When I was 12, this boy from a few streets over in my neighborhood started hanging out with the kids from my street: specifically, the girls. He was a few years older than us (14 or 15, I think) and he was...well, he was the kind of teenager who wanted to hang around with 12 year old girls. He was really manipulative and inappropriate, ignored any time any of us asked him to not talk about sexual stuff or hit on us.
He asked me out and I turned him down, told him I was too young to date (thank you, mom). He started dating another girl on the street, who was a year younger than me.
She had a really strict mom (who definitely did not know that she was dating) which was normally annoying but when it came to him it was probably a godsend. She wasn't allowed to leave the sight of her window, so he never was able to do anything to her, but the fucked up thing is that we know he would have, because he told her.
At the time, none of us really understood the gravity of what was going on. She'd tell us about the things he said to her with a vague sense of pride, because she was excited that she was getting a boys attention. We didn't have the mindset to understand the difference between good attention and bad attention, so in our mind (particularly hers, but all of ours really) we thought that even though she/we had asked him not to talk about those things and told him we weren't interested, we still thought it was good. We thought he was being persistent, because she was really sexy/pretty/cool/whatever.
Then things started getting really scary. She told me once, when it was just the two of us, that he kept talking about me. About how I was such a bitch for not dating him, how I could have kept it a secret like she did. He told her, flat out and in no uncertain terms, that he wanted to rape me. She told me she didn't really know what to say to that.
Now, in a different world where I'd been a smarter kid, I would have told my mom (and her mom) about this. But, again, I didn't really understand the gravity of it all, and I was also pretty sure I'd get in trouble. I don't know why, because my mom is far from the type of mom to blame me for something like this, but I felt bad about it and figured that meant I'd done something wrong.
About a week after this, he was on our street hanging out with the friend he was dating. I guess she told him that we (myself and the other kids on the street) were telling her she should break up with him, because he confronted the rest of us about it.
He was screaming and asking why and because I was the bravest/dumbest of the group, I told him he was creepy and we didn't like having him there. And then he pulled out a knife.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't really remember what happened next. I know we talked to him, but I don't remember what anyone said. I just remember that the entire time he had his eyes locked on mine, and he kept getting closer to me and I kept backing away. I guess someone talked him down, because he put the knife away and walked back over to the friend he was dating, who quickly told him she had to go back inside.
I don't remember going into my house, I just remember sitting in my living room sobbing. I called my mom and I couldn't even tell her what happened, I just cried into the phone. She worked about an hour away, (this was summer and I just stayed at home during the day, the street had a kind of "the stay at home moms watch all the kids" policy that was revisited shortly after this happened) and by the time she got home the police were already there. My friend told her mom what happened and they came to get statements.
They told us he wasn't allowed on our street anymore, and if he came back to call them and they'd arrest him.
About a week later I had cheerleading practice, and he came by and circled the block on his bike. I normally walked home, but I asked one of my classmates mom to drive me, told her why I needed the ride and she gave me one, no questions asked.
Nothing happened after that for a long time, but I had nightmares that I'd look into my front yard and he'd be there for years. I did see him once since then, walking home from school he rode by on his bike, stopped and said hi. I told him to fuck off (a move that, in retrospect, scares me basically as much as anything else that happened.)
I kind of told the whole story instead of just the part where I was afraid I was going to die, but yeah. The crazy thing is that my memory is so fuzzy about it all. It's like it was so emotionally stressful that my brain just went "NOPE," and kicked back on once I was safe in my house.