They Only Come Out at Night.

[The ANGRY Blog.]

I usually take the night-bus in to town when I have morning shift. It swings by my place at 02:45, and gets me to where I'm going at 3:20 or so. Last night was no different from any other night, except for that a girl with two suitcases and two baggies asked me to help her with her bags as she was getting off the bus.
"Sure, no problem," I said. "I'm heading the same direction myself, I work here!"

Since neither of us were due in until 3:30, we stood outside and chatted for a while. Pleasant girl, aside from her bleached beard - she enjoyed Kung fu, loved her freinds, lived near me. She told me that she was 28, and on her way to Italy and had been too excited to sleep for two nights in a row, since she was meeting a prospective beau. I understood her. Someone paying your ticket to Italy with hopes of romance is enough for one to give one a bit of the jitters. If not second doubts because of a reality check.

The conversation evolved in a nice enough way, I told her what I worked with and she told me that the job suited me, since I seemed like the social type. I'm not the social type. But this girl seemed to think differently - very differently, as it turned out. We headed in at 3:30. She was going to take out some money, so I told her that I might as well take her bags with me since I assumed she was heading my way anyway. Everyone comes my way sooner or later. Okay, she says, and I open my little shop.

Ten minutes later, she comes to my booth and is hysterical. Apparantly, someone had stolen one of her bags. I felt sorry for the poor girl. I told her to run around and look for the person - if she didn't find her, I'd call the gaurd and ask him to help. But I'd try to keep an eye open for the 'theif' while she was searching. "It was a girl, about 1, 60, with a piercing in her nose. Dark-skinned", she informed me.

Five minutes later, she turned up again, empty handed - which was sad, since she was a lovely girl and on her way to an exciting adventure, too bad her trip start out in such a foul way. And too bad my first morning of night shift turned out to be one of witnessing tragedy. She was getting more frantic by the minute, pummelling words at me a mile a minute. "I can't beleive I was so stupid! She seemed nice enough, offering to help. Then she just steals my bags! What a jerk!"

I shook my head sadly. A thought did cross my mind though - could she be referring to me? I gave her the benefit of the doubt and started dialling the gaurd's number. While it rang, I grinned at her, and asked what I thought to be a stupid, though perhaps tension-releiving question. "You don't mean me, do you?" She jumped back a meter. Anger flickered in the eyes that had been blank the second before "It was YOU?! YOU are the one who took my bags?" I didn't quite know how to respond to that one. She sure knew how to continue though, and proceeded to chew me out for being such an asshole.

I sincerely hope she really was stark raving mad, and that this was not a temporary loss of sanity.
After a while she apologised for her getting so upset and confided that I simply had to understand how worried she had been. I raised my finger and pointed to my right.

"Leave. Your gate is that way."

I can't recall ever being that angry during my four months working there.
Just not sure if it was because I'd just been called an asshole by a girl who'd forgotten my existence in the space of two seconds or if it was because she said that the perpetrator had been 1,60cm tall.

Stupid wanker, get a shave.