Day 4 Prompt: A story about a time you were very afraid.
This one is hard because in my young adult life, the only times I really get truly scared are when I think I'm going to throw up. It's my biggest phobia. Other times that hit me for being really afraid happened when I was a little kid. There are a couple of travel stories that I can think of, though, where I was frightened at the time. Nothing earth-shattering, but here goes.
This particular story happened when I was studying abroad in Belgium a couple of years ago. I was on my way to visit another American friend, and to get to her host family's house, I needed to take both a train and a bus. The train ride went smoothly, and I arrived in this big city called Liège (that's the train station above). I was pretty familiar with it, so I didn't have any worries going by myself. I had done it plenty of times before. However, I had never taken this particular bus. Well, for some reason, I didn't have money for the bus and had to withdraw money from the ATM in the train station, which was nothing new for me. This particular night, though, the ATM was conveniently out of order. It was probably 8:00 pm, which means all the shops were closed and the bus kiosk in the station was also closed for the night. I realized that I had no way to withdraw money, nobody with me, and nowhere to go. I'm also pretty sure that my cell phone was dying... I was pretty much stranded and freaking out. I even asked where another ATM was, but when I got there and tried to withdraw money, it didn't work. Finally I went up to the ticket window for the trains, shaking and scared, my voice trembling, and trying to withhold tears, explained to the ticket man what was happening. Although he wasn't very empathetic, he did make a transaction for me where he was able to do a sort of cash-back situation and gave me a 20 euro bill. I was more grateful than you could imagine. Eventually I did make it on the bus (where there was a guy bleeding out his eye) and managed to get to my friend's house in one piece.
There were a few other situations where I had gotten on wrong trains and ended up in the middle of nowhere or forgotten my train ticket at home and had to hide out in the bathroom... I even have other stranded stories. The only other instance where I can remember being truly frightened was on New Year's Eve when I was in Belgium and one of my friend's got so drunk that completely passed out and we couldn't get her to come to for a long time. I remember seeing people smacking her, dunking her in water, and her just being limp. I'm not a heavy drinker, so I'm not used to seeing these things, and I was truly terrified. In the end, she was perfectly fine and didn't feel a thing the next morning. Meanwhile I was traumatized.
There may be something else in my past that was scarier than these things that I have mentioned, but like I said, nothing earth-shattering. My life has never been threatened, I've never witnessed a crime, and I've never been injured so badly that I questioned if I would live through it. Trust me, I am grateful that I've never been through those things and that the scariest my life gets is being stuck in a train station! God has been good to me.
What are your real-life scary stories?
No comments:
Post a Comment