Impact
Droplets of rain entered the main stage, performed their magical dance, then slid away into the street leaving a trail of memories that vanished only seconds after. One after another they danced with force, blinding the wide-eyed passenger from seeing the world pass by. Every three seconds the taxi cab would erupt with dusty yellow light as they passed under the perfectly spaced street lamps. It was cold. It was dark.
The flickering digital clock on the dashboard read 05:56 as I squinted through raindrops to read the street signs. We were on Avenida Rafael Nuñez with only five minutes until my street. Exhaustion consumed me.
Yet another wild Saturday night on the Chateau strip had come and gone. My ears were still ringing with the beats of bachata and my clothes were drenched. The hundreds of Córdoba club-goers, who at precisely 05:30 crowded the streets and began hailing cabs in the pouring rain, made getting a taxi for my friends and I rather difficult. Eventually we surrendered to the sky that saturated every inch of our beings and hustled down one of the major roads desperately trying to find a ride. Finally, a car stopped and we jumped in. The driver looked familiar.
One by one the passengers were delivered home until I was alone, staring at the tiny dancers on my window. The sound of water flying off the tires creating a brilliant mist behind us, mixed with the pitter-patter of drops on the roof soothed me. I drifted to a distant land, a land where it always rained, a land where everyone loved the rain. I used to love the rain. I don’t anymore.
We arrived at the corner of Avenida Rafael Nuñez and Calle José Roque Funes, my Argentine host family’s street. The driver stopped just before the street and asked me if he could drop me there. I happily obliged. I wish I hadn’t.
I stepped into the wet world once again and as soon as I shut the door, the driver sped away with troubling haste. I spun around and stopped in confusion to only see the brilliant mist trailing from the taxi as it raced away into the distance.
I saw a dark figure by the tree out of the corner of my eye. The figure was coming straight for me. I had no time to react. Impact.
It was a man clad in all black, hood fully pulled over which let what little light the street lamp provided illuminate the pale skin of his nose and mouth. Then I saw his eyes. Darkness and hatred lived in his eyes. There was no line where the pupil ended and color began, they were full black eyes, full black eyes that pierced through my terrified blue.
All concept of time and space disappeared once he began. It felt like ages, it could have been minutes. I imagine he wanted to simply grab my purse and run, but the thick leather strap, that was worn across my body didn’t tear as he hoped. Instead I was pulled with it and he transformed. He changed from a thug, a purse-snatcher, a bad man — into a monster.
He threw me into the street with full force and I landed on my stomach with the purse lodged underneath me. He followed with fists.
Impact. Body shattering, skin rippling, relentless impact.
Impact.
Impact.
Impact.
I began screaming. I begged and begged for him to stop. Tears were flooding my face and rain was washing them away. I couldn’t move. My hands were pinned underneath me and with every blow I felt the cuts from the pavement rip deeper.
“TÓMALA! TOMA LA BOLSA!” (Take it! Take the bag!)
The fists continued.
“DÉJAME EN PAZ, POR FAVOR. DÉJAME!” (Leave me, please. Leave me!)
His hands redirected themselves. His cold fingers wrapped around my throat and I couldn’t breathe. He whispered a cuss and held tighter. This was it. He was going to kill me, or rape me, or both. I closed my eyes and lowered my head into the puddle. It felt like ages, it must have been seconds. Darkness enveloped my body. I had given up, I had lost. This was it.
This was it.
The frigid fingers moved again. Now covering my mouth, I could breathe ever so slightly through my nose. One hand was keeping me quiet, the other was jabbing my ribs again. Then the jabbing hand moved underneath me. I held my breath. Not a sound, not even a muffled whimper left my lips. Not this. Please, not this.
Not this.
He grabbed the purse and tore it out from under me. In the same, powerful motion he flipped me onto my back but the strap would not break. I opened my eyes and saw him towering over me. He was a silhouette of terror, a living hell. He stood and stared at his work. He grinned. I didn’t feel alive. He had yet to take my purse, but he took everything out of me. I was empty.
With a final, theatrical movement, he tore the purse off of me and sent a pain to my shoulder so piercing that I let out an astonishingly loud cry. With perfect football form, he kicked a penalty shot straight into my side. Goal. That was the winning shot and the the rain went wild.
Blackness. It felt like ages, it could have been minutes.
I woke in the gutter of the street with drain water flowing over me and fresh dancers still falling in numbers from above. I felt paralyzed, but my entire body was shaking. I was crying, but I felt no emotion. I was able to sit up and scan the street. No one was in sight. Not a car nor a bus on the road. Just my little dancers. I hated them. I saw my eyelash mascara and hand sanitizer on the footpath. They had fallen out during the struggle and so I crawled over and retrieved them. Now sitting alone on the corner, with rain heavier than before, I looked down at the items I could barely hold in the hands I could not open. They were painted red with blood and every muscle in my slashed fingers rendered me unable to move. There was so much blood. I went into shock.
“At least I’ll have long lashes and clean hands”, I said to myself through a forced smile and with a light laugh that immediately trailed off.
After an unknown amount of time I was able to drag myself to my host mothers’ house, which was only two doors down. I cried out their names and watched as the light in the room on the second floor turned on. They saw me on the ground and ran over to the gate to help me to safety. I was able to tell them what happened through my fit of hysteria as they tended to my wounds and helped me out of my clothes that were soaked with rain and blood.
After informing my family of the horrific events, still mostly numb to the pain, I drifted to sleep with ease. When I woke only three hours later, I was in an immeasurable amount of pain. I could not move whatsoever, so I went to the hospital shortly after and received proper medical attention. It took about a week to tolerate the physical injuries, but it took much longer for my mental trauma to feel tolerable.
Just over a week later it was a lovely March day and the sun still warmed our faces as we strolled through markets and past glossy shop windows of downtown Córdoba. We got on the public bus to return home as the sun was setting. A panic set in. I would be out at night for the first time since the incident. I wasn’t ready.
I disembarked at my stop, which was at that dreadful corner. People were in the cafe, cars and buses were passing by in numbers, it was barely dark, but the second I stepped onto the footpath I went into a complete panic. I began crying hysterically and headed for the house as fast as my recovering body would allow. When I entered I couldn’t stop myself. I just kept crying.
It felt like ages, it could have been minutes.
