Encounter on a Hill | Learn English Through Story | English Listening Practice - video Dailymotion

English Practice Stories

#English  #shorts  #story  Encounter on a Hill - Learn English Through Story - English Listening Practice - English speaking practice - English Stories - English Practice Stories -------------------------------------------- Welcome to our channel    "English Practice Stories - EPS" https://bit.ly/EnglishPracticeStories Consider subscribing if this is your first visit.  https://www.youtube.com/@EnglishPracticeStories Follow us on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/EPStories -------------------------------------------- Join our channel "English Practice Stories - EPS" to enhance your English skills through various story categories like educational, heart-touching, and motivational stories. Improve your language abilities by listening and reading different contexts and new words. Subscribe now for English listening practice and engaging content. Explore our videos for valuable English learning experiences.  In this channel you can Learn English Through Stories. You will improve your English speaking, listening, and understanding skills through our videos. Listening and reading helps you improve your English skills. By listening and reading a lot, you experience things you've learned over and over again in different contexts and are exposed to new words and sentences. It strengthens your comprehension and your ability to use language. It enhances your confidence and helps develop fluency. We will upload various types of videos like English stories, grammar-related videos, and speaking and listening-related videos like  1. Educational Stories  2. Heart Touching Stories  3. Inspirational Stories 4. Emotional Stories  5. Suspense Stories 6. Motivational Stories 7.  Moral Stories. Thank you for visiting our YouTube channel  #English_Practice_Stories​  CATEGORIES:- learn English through stories, learn English through story, English stories, English story, learning English, speaking English, study English, English listening practice, English vocabulary, English conversation, story in English, listen English story, learn English online, English listening, English story for listening, woo English, learn English by listening, English Practice Stories, improve English speaking skills,  English Listening Practice, short stories for English speaking practice, reading practice English ,listening English practice stories, listening English practice beginner, listening English conversation, English practice, English practice story,  English through stories, English practice book , English practice speaking, English speaking practice, English stories reading practice, English language academy, English easy practice stories, English listening practice level 1,stories for teenagers ,English story for learning English, English story, English story for listening, Learn English through story, English practice stories, English speaking practice with English story, English listening story,  Story book in English, Story in English

Transcript

00:00Welcome to English practice stories.

00:08Hi, my dear friends. How are you?

00:12Let's start the story.

00:14On the night this happened, I had been in town,

00:18and I had agreed to go home with my friend,

00:22mostly because I'm a bit of a weirdo

00:26and don't like getting taxis on my own.

00:29But on this particular night, my plan backfired,

00:34as it turned out she had brought her bike to the party.

00:39So rather than manning up and just enduring

00:43a ten-minute social interaction with a stranger,

00:47I ended up having to walk my ass home with her,

00:51which takes about an hour-ish.

00:54Now, she lives at the very bottom of a hilly area,

01:00so whenever I'd end up walking home with her,

01:04I'd usually try to puppy-dog-ize my way

01:08into a sleepover for three main reasons.

01:12A. I was tired-lazy and didn't want to have to walk

01:18all the way up to mine,

01:20which was at the very top of the biggest hill.

01:24B. Sleepovers are fun.

01:27And C. The further up my hill you go,

01:31the weirder people tend to get.

01:34Down where she lives is pretty nice and well-off mostly,

01:40but up around my house things can get a bit rougher,

01:44so walking up there alone at night

01:47wasn't my favorite thing to do.

01:50Unfortunately, for whatever reason,

01:54either I wasn't able to stay

01:56or I decided that I just needed to get home

01:59to my own bed that night,

02:01I ended up not staying

02:03and I set off on my journey back to my house.

02:07The first half of the hill isn't that bad, really.

02:12The street lamps illuminate pretty much everything,

02:16albeit in an off-putting orange glow,

02:20and the roads are wide.

02:23There aren't many places where people could hide,

02:27and although there are almost never any cars around

02:31that late at night,

02:33the presence of the main roads gives a sense of security.

02:38You could almost convince yourself

02:40that someone would miraculously drive

02:43by right in your hour of need.

02:46Failing that,

02:48at least if you were to be stabbed

02:51or beaten to a pulp,

02:53there'd be a CCTV camera

02:56catching all the action from nearby,

02:59hopefully catching your good side in the process.

03:03All this means that

03:05when I walked through this section that night,

03:08I didn't feel particularly on edge.

03:12I zoned out while I walked,

03:15aided by the white noise of the wind,

03:18the buzzing of the old street lamps,

03:22and the soft roar of the cars in the city far away.

03:27This ambience carried me all the way to the foot of my hill.

03:33Here, walls and houses close in on the road,

03:39making it feel narrower

03:41and muffling the sounds of the night.

03:44There are far fewer street lamps

03:47to give off that comforting buzzing sound,

03:51and the wind doesn't make it down to street level.

03:55The tall trees along the paths on either side

03:59create dark passageways

04:01that you can barely see into from outside,

04:04and there are numerous dark alleyways

04:07that run off into other estates along the road.

04:11The silence always forces me out of my thoughts

04:15and focuses me on my walk.

04:18It's just completely quiet,

04:21you can barely hear the wind,

04:24and something about that silence

04:27always feels off-putting to me,

04:30almost predatory in nature somehow.

04:34My mind always circles back

04:37to the feeling that something is there,

04:40that something could hear me if it were listening.

04:44To that end, I always find myself

04:48focusing on my footsteps,

04:51which sound heavy in the quiet.

04:54I chose to walk on the right-hand side of the road,

04:58along the path most heavily shaded by trees.

05:03There's a section of the path that dips down a bit,

05:07bringing your head just a bit above road level,

05:11and it was right as I reached that point

05:14that I turned my head to the left and saw him.

05:18There was a man standing right in the middle

05:22of one of the side roads, facing me.

05:25My shoes made a scuffing noise against the ground

05:30as I stopped almost involuntarily,

05:33like a startled animal.

05:36It was so odd that I was more intrigued

05:40than anything else.

05:43I mean, a person standing in the middle of the road

05:47is excusable enough.

05:50We've all done it, but he was standing

05:53in the exact middle of the road,

05:56on his own, and he wasn't moving.

06:00I looked at him for a while,

06:03and he just did not move at all.

06:07He was completely still,

06:10and the way he was standing was strange as well.

06:14He was ever so slightly hunched,

06:17his legs just a tiny bit bent,

06:21his shoulders forward, his elbows out,

06:25and his hands in.

06:27It seemed an unnatural way to be standing.

06:31I tried to make out his face

06:34or any other details about him,

06:37but he was backlit by the lights

06:40in the estate behind him,

06:43and he appeared to me as just a black silhouette,

06:48just the outline of a perfectly average-looking person,

06:53a bit broad-shouldered,

06:55but really nothing out of the ordinary.

06:59I realized that my position within the darkness

07:03of the trees might be preventing him from seeing me.

07:08I mean, surely if you were a normal person

07:13with any normal reason to be doing what he was doing

07:17and somebody walked up,

07:19you would stop and move on.

07:22And if he was looking for somebody to jump,

07:25then he probably would have called out or come over,

07:30but he just stood there.

07:33I didn't feel like he could see me,

07:37but the longer I looked,

07:39the less sure I became of that,

07:42and the more I felt like it really didn't matter.

07:46Any normal person,

07:49whether they were aware they were being observed or not,

07:53would have given some sort of clue

07:56as to what they were doing by now.

07:59I was sure of that.

08:01I suddenly thought that maybe he might be a mannequin

08:05or a cardboard cutout left there to scare people

08:09or something like that.

08:12I looked a bit closer and focused on his shoulders,

08:17but sure enough, they were perceptibly heaving.

08:22He was taking deep, heavy breaths.

08:26At this point, I started to get a bit disturbed,

08:31so I started walking again and continued up the hill.

08:36The interaction made me nervous,

08:39and I kept looking back over my shoulders the whole way up.

08:44I'd look over my right shoulder, then my left,

08:49then turn around fully and scan for a second,

08:53then continue walking.

08:56I continued this routine for a while,

08:59but by the time I reached the top of the hill

09:03and started into the estate where I lived,

09:06I had mostly calmed down.

09:09There were plenty of weird people around,

09:12and he hadn't actually done anything wrong.

09:17A bit strange, sure, but not really a big deal.

09:23Something about being on my estate always makes me feel safer,

09:28like nothing could happen to me on my home turf,

09:32so I settled back into my thoughts as I walked this last stretch.

09:39I was still always aware of places that could be hiding potential danger,

09:46so as I approached one of the small, darkened alleyways,

09:51I was about to turn my head to look into it,

09:55as I always did every time I passed.

09:59But I was stopped by the sound of heavy, labored breathing coming from within it.

10:07I didn't look, but I could see the same shape from down the hill in the corner of my eye.

10:15He hunched the same way, facing me again.

10:20My heart skipped a beat. How could he be there?

10:24If I had left him behind me on the hill,

10:28he would have had to walk right past me in order to get here.

10:33There just wasn't any other way to get here.

10:37I was so shocked and scared that I just kept walking,

10:42as if my body didn't even register what had happened.

10:47After I had passed him, I sped up, walking at an almost comically fast speed.

10:57My ears were on overdrive, attuned to every single sound around me.

11:04If I heard anything behind me, I was going to start sprinting back to my house.

11:11I had reached my limit for weird occurrences for the night.

11:16I just wanted to get home without any further incidents.

11:21And I almost did.

11:24I made it to the very final stretch,

11:28a maybe 100 meter section of road with houses all around it,

11:34my house at the end,

11:36and the same figure standing right in the middle of the road between me and it.

11:43I felt a cold feeling creeping through my veins like syrup,

11:48and the sweat on my body suddenly began to chill me.

11:53I simply stood there, staring at him,

11:58just like when we first met maybe 15 minutes ago.

12:03I was utterly terrified.

12:06I couldn't think of any possible rational explanation for what was going on.

12:13I had passed him twice now.

12:16He hadn't moved, hadn't passed me,

12:20and yet here he was again,

12:23standing just as before, breathing just as before,

12:28and looking right back at me.

12:31I was there for quite a while, thinking about what to do.

12:36I would begin to approach, back up, and try again,

12:42only to become too scared and retreat once more.

12:47I paced back and forth, and all the while, he watched me.

12:53He never made any attempt to move towards me, speak,

12:59or do anything other than simply breathe and watch.

13:04I decided I would simply walk past him.

13:08I had no other choice, really.

13:12So I started towards him,

13:15but I couldn't bring myself to come that close to him,

13:20to come within arm's reach of him.

13:23More than that, I didn't want to see his face

13:27or be able to make out his features.

13:30Every time I had seen him,

13:33the lights behind him had made him appear pitch black,

13:38his features indistinguishable,

13:41and I had begun to feel like that was merciful on the part of the lights.

13:47So I walked to my right,

13:50into the gardens of the houses alongside the road.

13:55I clung as close as I could to the houses,

13:59being careful not to crush any plants or flowers growing there,

14:05stepping up onto doorsteps to squeeze past the cars

14:10parked in the driveways at points.

14:13As I came up alongside him,

14:16it took a great deal of willpower to stop myself

14:20from turning to look at him and see him in greater detail.

14:26But I turned my head only enough to keep him in my peripheral vision.

14:32Every muscle in my body was ready for him to suddenly break

14:37from his near motionlessness and run at me,

14:41but he didn't, and suddenly I was past him.

14:46I continued on with my walk through the gardens for another few meters,

14:52and then I broke and ran all the way to my door.

14:56I wrenched my keys from my pocket and shoved them into the lock.

15:02I heard the click, and I burst through at top speed,

15:07slamming the door shut behind me and locking it again.

15:12After a few moments, I slowly made my way to my bedroom,

15:18got ready for bed, and went to sleep.

15:22The experience had made me, above all else, bone tired,

15:29and I quickly fell asleep.

15:32Shockingly, I had no dreams that I remember,

15:37and I woke feeling pretty much fine.

15:40I wasn't bothered by my experience at all, really.

15:46As quickly as he had entered my life, he had left.

15:51I had gotten an angry text from my mom about slamming the door the night before,

15:58but neither she nor anybody else ever asked me why I did it,

16:03and I really never felt any immense desire to tell them or anyone else.

16:11Until recently.

16:13I somehow felt that I should recount this story,

16:17as I've been thinking about this encounter more and more often,

16:22and it disturbs me a little bit more each time.

16:27I wish for happiness in your family.

16:30Thank you for listening to the story.

16:33Be sure to subscribe to this channel and click on the bell icon to meet us again

16:40and hear more stories like this.

16:43Bye for now.

16:45If you like our story, subscribe English Practice Stories channel and click the bell icon.

Encounter on a Hill | Learn English Through Story | English Listening Practice

Category

Transcript

Recommended