I was on a date with a man I\u2019d met only a week earlier. Dinner had gone smoothly\u2014he was charming, funny, and seemed like a gentleman. Then the bill came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The waitress looked him dead in the eyes and said, \u201cSir, your card was declined.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He froze, his face pale. He muttered something about fixing it later, grabbed his coat, and hurried us out. I thought it was odd, but didn\u2019t question it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as I was about to step outside, the waitress grabbed my wrist. Her nails dug into my skin as she whispered, \u201cI lied.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I could react, she shoved the receipt into my palm. I unfolded it under the streetlight, my stomach twisting. Scrawled across it in frantic handwriting were two words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHE KILLS.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I looked up, my date smiling at me from the curb, waving me over to his car. My hands shook, my heart raced, and in that moment I realized\u2014I had to decide whether to get into that car\u2026 or run for my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was on a date with a man I\u2019d met only a week earlier. Dinner had gone smoothly\u2014he was charming, funny, and seemed like a gentleman. Then… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimebuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}