Transcript
Advertiser (0:00)
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Storyteller (1:54)
I recently took a long distance 12 hour plus train ride. One of those peaceful trips where you could lean back, close your eyes and relax. But what began as an opportunity for quiet reflection and escape quickly turned into an uncomfortable and unrelenting experience. I opted for the train over flying due to the recent uptick in airline incidents, and I'm somewhat of a nervous flier. The train seemed like a safer, more relaxed choice, but when I boarded the train and settled into my seat, things took an unexpected turn. A young woman about my age, but perhaps a bit younger took the seat next to me. I'm a 30 year old male by the way. She seemed friendly enough at first, but before long it became clear she was in the mood to talk. I didn't mind at first, thinking maybe it would just be a brief conversation to pass the time, but it quickly escalated into something else entirely. I had tried to nod off, hoping to get some rest, but she kept tapping me on the shoulder, waking me up each time. It felt like she was determined to keep me engaged, and even though I told her I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. The conversation kept going and going, uninterrupted. She began asking personal questions, probing into my life. I felt it was strange, but I didn't want to be rude, so I answered as best I could, always polite, but I was starting to get really uncomfortable. Then she had started to reveal some deeply personal details about her own life. Her stories were heavy, and she didn't seem to care much about the fact that we were strangers. She spoke about drifting for months at a time, how she had spent over four years in and out of mental hospitals with over 40 admissions in total. She shared the trauma of her mother being a narcissist and how a family friend had abused her. The stories kept coming, each one more painful than the last. I'm not gonna go into further details, but they were some pretty traumatizing things that she was saying that she had experienced. I felt bad for her, so I tried to weather it and listen, but I was stuck, unable to get a word in or extricate myself from the situation. I tried to steer the conversation in a direction that might actually help me escape, mentioning that I was happily married in the hopes that it would signal that I wasn't interested in case that was part of it, or that she might think my wife wouldn't really appreciate me having a conversation like this with another woman. But instead of backing off, it seemed to kind of upset her. I could see the change in her expression, as though my words had somehow hurt her. Yet she didn't stop. She pushed on, continuing to share more about her troubled life. Even though I began offering little more than one word answers, or in some cases, complete silence. It felt like I was a captive audience. At some point, I had reached a breaking point. I finally told her as kindly as I could, that I felt uncomfortable and that I didn't really want to talk anymore. But that didn't deter her either. She seemed unfazed and just kept going, as if my discomfort didn't even register. That's when I told her that I needed to go to the bathroom, hoping it would offer me a break, even just for a moment. I moved to another car, trying to put some distance between us. But half an hour later, she showed up saying she had been looking for me, and she sat next to me again. I couldn't take it any longer. I came up with a plan to build the next stop. Even if it was nighttime in the middle of nowhere, anything was better than this situation. I told her I would go to the bathroom again. And she had started insisting that she would go with me this time. I realized this wasn't going to work out this time and I had to think of something else fast. Running out of options, I decided to time it just right. I waited until we reached the stop, I let the doors open and I waited for the conductor's last announcement that the doors would close. I waited an extra few seconds and then sprinted just before the doors closed. Luckily, I finally managed to get an Uber and stay in a crappy hotel for the night. The next morning I checked my phone and read a text message. Where did you go? I never gave her my number, but I think that I did actually leave my phone behind when I went to use the restroom the first time. Meaning that she used my phone to text her number and that's how she got my number. I blocked the number immediately and I'm really hoping that I don't see her hear from her again. I'm a 23 year old female who lives in a small country in Eastern Europe. Since the story involves trains, I'll set up how they work for you. Metro trains are not widely used, so the type of train I'm going to be talking about is the long distance between city types. They're old and slow and usually trips take anywhere from two to five hours or more. For comparison, a trip by car to the same place would probably take anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, three hours at most. Now that I've set up the basics, I'll begin with the story. It was the middle of February 2023. My cousin and I got up at 5 in the morning to catch a bus to the town over so we could catch the train for the capital. The first trip by bus takes about 40 minutes and then the trip with the train to the capital takes about three and a half hours. Everything in the bus was fine. We reached the station and got our tickets along with a little breakfast. We sat down in the front of the station to wait for the train to arrive so we could aboard. I think about 30 minutes had passed when the train came to a stop. We boarded and found a fairly empty cabin and sat down. Both of us took the seats that were next to the window facing each other. On my cousin's side there were two old grandmas. They had put their bags in the empty seat next to her ct. On my side there was an old man with a head injury leaning on the inside window and his wife sitting next to him. But there was one more open seat right next to me. The train started moving, and if we exclude the guy that wasn't feeling well, everything was going Both my cousin and I had our headphones on, just listening to music. For the first five stops or so. Absolutely nothing of interest happened. But on the next stop, a guy had boarded the train. He was really wobbly and carrying a big plastic open bottle of beer. He came right next to our cabin door and opened it. Didn't even care to ask if the seats were free. Pretty much tripped over the sick guy's feet and almost completely fell on top of me. He laughed sheepishly and abruptly sat down next to me. My cousin and I exchanged confused looks. We tried pretending nothing was going on, but there was just no way. The guy had decided he would take his jacket off, but in the process he had dropped the beer and spilt it all over the floor of the train and coincidentally, almost directly onto my feet. I quickly pulled my legs on top of the radiator and put my back in between us so he wouldn't come any closer. He sat back down, picked his beer up, and then put it in his lap. He took out his phone and started trying to take pictures of everyone in the cabin, but I guess he was so out of it that he had dropped both the beer and phone on the ground while kind of falling in and out of consciousness. The phone screen cracked everywhere and almost all of the beer was spilled on the floor and was starting to smell horrifyingly bad because of the radiator blasting heat. He would come in and out of consciousness, picking his phone up and dropping it as well as the beer, again and again, but as more time passed, the more annoying and irritable he would get. He was trying to lay down on the sick guy's wife. He tried to sit down on me. He was screaming incoherent things at the lady sitting next to my cousin, yet they would just laugh and mock him. He rolled up his sleeves, which revealed thousands of little holes, most of them still fresh and bleeding, I assume due to inserting some type of heavy drug in the needle. Now he was trying to vigorously stuff his face in front of mine and talk to me, and of course I was trying my best to look out of the window and ignore him, so I didn't agitate him any more than he already was. His pupils were huge, though. It scared the life out of me. The lady conductor came by now and asked him for his ticket. He gave her one, which turned out to be old, and she shouted at him to get off the train. At the next stop. If you're wondering how I heard that, I had lowered the volume of my music almost to zero at some point. Well, anyway, the conductor shouting at him made him really angry and he started to shout right back at her. He got up on his feet, barely being able to hold balance, and almost tried to hit her but failed because he fell back into his seat. At this point, everyone in the cabin was starting to freak out. It seemed like he would just hit just about anyone to take out his anger. He was flailing his bloody hands. Then he got another bout of going in and out of consciousness and maybe fell asleep. Problem is, he fell asleep right on the old lady next to us and she didn't know where to go or what to do. The conductor lady passed again and she told us that he was getting off on the next stop whether he wanted to or not. So we all just waited in silence, doing our best to not wake him up. His phone rang though. Yes, the same one that he broke the screen of to the consistency of salt. He jolted up, answered the phone and seemed really excited. He also scratched his face with the broken glass. Turns out one of his friends would be waiting for him at the station. He gingerly got up, almost falling over and hitting the ladies at the front. He got dressed real fast and then ran out the door. Before closing the door though, he turned around and looked at us with the most creepiest face I've ever seen. It's burned into my mind forever. Face pale as a dead man. Eyes wide and bloodshot, no pupils to be seen. Smile wide from one ear to the other, drooling a little. All he said was I hope you all enjoy the rest of your ride. And he wobbled off the train. That was the worst two hours on a train. Seriously. I really hope it doesn't happen to anyone else.