King's Cross
Squinting through the dark gloom, I see from the few dimly lit lights around the station that King’s Cross is nearly empty. I only see a few people around me - a family of three, with the two parents dragging along their sleepy child onto a rusty train on platform twelve. A man with a small suitcase wandering around as if it was his first time here. Someone in the distance, lying on a bench as he slept to the pit-pattering of the neverending rain from above.
Do they too have reasons like me, to be desperate enough to try for a train this late? I wonder.
I drop my head to keep a low profile, but it drops too much, and the hat on my head flies off. As I bend down to pick it up, I see something out of the corner of my eye that sends a jolt through my stomach.
A man. Tall and gangly, with a large blue trench coat. It seems to be around his mid-forties. Hooked nose, wrinkly skin, ugly face. Everything about him screams weak. Everything...but his eyes, which held a powerful but uncomfortable glimmer.
And those eyes are staring right.
At.
Me.
I slowly bent back up, adjusting my hat back onto my head. I hoped he’d stopped looking, and had only done so because of my clumsy actions, but one swift turn of my head confirmed that wasn’t it. Instead, his eyes are fixated on me, the beady eyes refusing to blink. I feel a familiar chill roll down my spine.
It’s only from the cold, I try to reassure myself.
Ten minutes of this uncomfortable staring persists. That’s when he starts slowly inching towards me. I don’t dare glance towards him, yet I can hear the thumping of his shoes as it gets nearer and nearer. Finally, the footsteps come to an end, and momentary relief washed over me. But too soon. I look to my right and flinch. There he is, the gangly man in the trench coat, hovering less than a foot away from my body.
“Hey there, my pretty little brownie. You’re looking quite young to be out here on your own. Where’s mummy and daddy, huh?” He grins, and I can see his yellowing teeth, more rotten than that of a week-old corpse’s. Smells like it too.
“Sorry sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about” I mutter coldly. I try to keep my voice from shaking, yet I could hear the fear in my voice. And so could he.
“Oh, I think you know just what I’m talking about.” He moves in closer.
I immediately start to back away. This is bad. This shouldn’t be happening. I’d read enough newspapers and heard enough stories to know what codgy old men do to girls out there. And I don’t want any part of it. The man’s still moving in closer, and I keep moving back. Suddenly, I trip over my own shoes and stumble for a second. My hat falls off again. He sees his chance.
“Don’t-
But too late, his bony hand was clenching to my arm, and he was pulling me closer to him, his mouth only inches away from my neck. I attempt to push him away from me, but his grip was too strong to escape. Need to scream, I NEED TO SCREAM. At first, all that comes out is a choking sound, and then small shrieks of help. The filth only hesitates before peering around. “Don’t worry darling,” he coos. “There’s no one around to keep me away from you”.
He then covers my mouth with his other hand to prevent me from screaming any more. I attempt to bite his hand, bite him till I can taste his metallic blood on my tongue, but he doesn’t budge. Instead, he inches closer and closer, until I can feel his disgusting breath on my neck.
The grip loosens, but only so he could shift from my arm and enwrap his own arm around my waist, his hand resting on my lower hip. Then that hand moves, it moves up my waist. It moves ups past my stomach. It just keeps moving. The arm grips me by the back, forcing me closer and closer towards this loathsome creature. I shut my eyes because I don’t want to see what was going to happen to me. I don’t want to feel anything, but I am. I’m screaming, I’m screaming as hard as I can, but it’s muffled, and there’s no one around, no one near me, nothing can save me no-
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you sir.”
I gasp. Someone heard my pleas. The old man’s hand tighten even more on my mouth and back. He pushes me behind him the best he can, so as to not reveal my face and the trauma plastered on it.
“Yeah, and what’re you gonna do, yeah arse? Don’t ya see my wife and I are in the middle of something?” But I’m not his wife. I try to say this, but no avail. All that comes out is the muffled sound only my ears had to bear.
“Well, it sounded like there was trouble, but if it was nothing..then I do ask you to be a bit more private in such a place.”
The stranger believed it. He believed this beast’s bullshit’s lies. How could he? This is the end. My only savior is walking away from me, and I’m once again stuck in the devil’s hands.
“Now, where were we....” He whispers. I whimper.
The answer comes quickly. Right as he said it a fist knocks him to the side, making him loosen his grip around me and fall to the ground. I hear a voice, the same voice that believed the old man, “THAT’S WHATCHA GET, YOU BLOODY BASTARD!” He screams. I just stare at the stranger, still in shock and awe. He comes up to me. “Are you ok lady?” He asks, scanning my face for any sign of abuse. I slowly shake my head, still trying to wrap my head around what had just happened. The stranger turns to eye the sick pervert, still on the ground. “Shit, shit, he’s still conscious”
“Wait, what do you mean, co-” but before I could finish, the same bony hand from only from minutes ago grasps onto my ankle. The stranger yells. He steps on the hand, before grabbing my hand and yelling, “Come on stop standing there we have to run we have to RUN!” My feet automatically does this, and I follow my stranger. All my trust in him now lies in our interlaced fingers. I peek behind and immediately regret it. The man was already up and running right after us with a bleeding forehead. That was enough to knock me back to my senses.
My legs start running as fast as my stranger is. There is no more getting to my train, no more going to Liverpool, no escape to Lady Liberty. All I can do now is worry about my escape from this hellhole.
...
The splattering of water over my face is enough to indicate to me that we’re outside and safe, safe from that monster. Still, my stranger persists we aren’t free yet, and we keep running until we’re under a small archway, out of the cold rain.
We both stop and our hands let go, as well as the warmth created from our touch. We’re both panting roughly. I can barely stand after running nonstop for such a long time. The hair that was in a neat bun is now an inky, curly mess around my shoulders, but I don’t bother trying to fix it. Instead, I move it away from my face to glance at my savior.
He’s a young man, looks to be around my age. Arms crossed, whether, from the cold or something else, I don’t know. A head taller than me, by what I can tell, and lanky limbs. I can tell from his auburn hair and freckles that he’s definitely someone boy that grew up on the streets of London. He wore a white collared shirt with a black coat over it, both drenched in water. His hair was glistening with water droplets.
I spent such a long time observing that it takes me a few seconds before I heard what he’d asked me.
“Lady? I’m asking you - are you a’right?”
“What? Um, yeah..yeah I think I am.” I straightened up and gaze up at him.
His arms are still crossed, and his green eyes are squinting at me. His eyebrows are turned down, as well as his mouth. Before I can figure out why he answers it for me. “Dida know I had to miss my train to save your ‘damsel in distress’ self? That was my ticket outta this dump! It’s too late for me to go now - the last train to Birmingham was at one in the morning!” He lifts his arm and moves his coat away from his wrist to show me a cheap steel watch wrapped around it. The hands read 1:47. He groans from frustration and covers it back up, before walking towards the wet steps nearby and sitting down. He puts his head in his hands and keeps groaning.
I start to feel defensive myself. ”Excuse me, I didn’t know saving girls that would’ve been forced to sleep with old horny men was a ‘waste of time’ in your dictionary! I was going to thank you, but now I’m not sure I should anymore!” I yell back. The boy finally has the audacity to look straight at me, not sure what to think anymore.
I stride towards the steps too but make sure to sit as far away from him as possible. A long pause is held between us. We listen to the dripping of the storm as it slowly comes to a stop. Soon, all that can be heard are the peaceful chirps of crickets nearby.
“...Thank you.” I break the silence. “I should’ve thanked you first. If it weren’t for you, I’d surely be dead by now. So thank you.”
A brief moment of silence.
“Sorry I got so pissed at you ’bout my train. M’sure you had somewhere to be too - why else would’a be at the station?” He sighs and turns to glance at me. “You know, maybe we should start again. Without a mad psycho chasing after us.” He scoots closer in towards me, before extending a hand. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. My name’s Sylvester Brandt - but you can call me Sylvie.” I take it. Sylvie’s hands are firm and strong, and I feel the same warmth I’d only felt an hour before. “Pleasant to meet you as well, Mr, uh, Brandt. You can call me Ishika Thomas, Ishi for short.”
“Nice to meet you, ‘Ishi for short’” he chuckles at his own cruddy joke.
I roll my eyes. “So, Sylvester, where actually are we?” I ask.
“This old thing? The St. Pancras Church of London. This bloody place’s the oldest damn thing you’ll have ever seen. Built only ’bout 300 hundred years after our Jesus was born, and conveniently only roughly around 2 kilometers from the station. Shocker, that the place hasn’t turned into a pile of dust yet.”
“Hm. Not a bad place for a hideaway. Who’d want to sin in front of the eyes of God anyways, eh?” I say. ”
I dunno,” he replies. “I ain’t much of a religious bloke myself. God ain’t there to support me, instead only mankind keeps striking me down.” I fall silent, not knowing how to reply to that. God wouldn’t do that, he looks after all his children. At least, I think He does. But before I can say this, Sylvester says “I’m sure you’re one of them religious blokes, so I’ll just say this; you believe what you wanna believe, and I’ll believe what I wanna believe. Let’s keep it at that.”
Sylvester yawns. “I dunno about you, but I was supposed to have my beauty rest to the rattling inside of a comfy train coach. Too bad that ain’t happening now.” I could feel my own body feeling more and more tired as if the energy was being sucked out of me. My eyelids were already droopy. “You know, I’d like to drop dead sleep too..” I let out a huge yawn and lie down on the cold pebbly stairs. My eyes close. I open them in a flash. I glimpse towards Sylvester, and suspicion runs through me. He’s still on the same stone step with me, staring out into the distance, and sleep is clearly on his mind as well. However, I wasn’t about to trust him that easily.
I clear my throat. Sylvester shifts his attention to me.
“I know it sounds odd to say this...but if you’re going to go to sleep, can you sleep....somewhere away from me? Not out of eyesight, but...just not this..close.”
A look of confusion passes his face before his eyebrows raise in understanding. “No problem. Wouldn’t want any trouble anyways.” He stands and walks up to the top of the steps, only 5 cobblestones away from me. He then drops to the side opposite to mines, takes his knees into his arms, and closes his eyes. Within minutes, I can hear loud snores echoing from no one else but him.
I convince myself that this is the safest situation I can now hope for. Then I let my fighting eyelids drop and settle into a deep, heavy slumber.
