The Stalker

by Specs4ever

I sat quietly in the hard wooden chair, waiting for the judge to return from his chamber so that the foreman of the jury could read the verdict of Guilty of Murder in the First Degree to the man known as the Stalker. The events of the last few weeks tumbled through my mind, and I looked around the courtroom. Seated next to the prosecuting attorney was his assistant, a pretty young woman with long dark hair, wearing very attractive black framed glasses with thick minus lenses that made me want to get up and take them off her face, and see what I could see through them.


And that was my main problem. When I saw a pretty woman wearing strong glasses, I had the urge to obtain the glasses, or the woman without any thought of the eventual consequences.
It had all started when I was in the 4^th grade. I had a strange problem that had been discovered the previous year. Often when I saw a simple word, such as "dog", my mind saw it as 'god". Whenever I had to read out loud in class, and I would substitute saw for was, or god for dog, the other kids would laugh and make fun of my mistakes. Our new 4^th grade teacher was not particularly pretty; she had to wear glasses with very thick lenses, but she understood what my problem was. She was very kind and spent a lot of time with me trying to help me overcome my problem.

I consequently developed a crush on her, and I wished I was grown up, so that I could marry her. I also became infatuated with her poor eyesight, and I loved to watch her narrow her eyes, push her glasses up close to her eyes, and squint her eyes nearly closed to see the kids at the rear of the room.

Over the next few years in school I found myself attracted to girls that wore glasses. A lot of the girls weren't too interested in me, because my family came from the poor part of town, and I didn't have nice clothes and very much money. But my Mom did her best doing housekeeping for the ladies in town that were a lot better off than we were. Mom always made sure that my clothing was clean, neat and mended. My father had a problem with bottles- he always was searching for the bottom, and as a result could never hold a job for any length of time. Unfortunately, when he drank he would sometimes use my mom, and me for a punching bag, so the day that he was hit by a freight train and was killed was not as sad an occasion as it might have been for most people.

I quit school, and got a job at the local lumberyard, where I unloaded boxcars of lumber, and waited on customers. The pay wasn't great, but I was bringing a regular income in to the household, and I was able to buy an inexpensive old car, and make sure that we had food, and clothing that didn't have to be mended all of the time. I am afraid that my mother became quite dependant on me, and because I lived at home, and supported her, I was considered a "momma's boy" by others.
I did drive to the nearest large town on Friday and Saturday night's. Usually I went to a movie on Friday night, and then to a dance on Saturday night. But, I was painfully shy, One Friday night, I noticed a girl that came to work as a ticket taker at the movie theater. She seemed very nice and I wanted to have a date with her. She had nice features, but she had a very bad case of acne, and her skin was badly pockmarked. I suppose that if she hadn't been wearing glasses with very thick minus lenses I would never have given her a second look. But, other than my 4^th grade teacher, Linda wore the next thickest pair of glasses I had ever seen. I went back to the theater every Friday night for the next month, and after the second week I got up enough courage to ask Linda for a date to the dance the following night. She said she had to work. The following week I asked her again, and received the same response. The fourth week I was finally smart enough to ask if she had any free time, and she replied that she was off Sunday afternoons.

So, I asked her out for Sunday afternoon, and I skipped the Saturday night dance, because to drive to town twice a week was all that my budget could handle. Linda and I went out together for about three months. I really liked her a lot, and I seriously considered asking her to marry me. I was 19, and she was 17, and was just finishing 12^th grade in June. So with this thought in mind I invited Linda home to meet my Mom for Sunday dinner. I thought it went pretty well, and I was not prepared for my Mother's reaction when I got home. She told me that there was no way I could marry that girl, as she had such bad eyes that all our children would be practically blind. She harped so much about how bad it would be for me to marry Linda that I finally broke up with her.
I have often wondered since that day if my marriage to Linda would have satisfied my quest for a woman wearing thick glasses, and if matters would not have continued to unfold as they did.
I continued living at home, and taking care of my mother until she passed away from lung cancer. Now there I was - almost 40 years old, and unmarried. Actually, I was 40 years old, unmarried, and totally inexperienced with women.

I had been wearing glasses myself since I reached the age of 30. I had gone to a thrift store, and I found a pair that I could, with quite a lot of extra accommodation, make myself see through well enough to function. After about a year of wearing these glasses, I found that I could no longer see without them, so I went for an eye examination. The doctor told me that the glasses I had were now just a bit too strong for me, but that he would give me a weaker prescription. I took the prescription, which was around -1.75D in each eye, and took some white out, and with the help of a copier I made a new prescription, reading -4.75D for each eye. The main choice of frames back in the early 70's were plastic aviator style, and I chose a much larger size than the optician recommended, so that when the new glasses came in, the plastic lenses were quite thick. It took a while before I got completely used to these stronger glasses, but I did, and I loved wearing them. I often went out, and did my grocery shopping on Saturday mornings where I would try to spot ladies wearing glasses. And, the early 70's was a good time to be looking at women wearing glasses, as the new easy to wear soft contact lenses hadn't come into wide acceptance yet, and there were a lot of ladies that had trouble wearing the original hard plastic contacts. Many times I would talk with some of the ladies that I spotted, but more often than not I would follow them around the store, at what I hoped was a reasonable distance, and when it looked like their shopping was finished, I would go to the checkout myself, and then when they left I would follow them to their car, and take down the license plate number. From which it was relatively easy to get their name and address.

Before Mother's death, I really didn't want to date any of the women that I got names and addresses for. I knew I wanted a wife that had to wear glasses with thick lenses, but I also knew Mother would be very disapproving and against marriage. And Mother could be pretty miserable if she disapproved of something, or someone. So, I merely contented myself with parking my car down the street, and waiting for the lady I was interested in to come out. Many times I discovered that she was married, so I would move on to another one of my ladies to stalk.

Finally Mother died. I had given serious thought to accelerating her time of death, but I was no killer - at least not yet. But, with my new found freedom I realized that I could not bring myself to ask any of the ladies that I had discovered, out for a date. For one thing, I had no logical explanation as to how I had gotten their name and phone number. Also, I was far too shy. Most other man would have come up with an excuse, or a story line that would work and proceed accordingly.

By the time I was 40, and Mother had died I had managed to work my way up to wearing -7.75D lenses in my glasses. I was forced to order them with +2.5D bifocals, but by doing this, I was quite comfortable with this prescription for distance. As soon as I was living alone, I ordered a number of different pairs of glasses - all with increasingly stronger and stronger lenses. Then I started ordering glasses for imaginary family members too - my imaginary daughter had such a strong prescription that she needed myodiscs, but a special type of blended myodisc lenses that looked really great. I went crazy with all of my glasses, and I was spending well over a thousand dollars a year on eyeglasses that I couldn't wear, nor could anyone else. My prescription writing skills developed so that they probably equaled that of a real optometrist, and all the labs in a nearby city must have thought that the number of high myopes had tripled overnight. I myself got up to a -10.25D prescription that I had made in a beautiful high index type of glass. These glasses were very powerful, but were so thin that they didn't make me look like I was a really blind person. The CR 39 plastic lenses in my regular glasses with this same prescription were at least ľ inches thick, and did make me look like I must be nearly blind.

I had a good time with the high index lenses. I found a relatively large number of women that were wearing thick regular CR39 plastic lenses, and they were very interested in my glasses with the high index glass. It was a real thrill to have them all think that I had worse vision than they had. And, I guess at the time I really did. Unfortunately age was creeping up on me, and one morning when I put my lovely high index glasses on, I discovered that I couldn't overcome the blur and I couldn't see well enough to function. So, I put on a pair of glasses with a lower prescription, and wore them to work. It seemed that every once in a while I could again wear the more powerful high index glasses, but these times got fewer and fewer. So finally I had to face the fact. I could no longer wear them.

I still spent a lot of time hanging around optical stores, and one day I spotted a couple of vials of contact lenses that I could easily pocket without observation. When I got home I read the numbers on the vial's and found that they were a +6, 8.6 14.0. I didn't know exactly what the numbers meant, but I opened the vials, and persevered, and finally got the lenses into my eyes. Boy were things ever blurry. It was great. These lenses enabled me to wear some of my thicker, stronger glasses, and although the lenses were not the right fit, I knew what I was going to do. I went and had my eyes examined. Unfortunately, the resulting exam lead to still another decrease in my prescription. Actually the doctor was amazed that my eyes had improved so much. The end result was that I was prescribed -3.00D contact lenses. When the lenses came in, I surprised the optician with the ease that I could insert, and removed the contacts. But what I wanted was the size of the lenses from the numbers on the vials. The numbers were -3.00, 8.8, 14.5, so since these lenses felt quite comfortable on my eyes, that was the base curve and diameter I was going to order with the appropriate plus power. I had a nice computer, and I got the doctor to give me copies of my prescription. So when I got home I made a pretty acceptable prescription blank. Sure, nowadays this is easy, you just use one of the print shop programs, but back when I originally did this there were no programs. I printed it out on nice white paper, and cut it to the right size. I had changed a few of the details - like the doctors name, address, and phone number, but what I had placed on the form were the most important things, such as brand, power, base curve, and diameter. I knew I wanted something around +10D, but I wasn't sure what brands I could get my size in, so I made a few inquiring phone calls. I found a type of lens that went from + 1 all the way up to + 20, so I ordered a pair of + 10's from one mail order contact lens supply house. I got them, and I soon ended up with lenses that ranged in power from + 5 all the way up to +14. With these various contact lenses I could now wear any pair of glasses with minus lenses that I had in my collection.

It became a real game for me to search out women with strong prescriptions. I began to go through garbage bins behind optical lens supply houses. I found many discarded work orders from completed jobs, and almost all of the slips had a store address, and a customer name. I would often go to the store to say that I had talked to a customer of theirs by the name of such and such, and wondered if I could get similar lenses. By this time, about 10 years ago, the new high index lenses were just coming out, and a lot of people were buying new glasses with the thinner lenses. I found that the optician would often go to the file of the person that I had named, and would bring out the details - including the full name, address, and sometimes if I was lucky the phone number. Then I would go and hang around that person's home, trying to get to see them. Usually it worked, but I was finding out that this didn't satisfy me any longer. I wanted to make contact with them.

My first really illegal act was to break into the home of one of the ladies I had been watching. I knew she was away, and the house was empty, so I jimmied the patio door, and went directly for the bedrooms. I found her room easily, searched through all the drawers, and found the case containing her most recent pair of old glasses. I pocketed the glasses and put the empty case back, and let myself out. I had broken nothing when I slipped the lock, so there was really no evidence of my presence.

One day at lunchtime things escalated. I spotted a car leaving a restaurant, and the front seat passenger was definitely a highly myopic female. I followed the car back to where the occupants worked, and then returned to my own job. I left work early that day, and positioned my car where I could get a good view of all the employee's as they left their job. Sure enough, my highly myopic lady came out and got into an old red car. I followed, hoping she would lead me home. She did. I wrote down her license number, and although it was now a lot more difficult to get the names of car owners without a lot of hassle, there was still one way. I used it, and found out that the owner was Susan Stillman, registered to the address that I had followed her to.

Suzie became my own private high myope. All my spare time was spent watching her. She lived on the second floor of an old house that was down towards the bottom of a hill, so I would park my car up the hill, and watch her until she went to bed. One night she came out of the house, and I followed her. I discovered that she went bowling every Tuesday night to play in a mixed league. I joined the league, and on Tuesday nights I would sometimes actually bowl with her. Then, whenever she went out shopping, and I would accidentally run into her in a store, I would always make a point to say hi to her. I was getting to the point where I was going to ask her out on a date.

But then Suzie started to go out with a man that she worked with, and I swore that there was no way that he was going to take Suzie away from me.

Just then the bailiff stood, and announced that the judge was coming into the courtroom. We all rose at his request, and when we sat back down the Judge asked the jury foreman if the jury had reached a verdict. He rose and said that they had, and read the verdict - Guilty of Murder in the First Degree. And then the judge polled each and every member of the jury. When it came my turn I rose, and said yes, when I was asked if I agreed with the verdict. After all - he was a killer, I had just been thinking of it.

Specs4ever Nov. 2000

With special thanks to AJ for the competent editing