My parents were on a business vacation and we children were not eager to accompany them. My father convinced me to stay in our cottage where we have been spending our summer since the beginning of first grade. The cottage was located in northern Sweden, in the middle of nowhere. Our nearest neighbour lived 40 minutes away and there was not much to do either. The wildlife was the only surroundings since the cottage was built deep in the forest next to a pond.

My parents enjoyed the silence and my father got it from my grandfather as a gift since they built it. During the winter holidays, we usually celebrated Christmas Eve here as well and we loved to make daily excursions with our snowmobiles.

The summer holiday began with my father driving me to our cottage. We lived in Stockholm so it took approximately nine hours just to drive there in my father's red jeep. When we arrived he stayed for the night but left early the next morning so he could be back for dad’s and mum’s business trip on time. Actually, it was the first time I was living there alone, although I had just turned sixteen, I have always been there with someone I knew.

Of course, I was home alone when living in Stockholm because my parents usually worked the night shift. Dad told me that he and mum would be back in a few days so I would be able to survive on the supplies we currently had in our storage. The grocery store was not adjacent, it was far away in the mountains so there was no way I walked there. If I ran out of something I could go to my neighbours and ask them.

I simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled my trousers and put them on. I urinated outside the cabin. I was shivering with the morning cold. As there was really nothing to do I decided to go for a short hike just to make the time go faster. There was no service at the cottage so I could not call anyone. My father installed crappy wifi last year so I could at least message and associate with people on social media. When I came back from the expedition I had successfully filled the bottles with fresh water. Then I started making lunch, a chicken stew with rice and salad.

After the delectable temptations, I decided to go fish in the pond with my grandfather's old skiff. As I walked down to the shore I hurt my feet on the pebbles. I uncoiled the skiff and adapted the oars. The smells were insane, I could smell the oakum of the deck and the smell of flowers that the land breeze brought in the afternoon.

I was also able to see the phosphorescence in the water as I steadily row to the middle of the lake. There I could feel the thalassophobia vibes and where all sorts of fish congregated because of the vortex. After a couple of minutes, I could hear the trembling sound of the oars that touched the skiff when the small waves came by the breeze.

After three hours I almost concede the fishing adventure and felt contemptible but I profitably got a considerable tremendous salmon. This felt like a corroboration of my occurrences.

When I returned to the hut I arranged my supper. The charcoal and oil made the grill functional and after a few minutes, the sardines and the salmon were grilled and ready to be served. Before supper, I added basilica, butter, salt, pepper and then lime juice.

After the exquisite refreshment, I started watching television as I laid down in my cot. It was not a very luxurious moment, as it only were three channels available, which also had an atrocious condition. When I was left unattended in the foggy, cold darkness of the cottage, I started to miss the intercourse with my fellows and family. The television program was now more inferior than before so I thought that I ought to go back to sleep.

While brushing my teeth, I saw through the window in the corner of my eye that a semblance walked by further away. The first that came to mind was that a deer in my garden was doing its night routine. A second later I realised that this was not the case, there was a man wearing a black coat and holding an ax.

I could feel the chills and the adrenaline rise like my anxiety. It was very strange that a man dressed in black stood so deep in the forest outside my cottage. The face was not recognisable. This man looked regardless and definitely wanted to do an enormity. The man went to the front door and began to hammer like a lunatic and scream. This man had obviously some kind of murder instinct. The front door was opened by force and I smashed the back window and got out. I ran into the woods against the main road.

The man followed me with his ax and I ran as fast as I could. As I ran through the woods I heard him yell, “Stop,” with a harsh-spoken voice that really terrified me. After running for a few minutes I decided to hide behind a rock as my stamina was getting feebled.

My palpitation was rising and it was echoing in my body, I had never experienced anything so frightening. The man became more outrageous when he lost me. Branches and sticks were broken as he walked towards me with his large brown boots pointing at the rubble where I hid myself.

When the man spotted me, I ran away and this was the first time I saw his dismayed face. That was the most disturbing looking face I have ever seen, his eyes were wide open and he had a long ghastly hair and a long grey beard dripping off some kind of alcoholic liquid. It smelled like a decaying corpse. His eyelids were really dark and his eyes were red and irritated like he had not slept in days. The man appeared to be in his fifties and a patient in a mental institution. His endless scary-sounding grin reverberated through the ambiance.

When I finally found the main road, I just kept running. Since I had nothing to defend myself, I felt very apprehensive and still had no service, so calling the police was not an option. The man was now just a few feet behind me and I almost began to hallucinate because of my extreme effort.

By a miracle, I saw two bears standing by the roadside guarding their cubs. The masculine bear’s ear pointed straight up and the eyes looked harmful. Normally you should never approach a wild bear, but in this case, that was my only chance of being extricated.

The man running after me caught the bears’ attention and they assailed him. As I continue to run to my neighbour's house, the man disappeared. When I finally arrived at my neighbour’s house the sun rose and I could smell the tar from the road.

My neighbour James woke up by me knocking on his door screaming for help. James loaded his hunting rifle as I told him what just happened. He drove me to the next village and I got a room in a motel for the night.

The next day, I informed the police about the man and explained my terrible experience. The same day, my father picked me up and drove me back to Stockholm. The police have still not been able to capture him. I have not seen the man after the incident and the only thing I can say is that the man is dangerously ill. To this day, I still wonder what could have happened if the bears did not turn up.