seconds, even in the middle of the day. One of us will be in the same room and the other will not have heard anything, but there we are, noses between the curtains, trying to sniff him out. And when we are not at the house, we are in class, daydreaming about all the ways we could hack his head open. My fantasies always involve tripwire and my roommate on the roof with a pot of scalding water. When he falls next to the house, she pours it in his eyes, and then I go at him with a hammer. And for 20 minutes during lecture, I am just hammering away; fixing what has been loose in our house.

I have a lot of anger in my life right now. It is enough to re-route how I lived, and to start living like a woman. We tacked all of our windows with sheets, pulling the curtains down on the outside world. All those stupid rules seem necessary now: not going out at night, never opening your windows, and clenching the mace every time you enter and exit your house or car. Relying on men to protect you from other men.

When we moved in and unpacked our lives, I did not realize we would be at the mercy of statistics. Our windows did not even lock when we signed the lease. Motion lights never crossed our minds, and even now I am blaming myself for not being smart; suspicious to begin. Tons of girls from the university have all had similar if not scarier stories about when they were stalked. It is a woman's own personal ÎNam, unrelenting, yet happening on our own turf. And guys do not understand. I am sick of them joking about it, making some smart-ass comment every time they hear the story. Because the truth is, I am scared that like that girl last year, my roommate will get raped at nine in the morning. Or that some guy will emerge from this jungle made out of worry and precaution, and beat the shit out of me before I get the chance to see his face.