Something wild happened to me today

Chapters 23 & 24

Friday, March 30th, 2007, 6:40 PM

Don’t think

Another stress-filled day at the office.

Although, having so much work isn’t a bad thing. It keeps you from thinking.

And in my situation, that’s the best thing that could happen to me.

Sara called me at noon; we’re seeing each other tonight to get next week’s adventure prepared. From what I can deduce, it’s going to be pretty on-the-fly: get in the car, burn up miles, and stop wherever we feel like. It doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve done something like that.

Almost as long as since I fought against Xavier—or against anyone, except for the two incidents from last week--. Tomorrow afternoon, about ten years late, I’ll have my moment for revenge. Or my moment to painfully return to reality. Anyway, we’ll see. Why worry?

Important note: I decided that after Easter week, I’m going to the doctor’s. Even if it’s just to keep me from spending my wage on clothes. This morning, I stained two shirts and a pair of pants before leaving the house, and to top it off, I missed my train.

I’m going to keep working a while longer. I just received the last corrections. 

 

Saturday, March 31st, 2007, 4:29 PM

Black Dog

I feel like shit. I’ve hardly slept.

To top it off, on my way home, I got mixed up in another brawl. If I don’t have powers this afternoon, after the combat with Xavier, I’ll eat my entire comic collection. I promise, and I’ll put it in writing. I spent last night at Sara’s apartment, making love and making the last preparations for our trip to nowhere—more the former than the latter--. Her roommates left yesterday to go to their respective towns for vacation, so we had it to ourselves.

We’ve decided to take the car really early Tuesday morning, we will buy maps at the first service station we come across, and we will start to explore Spain, since neither of us has travelled too much throughout the country. We’ll mark some places that seem interesting to us, and from there, we’ll improvise.

I can’t wait for the day to get here.

I don’t know what it is about train stations, but lately, they seem to attract problems. Or maybe I’m making it that way. However it is, after dropping Sara off at the bookstore, when I got to the Plaza Catalunya station, I saw how a dark guy, huge, and apparently furious, was running toward two African guys who were walking along peacefully. When he got up next to them, he yelled something I couldn’t understand and smacked one of them so hard it resounded in the whole station. The kid fell to the ground, and the other one, after looking around for a few seconds, got between the two of them without looking very convinced, more afraid. The aggressor was two heads taller than him and wouldn’t quit shouting, completely out of his mind.

From where I was, I could see the entire station and the stairs. There were no security guards, and the rest of the people, as usual, just looked on in surprise.

The guy kept shouting something incomprehensible, and easily pushing the guy away who had put himself in the middle, started to kick the one on the ground, who was trying to crawl away. From the look on his face, it looked like he still didn’t understand what was happening to him.

A few seconds later, between the friend and another two young guys—more brave than sensible—they grabbed the big guy from behind and pulled him away. He spit on the guy writhing on the ground and kept shouting things that sounded like some African language, while they forced him to retreat. For a few seconds, it looked like things were going to calm down and I started to relax.

At that moment, another group of black guys coming down the stairs appeared, jumping down the steps in threes. They were dressed like the one who was shouting: colored jackets, chains, rings, piercings, hats and camo pants and brand-name tennis shoes. All of them were fairly large, and almost all of them were over six feet tall.

They caused quite the impression.

They quickly ran forward, shouting, toward the place of the incident, surrounding the group of young men, who immediately let go of the big guy they were holding and retreated to the wall behind them. Their faces went white in a few seconds; they were terrified.

The people arriving at the station stayed away, observing, or totally ignoring—consciously or unconsciously—what was happening.

There were nine of them, and it didn’t look like they were planning on going home and forgetting whatever had happened. They seemed pretty pissed off. Indignant, even.

Little by little, trying not to be noticed, I approached. The one who seemed to be in charge was talking to the guys who, besides trembling and keeping their gaze to the ground, were sweating. Apparently, the guy, who now could hardly stand, had looked “too much” at the attacker’s girlfriend, and he got ticked off and went to give him a lesson.

The friend of the guy who got beat up looked at the group of guys he had in front of him, with a challenging attitude, and said:

“This is Spain. It’s a free country, and you’re allowed to look.”

“Fucking loudmouth. You fucked up,” I thought just before the first blow hit him in the face.

He seemed like the typical university idealist, and if no one did anything soon, he might just turn into a dead university idealist. But the worst was yet to come. The idiot tried to hit him back. In vain, of course.

Then a quite unfair free-for-all started, where the group of big guys lashed out at will. The poor other guys took it while they tried to get out of there. A security guard who showed up when he heard the commotion stood there staring, open-mouthed, and shrugged his shoulders when someone told him to do something.

I couldn’t take it any longer. I ran up to them and grabbed the first one I ran across by the neck. He turned around and looked at me in surprise. A kick to the nuts left him writhing on the ground while I jumped on the next one. Then, I lost control.

Two or three minutes later, the guys from the group who were still standing left the place. Three of them were unconscious at my feet.

Suddenly, everything stopped around me, and all sounds were silenced, except for my choppy breathing. The colors turned gray, and then the biggest black guy I’d seen in my life appeared, slowly going down the stairs, as if in slow motion.

The only thing that set him apart from his companions—apart from his impressive size—was that he was wearing a quality suit and an elegant top hat.

When he was in front of me—after what seemed like an eternity—he greeted me, taking his hat off from his perfectly-shaved head, and flashed me an enormous smile, full of perfect teeth. Then I felt an intense cold, and an overwhelming fear that totally paralyzed me. Bringing his face less than an inch from mine, looking into my eyes, with a deep voice and without moving his lips, he said:

“I’m Black Dog, and I’ve come to warn you. You shouldn’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. This time, I’ll let it go, but I recommend that you stay far away from my people from now on.”

Then he disappeared in an instant like a heartbeat—as if he had never been there—and the world started moving and took on color again. That was when I realized that most of the people who had witnessed the incident were observing me; I’m not sure if they did so out of fear, respect or thanks for helping those guys. It was probably a mix of all three.

I made sure the kids were OK and decided to go before the police got there.

No one tried to stop me.