Hi, my name is Lena Avenue. This happened to me when I was 19 years old. I am now 25, but this incident traumatized me so much that I developed psychosis and PTSD. I am still seeing a psychologist over the trauma but getting better. Now, writing this will bring back haunting memories, but I am glad I can share this with others.
I had a nice group of mixed gender friends in high school who our friendships continued into university. We held contact with each other and arranged get together all the time. In eleventh grade, an introverted and seemingly autistic girl name Jenna Tumino arrived at our school. I still remember her face like it was yesterday. She had unusually pale skin, jet-black raven hair that reached her shoulder and a stoic facial expression all the time. Out of pity because she had no friends, I approached her and befriended her. The others in our group were disapproving of my friendship with her, implying to me that something was off with Jenna. I ignored their suggestion to cut her off as a friend, even belligerent that they were so insensitive to her.
I was fairly friendly and close with her. I had many small talks with her, but she only ever listened and responded with simple words. Jenna was unusually clingy towards me. She was also the possessive friend who tried to get me away from Hayden and Samantha. Being the people-pleaser I was, I tried to manage both sides of this relationship. I tried to conform to my friends and be benign towards her.
By the end of eleventh grade, Jenna told me she had a birthday party in which she only invited me. I suggested to introduce her to my friend group in which she politely declined. We both enjoyed the night, watching a movie and drinking together. By the end of the night, Jenna confessed she would not trade anything for our friendship. I was a bit astounded to be honest, given we only knew each other for a year and weren't really that close. However, I brushed it off as future friendship anticipation.
In twelfth grade, we weren't in the same class, so I wanted to drift a bit further from Jenna. It was mainly because of her dependent nature. She would ask me to do everything, even borrow lunch money for her. I remained close with the others in my friend group because we knew each other since year eleven. That was when she started incessantly texting me harassing messages about how I ditched her and made her mental illness worse. I felt contrite for asking her for space, knowing she did not have that much friends, so I got back with her. She sent me photos of cats every night when I got home and asked me bizarre questions about them.
"What would happen if I squash those kitties?!!" she would text me.
By the end of high school, I was fed up with her bizarre speech and harassing photos of her cats. She also borrowed more than a hundred bucks from me for lunch money, I calculated. I listened to my friends' suggestion and cut her off. My friend Samantha suggested Jenna might have psychopathy because of her questions about dying cats. On the final day of high school, Jenna embraced me so tight that my rib cage cracked. I blocked her on social media and stopped replying to her messages. I felt remorseful for doing this, knowing she did not have friends, but I felt it was best for my mental health. I was going off to New York university and she was going to a community college, so I suspected we will never see each other again. Of course, my friend group and I remained close with each other and caught up all the time, even during the holidays.
On my first day of university, I felt someone was watching me from the back of my head. I ignored it and continued walking. At the end of day, I had an eerie split headache. The next day, I saw Jenna standing on the other end of the street pretending not to see me. I was so atrociously astounded, assuming she went to community college on the other side of the country. I looked the other way as I walked past her. Later that week, I kept seeing Jenna in different places. She always made eye contact with me but refusing to wave nor smile at me. I had different friends to drive me everywhere in different cars, but she spotted me in every one of them. It was like she thought of me 24/7. By the end of the semester, I had my high school friends visit me in New York, hosting a party for Hayden.
The night we came out of the bar as a six people group, I saw Jenna standing on the other end of the street. She was wearing a pink lacy dress, and her long hair was greasy and messed up, like she did not comb it for weeks. There, she stood gawking at us with a stoic expression. Hayden and Samantha gave each other a smirk while recognizing Jenna standing on the other side of the street while patting me on the shoulder. I looked back at her through my sun glasses innocuously before getting into the taxi. Later that week, when my old friends and I caught Jenna staring at us from different venues where we hanged out. I was getting very perturbed by the frequency I was seeing her, paranoid she was stalking me, but my friends helped me brush it off.
"That girl is sort of retarded you know? There's no way she would stalk us!" Samantha snorted while holding a cigarette when I brought it up.
"Yeah, but you notice the way she looks at us. It's like she's searching for us!!" I whispered, paranoid someone was eveasdropping on us.
"Oh please. What can she do?! Hayden scoffed while embracing me out of the taxi.
The next day, I was coming home from school when this all happened so fast I still have recollective memories traumatizing me to insanity. I opened the door of my apartment to see my two old friends crucified on the wall on my room. I could not help but drop to the ground, seeing the pool of blood dripping from their torso. I noticed their legs were missing. Their eyes were poked out, and there was two knives penetrating their chests. On top of them were written in blood SLAY THE THIEVES. I was so appalled that I puked before blacking out. I knew I had to bolt out of the apartment, seeing Jenna standing next to the two people with a knife in one hand while a piece of their leg in another, but my body could not handle it. When I woke up, I found myself lying in a hospital bed with my mother sitting next to my bed crying. The doctor gave me medications for my delusional belief that that I was a goddess. I could not eat anything and ending up puking all of it out, so they had to give me injections for food.
It was later discovered that Jenna had serious psychotic illness but refused to take the heavy dose of medication prescribed to her alongside a diagnosis of psychopathy. Because of her condition, the court didn't give her a life sentence, something my family is infuriated over. She was sentenced fifty years in prison alongside involuntary treatment order. My friends' murder will forever traumatize me for life.
