Flight

I could feel my heart thumping like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest. So far it had found it's  way up to some where in the middle of my brain. The thumping was kaboom, kaboom, kaboom. My head ached in a pounding rhythm with my heart. My lungs sucked the air as if there very little left in the world and I had to get what was left.

My legs throbbed in agony. I waited in the shadows trying to hear those that followed me. It was hard to hear anything because my body was screaming at me. My brain screamed ...RUN...my legs wouldn't listen.

I was gasping for more air but I could hear the sirens...the wheee...wooo, then the kleghorns, the clangs.

But, they were getting fainter or was my heart, my lungs sucking the foul alley air was masking how close they were. Their voices, their yells had gone away. I crawled in behind some garbage cans and waited to find my breath.

I waited an hour, maybe longer and then I renewed my flight. I stayed to the alleys and dark streets always stopping, waiting, listening for someone, anyone to scream that I had been found. 

Some how I made it back to my section of town and safety. I had been crazy to go into the backs streets of Taiwan away from the American bars. Drinking their home made Absinthe had made me crazy and a Chinese bar girl had picked my pocket. I felt her hand but she was out the door before I could grab her.

I followed her into the night and the cab I saw her get into. I grab the next cab and we followed them deep into the bars that were off limits to American personnel. She left the cab and walked into an alley. I followed until I saw her enter a sleazy bar three blocks away. She wasn't aware that I was following her and when I walked into the bar she was talking to the bar tender. No one else was there...just the three of us. I grabbed her arm and told her I wanted my money.  The bar tender told me to leave. She denied that she took the money. I picked up a glass and threatened to break his big mirror behind the bar if he didn't make her to give me the money.

He said, "You go now, GI or I call police."

I threw the glass and  then another and another. He was on the phone screaming something in Taiwanese. She was trying to hold my arms...to keep me from breaking the glass. I threw another. It crashed into the mirror and then another and finally the mirror broke. He was screaming into the phone. She was screaming at me and hitting me.

Then I heard the sirens getting closer and I ran out the back door of the bar into an alley and I had no idea where I was or how I was going to get away.  Getting caught was not something I wanted to think about. Even though we had immunity from the Taiwanese police. the time between when they caught you or arrested you and when they turned you over to the M.P.'s was not a pretty one.

I walked back into the bar where it all started and ordered another beer and a shot of Absinthe. A pretty little bar maid snuggled up to me and and said, "You like to buy me a drink G.I?"

I said, "Sure, why not."

written by gs batty for Two Shoes Tuesday