Run away in underpants

It had started to rain, so I moved under the railway line before midnight, thinking that I would be safe from the rain here.

The passage under the elevated railway is still under construction, one side is a national road and the other side is a gravel road leading nowhere, and it is 2 am. There is a person at the entrance to the national road, about five metres away.

He has long hair, and because of the low height of the elevated railroad tracks, he looks much taller than he really is. My body instantly tenses up, I’m still lying down to see what’s going on,

“Please just go away!”

I hoped in my sleeping bag. The silhouette of a car as it passed by gave me an eerie feeling.

He was whispering something, but it didn’t seem to be to me, but to someone else.

The other person appeared from the direction from which he was speaking, limping and with a weak gait.

“Just taking shelter from the rain?”

The man walks weakly towards me, there’s nothing in my direction, except that I’m asleep, and I can hear him dragging one of his feet, as if he has a bad leg.

When he was about three meteres away from me, I sat up, ready to do anything he might do to me. The man doesn’t seem to mind, he doesn’t stop, he keeps coming closer, he’s obviously coming for me. My nerves were at an all-time high. As he got closer, I could hear him saying something, but I had no idea what it was.

Thinking it would be a bad idea to be identified as a “foreigner”,

I remain silent. The man keeps walking, completely beside me, touching my bike, and then comes around to my head, saying something to me, an older man.

I didn’t feel that he was threatening me with violence, because his steps were weak, but he came right up to my head, pointed at my bag and tried to touch it, so I made a

“Don’t touch my things!”

motion with my hands.

The man still said something and pointed at the bag. I didn’t know what was going on, but I thought,

“Anyway, it’s not good to stay here.”

I quickly jumped out of the sleeping bag , quickly rolled up the sleeping bag, rolled up the sheet, put the sleeping bag in my bag,

I jumped on my bike in my underwear, and rode out under the elevated train tracks.

passing another person near the exit and onto the dark road. I cycled as fast as I could, in my underwear, towards the city.

I could see the lights of a petrol station a little further on, and I did my best to get there. I parked my bike under the light of the gas station sign, the whole thing had been happening in the dark, so coming under the light calmed me down a bit. I put on my trousers and tied my luggage to the bike,

I couldn’t find the band to hold the mat under my sleeping bag, “I forgot it when I left in a hurry, that’s where it was” I didn’t want to go back, but it would have been useful to have it, I would get it in the morning. The rain had stopped so I went from the petrol station to the nearest town and lay down on the grass by the road until it was light.