You Came to Me

6. Thebe

Published: June 17th, 2021.

Word Count: 2,781

Madrid. September, 1975.

After a couple of minutes, Luisita and I's train finally arrived. It wasn't too crowed, so we were able to find two quiet seats in the back of the carriage.

- "You've not been to this neighborhood before, right?" I asked Luisita.

- "No, no. Never." She said as she looked directly at me.

- "Well, I guess we'll discover it together." I said with a smile.

I was excited to see more of Madrid and even more excited to see it with Luisita; I've barely seen any of Madrid since my arrival. I wasn't too nervous of the neighborhood Luisita was bringing me to, but I could see she was.

Luisita and I carried on with our small conversation where I asked her all about her knowledge of Madrid, but after a couple of stops we noticed the train began to get more full. A group of young men, who were noticeably day drunk, entered the train and Luisita and I took a collective sigh at their arrival.

The only seats available were right in front of us, we looked at each other signaling that we knew they were going to sit there and probably find a way to disturb us.

We knew our intuition was right when one of the boys, who seemed to be the leader of his rowdy pack, made his way to the chairs in front of us. He sat and his minions soon followed.

- "Hello, ladies." He said as he examined mine and Luisita's body.

We remained silent and looked down to try and get him to realize we were not interested in chatting.

- "Do you not speak?" He said laughing, gesturing to his boys to get them to come talk to us as well.

Luisita and I kept our eyes on the ground and did not move in the hopes that this brain dead man would get our hint.

- "Hellooooooooo? Is anyone in?" The man said while moving his hands in front of Luisita's eyes to try and get her attention. I gulped at his sudden action. He soon grabbed Luisita's chin to get her to look at him and I could see the fear in her eyes at his force.

- "Hey, hey, hey, that's enough." I quickly said as I took his hands off her scared face, her gaze went back down to meet the ground.

- "Oh, so she does speak." He told me with a dirty glance.

- "Why don't you go back to your friends, we don't want trouble." I told him as I tried not to make a scene.

- "Am I not allowed to talk to two pretty girls?" He said with a smile.

- "No, you're not. We're not interested." Luisita said while looking at him directly with a blank face to her hide her fury.

- "We're very fun, we can show you girls a good time." He said to us as he caressed my cheek, I could smell the alcohol on his breath because he was so close. Luisita violently grabbed his wrist and twisted it, he let out a big cry and we both stood up and ran out the train doors, which were conveniently opened since we were at a stop.

I could hear the boy shout for his friends to try and chase us. Luisita led the way out of the train and grabbed my hand so we didn't separate. We ran up the stairs that led out of the train station and ran as fast as we could down the unfamiliar street.

It wasn't until we ran a couple of blocks when Luisita told me that she couldn't see the boys following us anymore. We both slowed down into a walk.

- "What a way to discover the city, eh?" She told me with a breathy chuckle.

- "Are we even in the right place?" I said while twisting my head to see if I could see a sign that would tell me where we were.