Mama Kat Thursday: Followed

 The Mama Kat writer's prompt I chose to day is the question, "Have You Ever Been Followed?"

One time, many years ago, I feared I was being followed---but, later, I wondered whether my imagination merely got away from me.

It was 1976. I was in the Air Force stationed at Offutt AFB Base in Omaha, Nebraska. I was 20.
I lived in the dorms on the main side of base. I didn't have a car, but everything I needed was right there within easy walking distance. The Mess Hall and place we picked up our mail shared the same building and was right in the middle of the dorm cluster. The NCO club with a pool was a few blocks away and directly behind the dorms was the Base Exchange & Commissary and a few other AFEES shopping facilities, arranged in row like a strip plaza. The Base movie theater and base Chapel were on the front-side of the dorm closer.

In that era, Airmen not having a car was far more common then it is now. Now an Airmen without a car is an extreme exception, but in the 70's gas was cheap and the Air Force ran a fleet of blue buses all over base. Every 30 minutes. Offutt was a large base with a runaway and lots of planes. A huge building that used to be a bomb factory during World War 2 was on the far side of the runaway and it housed numerous official tenants like the Weather Squadron, as well as the Base Bowling Alley.  Every time I needed to attend an official safety briefing, it was there and I would have to get in uniform and take a bus.
 I worked at the Base Hospital, which wasn't on the main base side, but across the duel-lane highway where Base Housing was. It was easy to catch a blue bus to work in the mornings or mid-afternoons, but for midnight shift, when buses didn't run, I could call the Motor Pool Unit for a "Base Taxi," since going to work was "official duty," and someone would pick me up and drop me off at the hospital. 

All this to explain that food, mail, shopping and entertainment were, for the most part, an easy walk away for me, so I walked.  As did many other Airmen. I also usually walked alone. 
It was on one of these walking occasions when I'd been over to the Base Exchange. It was a weekday, somewhat overcast one late fall afternoon, just me walking back to the dorms with my purchase. No one else around.
Then  I glanced back and noticed there was a guy walking about 25 feet behind me, apparently going the same direction I was.
On first glance, I thought little of it. Many Airmen worked shift work and were off during the day, but it was when I glanced back again and saw him still  behind me that I began to worry I was being followed.
The area between the Base Exchange plaza and my dorm was a massive cluster of many dorms landscaped with shrubs and trees in a park-like manner with a maze of sidewalks running throughout.
I had a certain route I generally walked, but now, feeling afraid, I turned a different direction and picked up my pace.
When I glanced back, he was still there.
Now I panicked and walked even faster and turned yet a new direction down a different walk.
When I looked back, he was gone. I was relieved.
I returned quickly to my room, but was left wondering afterwards whether it had been merely coincidence and I just imagined I was being followed or had it been real?
I'll never know.

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(photo is from Pixabay)