Stolen+Pages


 * 1) The moment I realized what I was reading, I knew I was as good as dead.

 The Libraray was quiet that day. Well that's obvious, because it's a library, but quieter than most days. Any way, I had just checked out the books I wanted to read for the month, and sat down at a table to read them... I'm sorry, let me introduce myself. My name is Mary, Mary Elizabeth Soulstein. I have long, straight brown hair witch often falls into my face and obscures my sight. People say I'm thinner than I should be, but I don't really care. As long as I have my stories, I'm satisfied. But anyway, I had just started reading a new book called "The Panther Tree" when I noticed something interesting. The main character had the same name as me. Now having read many different novels it should come as no surprise that someone had given their character the same name as me, but this was different. She had my full name, Mary Elizabeth Soulstein. But I continued to read anyway, why would I let such an incredible coincidence stop me? But the coincidences didn't stop there. We had the same birthday, lived in the same town, and had the same family and friends!! What was this? At first I thought this was just a trivial finding and decided to proceed on with my life. I went home after reading more novels, went to bed and woke up for school. As days went by I realized I could not stop thinking about the other Mary Elizabeth Soulstein. I began to have sleepless nights wondering about the person who wrote the book. I tried to tell myself that I wasn't in a horror movie or weird science fiction novel; that the author wasn't stalking me or anything- that doesn't happen in real life. It became harder and harder to convice myself of this. I lived in a small town. No one knows about my town- even some of the people living in it. So how did the creator of Mary know it? Instead of going to extreme measures and being called crazy, I simply Googled the author. At first, nothing came up. Then I realized the author was arrested for manslaughter two years prior. John Jacob Tyler was his name. He was a bus driver from Minnesota, 53 years of age. In 2001, he was charged with stalking a young woman from Mississippi. Was I to be his next victim? Fear swept over me and my anxiety peaked its maxium level. My head was spinning in circles over the fact that this is not just my imagination. To validate what I had just read I had my friend Amy do some research on this one John Jacob Tyler. Later that day she found some old news paper articles on his arrest and background on his life before conviction. He was known as the "The storybook murderer", and he was known to stalk his victims for a while before he finally did his work. Apparently The Panther tree was the last book he had written before they caught him and sent him to jail. It's horrible! He even knows about how my sister fell down and broke her ankle at my birthday 6 years ago!