It was very dark.

Last night I went to Safeway, just before 11, to get Better-Than-Sex Cookies. I had driven Mitch’s car after dropping him off at his house.

Of course, going to Safeway alone late at night isn’t the safest idea. I’m not saying it’s dangerous... just there are safer things I could have been doing. Like reading. There was a drunk-looking man in the otherwise empty parking lot. And it’s dark. The sprinklers were going. I clutched the car keys, but an attempt to attack someone with them might have just made my assailant angrier. Maybe I should have made Mitch go with me, I thought.

When I got back to Mitch’s car, BTS cookies in hand, I checked the backseat twice. (In case I missed the hulking evil man the first time.) I felt a little better surrounded by metal and glass with a gasoline-powered piston-pumping mechanism at my disposal. The first street light I came to was red.

I heard someone yelling.

“Hey!”

I checked to see if the doors are locked, but I couldn't find them (the locks not the doors).

It’s very dark, and I told myself that the yelling was just the radio on low.

“Hey!”

I spotted a man standing in the grass on the other side of the road. I couldn't make out anything but his silhouette in front of the faintly lit gas pumps. C’mon light, turn green, I pleaded.

And the light did turn green. I gunned it across the intersection and as I did I heard, “Hey, your lights are off.”

And sure enough.