Through the Alps

   The train’s movement woke me up as it pierced through the longest tunnel in the route. The trip from Italy to Germany can be quite annoying because of that, although you get to check out some beautiful sights in between the tunnels, so it’s not that bad. The very dim lights of the tunnel gave me an eerie glimpse of the people that were in the same cabin, all of them fast asleep, not disturbed by the movement as I was. It was right then when I heard someone rushing by the aisle, stumbling and then running off.

 I was about to yell and pull the door of the cabin making a lot of noise, but I remembered my friends were sleeping so I stood up and carefully pulled the door open. Once I was standing on the hallway, I close the door again and enjoyed the show the little lights on the floor of the train were doing. They turned on and off and on and off. It made the hallway look like some kind of disco. I looked down the hall but there was no one there, at least not where I could see. I decided to walk in the same direction as the person I had seen.

 I had to move from one car to the other. Apparently most people were asleep because there was not one noise breaking the silence, only the one of the train travelling on steel. The tunnel, I recalled, was so long it could take up to half an hour to traverse it completely. And if I was not mistaken, we had entered it less than ten minutes ago. So walked on knowing that natural light would take its time to comeback. The third car I entered was completely dark; the lights on the floor were not working.

 Then, I saw him. The lights on the tunnel were too weak to actually see anything but his form was noticeable. I stood there, on the entrance to the car and waited for the shadow to make its move. But it didn’t. It just stood there, most likely watching me, until it dropped something on the floor and my curiosity pushed me forward, in order to check the object closer. I walked half way and then the shadow bent its knees and fell to the floor, apparently unconscious. Something was wrong.

 Not only wrong but very wrong. The object on the floor shimmered with the dim yellow lights of the tunnel. It was obviously a knife, the kind you use to cut a steak. I remembered watching those on the restaurant car, a place I had only sat once earlier that day. It was a bit too expensive for me but I did remember watching someone eating a piece of juicy red meat with a knife just like that one. However, the handle on the one on the floor was glistening with dark red blood. Some of the silver edge had stains of it too. It was so strange to see that there, doing nothing but dripping blood.

 The train moved violently and it was then I realized what was going on and how serious it could be. I wanted to tell someone about it but I also realized I hadn’t seen one single person from the train company around the hallways. Neither a security person nor a waiter. There was no one around to denounce such a strange thing happening. Because bloody knives are only found on the floor of trains in novels or movies, but never in real life. What to do in that case, when there’s no one to turn to?

 The shadow then groaned. I got scared, walking back a little, abstaining myself from touching the bloody knife. I was about to turn around and look for someone to help, when the shadow said something. I had no idea what it said, because it wasn’t really articulating words. At least not words I understood. I got closer and the shadow coughed and suddenly looked up. I could not tell if it was a man or a woman, even if it was young or old. But I knew it was someone disturbed, as its eyes were red and mad.

 Then, the shadow spoke once again. I finally understood what language it was speaking but I had no idea what the words meant. I had seen several movies in German and I had even studied a bit of German back in college, but not enough to understand what the shadow was saying. Maybe it was asking for help or maybe it was begging for me to go away. I had no idea, as my trip through Europe had not contemplated helping dying or crazy people in dark trains while traversing a long tunnel.

 However, my instinct told me to help that person. So I got closer and tried to make something out of the words it was saying. By getting closer, I finally realized I was interacting with a young man, maybe half my age. He had delicate features covered by a large amount of very blonde hair. He was obviously of Germanic descent as the eyes that were looking at me were made of a very deep blue, almost the color that ice gets sometimes. Those eyes gave me a shiver.

 I spoke to him in English, asking if he needed any help. He wouldn’t answer, so I decided to speak a little slower. That seemed to do the trick because the young man started nodding violently, his eyes becoming even redder and more insane. It was quite disturbing to watch but not as disturbing as when he stood up and revealed his tainted clothes to me. He was wearing what any boy would ear in the summer: shorts and a stripes shirt. However, both were soaked in the same dark blood that covered the knife. I tied one and two together and realized I had a killer in front of me.

 I started breathing heavily but had to control it because the kid was getting worked up to. I relaxed so he did too. However, he did seem to be breathing a lot heavier than he should. He was obviously scared. Maybe he had killed his mother or father, or maybe a brother or sister. He had done it with a knife he had found close by and he had taken advantage of the tunnel to run away. But they were in a train and there are not that many places were you could hide. Ask Agatha Christie.

 For a moment, I was lost. I had no idea what to do. Yeah, maybe looking for a security agent and giving them the kid would be the smartest thing to do but it also seemed like a very wrong thing to do. The kid was obviously traumatized and maybe he had done what he had done out of self-defense. Maybe he had been bullied by someone or harassed by his family or at least one member of it. There were so many things to consider and reflect on before just running out of that car. It wasn’t simple.

 Then, as if in a dream or a religious movie, natural light filled the space. They had finally come out of that dreadful tunnel and the train was now advancing through the mountains by a large beautiful lake. The view out there was amazing but inside the train things were not exactly that. I realized then, with light, that the young man had not injured anyone else. Someone had injured him. He had blood pouring out of his body from a point around his stomach. It was something of a miracle to see him standing there.

 I finally did what took me so long to do: I ran out of the car and made noise, lots of noise. Finally a security guard appeared and I took him directly to the place where the knife and the boy were. When we got there, the young man had collapsed on the floor, falling on his face next to the knife. Some people on the neighboring cabins had stepped out and were screaming like lunatics. I ran to the boy and tried to wake him up but there was no point. He had bled out to death. I had acted too slowly.

 When we finally got to a train station, the body was brought out and sent the local morgue. Every single passenger was questioned by the police, especially me. I told them every single thing that had happened and they let me go without saying anything. I saw the parents on my way out of that place.

 The train departed later the following day. As curious as I was, I went one more time to the police station to ask about what had happened. Apparently, the autopsy had revealed the wound had been self-inflicted. The young man had committed suicide. I would think of him for the rest of my life.

Payback

   Jean was on highway six and she was doing great time. The road went through the mountains, using tunnels and bridges, to a place with a much nicer climate and where she could finally relax from an exhausting week. Work as a nurse could be very heavy and opportunities to have a few days for herself were pretty scarce. So she decided to grab the car and ask her parents for the keys of the summerhouse they had on that region.

 She had not been there for several years, since she had started her career, and her parents were not big fans of going to a house were the weather was warm but there was no ocean or anything to look forward to. There was a pool though and Jean knew she would have to clean it thoroughly before making use of it. Her parents now owned an apartment by the ocean, so this house had been deserted for quite some time. The plan had always been to sell but no one really seemed interested.

 Driving was making her back hurt a bit, so she decided to turn up the radio and sing along, in order to male a distraction from her pain. She would sing clumsily after the lyrics were sung but it worked as it made her laugh and enjoy the trip. On every curve, she would stop singing, instead humming the lyrics and looking at the dark road. It was the end of the afternoon and she had been driving for about an hour. She was only about thirty minutes away from her exit went the unthinkable happened: another car rammed her.

 The hit from the back make her bob like one of those taxi dolls but her arms kept straight and the car didn’t move so much. She tried to look who had done it. For a second, she thought that maybe someone was having problems and it had just been and accident. But some minutes later it happened again and in a curve. Jean’s heart felt right in her mouth and she decided it was best to speed up in order to loose that insane driver.

 She gained velocity quickly and in a couple of minutes she had lost the car, a red car that seemed to old to be still in circulation. Jean noticed the exit was nearby and was trying not to miss it when a police car appeared out of nowhere and she was asked to park further ahead. She stopped the car on a restaurant just off her exit. Stepping out of the car, she fixed her hair and waited for the police officer to come and talk to her.

 With that air of superiority many policemen have, he told her she had gone above the limit some kilometers ago and that she had violated the top speed she could be driving on the highway. Jean answered that it was all fine but that they should also give a ticket to the owner of the red car that rammed her twice. She went to the back of her car and showed him the marks of both attacks. The man checked it closely, then grabbed his radio and alerted other patrols to be on the lookout for the red car.

 After he had given the ticket to Jean, she was able to go. Her parent’s house was just fifteen minutes down the road on a small plateau between two mountains. The place in itself was very nice but it was obvious people always wanted more and better things so they were all selling these all old houses in favor of newer, more modern ones in places not very far from there.

 Jean stopped the car on the entrance and used the keys to release the lock on the main entrance. She opened the door manually (it wasn’t a electric one) and then drove the car into the lot. She stopped the car just by the pool, closed the door and then took out the only suitcase she had brought along.

The place was very dark and moist, the humidity was incredible. She turned on the lights and was amazed at how much work she had to do that night. She only had three full days for herself there and she was to clean to leave everything as it was. So after leaving her suitcase in her parent’s old bedroom, she decided to grab all the cleaning products available and start scrubbing the floor, mopping them, dust the furniture, vacuum and a number of other thing she would have forgotten to do if she hadn’t been a nurse.

 She had gotten there around seven and now it was almost eleven and her stomach asked her for food. In the house there was nothing to eat, as they had always disconnected the refrigerator before leaving, in order not to let any electric appliances on the long periods of time they were not there. She had forgotten all about eating when she had grabbed the car, so she went outside and decided to head down the road, where she remembered some stores were located.

 They were small family-owned stores, the kind that sells things kids would like on a road trip. No meat or anything raw. No lunches or any form of cooked meals or even microwave meals. Thankfully it was open and the lady that tended to it remembered her. They had a nice conversation as Jean grabbed some yogurts, orange juice, milk, cereal, bread, ham and butter. She also grabbed some candy and a big bottle of soda. The lady asked her if she wanted help to carry all that to her house but Jean refused and told her she could manage.

 After dropping the soda bottle five times, she finally arrived to her house and ate a pathetic sandwich before feeling to tired to go on. She feel asleep in no time.

 The following day, she put on her swimsuit and ran to the pull, only to realize she hadn’t cleaned that. Someone, according to her parents, took care of it when they were not around but still there were many leaves. She grabbed that long pole they use to catch leaves and she started doing so, sweating like crazy, feeling more and more humid by the minute. As she was halfway through the job, she heard a car coming. She wasn’t expecting anyone so she didn’t looked up to see that it was the red car coming slowly down the road. It stopped a few meters away, far from her sight.

 Jean finally looked at the pool: it was clean enough and she just wanted to swim. So she did, for several hours. After that, she decided to lay down in a plastic deck chair and just dry away the water of the pool. It was right then when the two men driving in the red car entered the house and she didn’t heard a thing. They hid behind lush plants and behind her car. She had closed her eyes, tired again from all the exercise. One of the men was holding a knife, the other a gun. This last one raised his hand.

 A shot was heard all over the road and many neighbors looked up and down the street for the source. But they could only see a red car parked there.

 And also, a patrol car.

 The policeman, not the same one that had stopped Jean on the road, had shot first, wounding the one that was holding a gun on the side. He fell to the ground by the pool and his pain had made him drop the gun into the water. The other one was still holding the knife and was pretty agile, grabbing Jean by the neck and trying to suffocate her with his skinny arm.

 She fought back but he was stronger and much more crazy. The policeman was pointing at him but the knife was already too close to the skin and Jean decided to do the only thing she could thing of doing: she bit the arm of her attacker, that got distracted for a second. The policeman got the message and shot two times, both to the chest.

 In a matter of minutes, neighbors had called the police and ambulances. Both men were alive, one on much worse condition that the other. Paramedics also attended Jean, as she was coughing too much and she had a deep cut on her neck.

 She went back home that day, on the ambulance. She would ask someone to go down there and grab her car for her. She only wanted to be home. Jean thought of the men every second of the short trip, their faces mad with anger, the weapons and the feeling when she had heard the gunshot and then the man grabbed her. She felt so helpless and useless. They cured her wounds in a hospital and then released her, late at night.

 Once home, she sat on her bed stroking her neck wound and remembering where she had seen those men before. They were family members of a woman that had recently died in her care. Her husband had attacked her and those men were her sons. Jean remembered they wanted her cured instantly, like by magic and they pressured the doctor not to mention their father in the report. But he did. And Jean was too slow the day the woman went into cardiac arrest and died. She had not believed their word, as the woman had been fine just hours before.

 Jean couldn’t fall asleep anymore. And traveling to relax was definitively out of the question.