The first time I met him, he had a gift waiting for me. He might as well have gift wrapped it, put a big blue bow on top and given me a giant pair of scissors to cut it open.

I'd never met him before, or so he said, because there was something vaguely familiar about his voice. I felt like I'd heard it somewhere, but couldn't put my finger on it. He had gone to great lengths to "abduct" me in a rather dramatic way. He seemed to be trying to convey a very distinctive message in the way he'd first taken me.

He'd made his presence known to me outside my post office box. I have a few post office boxes scattered around town that I use to keep 'special' things in. Not in my name obviously. The one in question was located outside a busy mall so I look like a perfectly normal person fetching the post.

His message was so clear...I know who you are. I know your secrets and I've been following you and I am in control of this.

I'd seen him there first, and I'd known immediately that he was after me- I just know these things. He was wearing an overly smart vintage suit that looked like something Sherlock Holmes would have worn. The look was topped off with an eye-catching bright white Panama hat. He wasn't trying to blend it, that's for sure.

I made a quick beeline for the busy mall and disappeared inside. I walked around, pretending to shop for over three hours. I thought I'd finally lost him when I'd ducked into a Chinese restaurant, grabbed a tray and some glasses on entering and casually walked through the kitchen where I knew there was a door at the back that lead into the basement parking lot.

From there I'd made my way to my car, but unbeknownst to me, he had been in the backseat waiting for me. The last thing I remember was the sharp sting of the needle when he'd plunged it into the back of my neck. When I finally came round, it felt like hours had passed, I was bound and gagged and strapped to a chair in the middle of a massive room. My eyes started adjusting. They were a bit sore and sticky feeling and I started making out more and more shapes. My feet felt wet and I looked down, they were covered in brown water, in fact, the whole floor was covered in brown water. I looked up again, blinking. This wasn't just an abandoned building, this was an abandoned hospital and I was currently tied to a chair in what was once an operating room. A broken round light hung from the ceiling over an operating bed and blue chipped tiles crumbled off the walls.

My eyes moved around the room and that's when I realized I wasn't alone.  Someone else was there, he was sitting in an old wheelchair opposite me- also bound and gagged. I recognized him immediately. While Panama Hat man had been following me, I had been following this guy for months. I smiled, even though my mouth was gagged.

I'd befriended him in a chatroom as Frank. A bored, forty- five- year old man that lived alone and liked Formula 1 racing. The chatroom in question was for "like-minded" people. I'd easily found it lurking in the dark web and we'd been conversing for months already. Our conversations usually revolved around young, blonde girls and the things we would like to do with them. It had been my intention on having a face- to- face meeting with him, but he lived all the way across the country and I was trying to formulate a plan to get him to voluntarily come to me.

I was in the process of setting up some entertainment that I knew he couldn't resist- the main dish of course would have been "me". My innocent, girl looks have come in handy.

There was a knife on the bed between us. It was easy to spot as it was brand new and it's silver blade shined and glimmered in the room. This message was clear too. Here is the man you've been hunting, and here is a hunting knife... Like I said, he might as well have put a big ribbon on the guys his head. Releasing myself from the ropes had been easy. I'd picked the knife up and walked over to him, and that's when Hat Man had stepped out of the shadows. The sound of his feet sloshing through the water. I still call him Hat Man as I have no idea who he really is.

"It's lovely finally meeting you Hope. I've been a fan of your work for some time now." Hat Man had said.

I didn't say a word to him; instead all my focus was on Bigdaddy69.

"Go for it. He's yours." He'd said to me.

I looked up at him briefly. He had a friendly smile plastered across his face. But I also knew that if I "opened" his little gift, I would become bound to him forever. This total stranger and I would know the most intimate secrets about each other and as a result, we would be inextricably entangled together.

"It's ok," he said. "I'm here to help you."

So I did it. Hat-man had seemed very pleased. He hadn't said anything else to me. He dropped a small folder on the bed and left. Just like that. 

"Don't worry. I'll take care of the body." He gestured towards Bigdaddy, who wasn't so big anymore. 

I picked up the file and walked out into a long, dark corridor with a lone hospital bed in it. If I were a person with actual feelings, I might have found this place hauntingly eerie and disturbing. But I wasn't. 

I looked out of the dusty broken window. It was dusk and getting dark. I could see my car parked in the old parking lot. This place had been abandoned for so long that weeds were growing out of the cracked concrete paving. One of the broken windows was big enough to climb through, so I did. My feet hit the ground of the parking lot and I made my way to my car. I looked around, the rest of the lot was empty, no other car in sight. 

My car was unlocked and my mobile phone had been placed on the passenger seat.  I climbed in and immediately looked in the file, there was nothing in there other than a web address. The web address was a .onion, a deep web address. I was pretty sure where it would take me.

I looked up at the building I had just been in. There was something strangely beautiful about it, in it's brokenness. I liked it. It made me feel at home somehow. But where exactly was it?

I grabbed my phone and went to Google maps. I was in an old abandoned hospital Kempton Park in the back end of Johannesburg, a million miles from home and everything else. I entered my home address in and directions populated the screen. It was an hour drive back home. I started the engine and was just about to drive away when I looked up. Hat Man was standing looking at me through one of the broken windows. He waved at me as I pulled away.

And since then, Hat Man has moved in and out of my like a growing and receding shadow. He is there, he is gone and it's always on his terms. He calls the shots. He gives me just enough information and points me in the right direction to continue doing my work. I don't need him to do my work- but he certainly makes it go faster.

We've been meeting on and off for two years now. And he is the only person in the world who knows who I truly am. He is the only person I can be completely honest with. But he is also the only person in my life that I cannot control. Sometimes I wonder if he's actually the one in control of our relationship.

We've developed a strange relationship over the years, he is the closest thing I guess I have to a father. We talk about mundane things and he gives me advice- mostly to do with my work. He also gives me gifts from time to time, the other day he gave me all my final exams for year end- no need for me to study. More time to continue my work.

But the thing is, I know he has a hidden agenda that is far, far greater than the work I am currently doing. He hasn't revealed that to me yet, but I know a day will come when he does. But for now we do what we do... until the day I know he is going to ask me to do something else. And of course, I will not be able to say no.