Chapter 1
The obvious sequel to the Fury stab story must be something bombastic and of course involves a coke junky. In hindsight, or if you look at juxtapositions of things that hold similar meanings, stabbing and coke isnt necessarily related. Besides the obvious debaucherous nature, and the fact that the two stories took place back to back.
So after I got stabbed, in the arm, and slept in that hostel (catching the readers up, if you havent read it), and returned home, the Mexican dude, who “saved” me, from more stabbings, texted me.
“You want to grab dinner perhaps?” he asked.
I was reluctant. I said, “Is the girl coming?”
He wasnt sure, he’d asked. He made sure. In the end she wasnt coming. So I took my time, and thought about it for a bit, and was still even wearing the same clothes of that day, and just hopped back on the train. Back to Amsterdam. Where things go to shit.
This time, on the train, I didnt bring a bottle of vodka. It had gotten me enough trouble, for a lifetime, to be honest. Once there, in Amsterdam, it was quite late, and we met up at the same bar, we had met before. The sailor bar on the corner, in or near the Red Light District.
It was dark. The canals shimmered in ancient lantern light. The cobblestoned narrow roads were charming. We walked.
We chatted a bit, and ofcourse the big mystery was, WHY DID THE GIRL STAB ME?!
To be honest it’s such a big mystery, that half a decade later, I dont really care anymore, but she was psycho, and wanted to party more, and I was teasing her with her scarf. Or something. That warranted the shiv, of the biggest fattest blade I’ve ever seen, straight to my left forearm. Of course. And ofc there was the fact she was just Mexican. Latina fire. Of course.
I let it be, and we just looked for places to have a drink. Funnily enough, for a city that never sleeps, it was frikking hard to find a place that was still open. People were leaving there local bars, chanting the last songs as they made their way out of the joints, as we wanted in.
After multiple busts, and dead ends, we decided just to stroll. Mexican was just here for one night more and they, the crazy Stab Mexicana and the rest of the Mexicans, would leave in the morning on a bus to Berlin to celebrate New Year’s.
It was his last night so I decided not to go home, and do my thing. Collect stories, through the night, in the face of danger. Well danger came, soon enough.
Before that we took some photos, by the canal, by the water and it was nice. There were Banksy replicas on display, we took photos. It all looked groovey and nice, on a chilly but extremely quiet night. There’s something extremely eerie about Amsterdam at night, but completely abandoned. It’s medieval, mystical, but ghastly, haunting at the same time. Kinda fun. if you ask me, but it’s an acquired taste. The scenery lends to the spectacle. There are old school lanterns, dimly lit, with that ghastly yellow, shimmering across the canals, giving the inky black water a sheen. And when it’s Christmas, there are all kinds of little lights peppering the dark like fireflies in the deep dark woods.
Chapter 2
Like I said there wasnt much to do so we decided to drop the Mexican off at his hostel. Along the way we passed Rembrandt plein, or Leidse, I forgot, but there were people outside the clubs smoking. We decided to try out luck, to get in, but the bouncers refused.
To full, they said. Prolly lies, they didnt want a cholo gangster and a chino barging in on their thing.
Mexican was chill, he was uberchill, mind you. It was because of his upbringing. He told me of his homecountry, stories of famine and knives and danger. You could read it from his face, his eyes. Or not. His eyes were that extremely cool, and dead, and dangerous. I’ve seen the type. UFC fighters on TV I studied to death, or killers, or jailers. Or other Latam dudes I met in Slovenia. Brazilians. Who had the extreme same chill vibe. Kinda like they could die any time and they wouldnt care. Not that they didnt, but there was this Stoic hands off, let go kinda approach to it, that it wasnt your fault if it did, you know.
We sat on the party streets as people smoked outside the clubs and you could hear the chatter. A hot woman would pass by and the Mexican would mouth, Oh mami. Or something like that.
Id smile and we’d talk about women, and online dating, and how he had accumulated an insane bodycount in his time living, and working, in Moscow. He was an extremely average Joe. Slightly taller than me. His face was not pretty and he had long black hair, dry and brittle, bunched up in a ponytail. This was no fucking Brad Pitt, I kid you not.
His secret was that he was a Piano Teacher. That was the angle, and he smiled and shared some catfish stories with me, failed dates, and even confessed that he had once had a threeway with that crazy Mexican girl who stabbed me. Yeahhhhh, good thing I avoided that girl, I dont want no slopping seconds.
We walked home back to his hostel. A guy was shouting, arguing with the hostel manager. The hostel manager shoved him, throwing him out on the alley, the cobblestones still in display in the dark.
The guy shouted back. I’ll kill you. He mimed his hand in the air, feigning dread. The hotel manager was a tough one. Been there, done that. He stood his ground. Hands on his hips. The guy who had shouted was just words. A pussy. He shouted a couple times more, but his feet pointed in the other direction, away, and he started walking.
The hostel manager went back inside. Just another night in Amsterdam.
So Mexican and I just sat outside for a bit. In the cold, it was late now. We just were chatting, on the steps, of other hostels or shops or whatever. Those charming oldschool wooden doors were behind us.
That’s when the crack junky came out of the dark.
Chapter 3
He came out of damn nowhere, like a ghost, and suddenly he was in our faces. Nowhere to go. Not that we wanted to, and with “we” I mean the Mexican. His uber chill favela cholo gangster mode took over. With which I mean, he didnt move an inch. Usually a person, at least I, when talking to the homeless, makes a movement, shuffling of the feet, looking towards directions you want to escape to. But no. Not this guy. He stayed put. And maybe because of ancient atavistic calling, aka dick measuring contest I did the same.
So there we sat, in the dark, in the late hours, in Amsterdam, on the steps of old mansions and with a coke junky.
Well how did I know he was on coke? Well he whipped it out, ofcourse.
It was not the fact that he was doing it, in front of us, that was jarring but it was his whole demeanour and his attire. It was completely off putting.
In non chronological order, he consistently said he was drunk, whilst apologizing for it.
I’m so drunk, I’m so sorry.
Mind you, he said this in a supremely slurred fashion. With a hint of Italian accent because he was Italian and had somehow in sane manner FLOWN in. To this day I dont know if this was true. But apparently HE was a pilot, yeah this coke head and HE had flown in. haha.
Maybe it was a tall tale, but then again I’m telling the tale, which is part of telling tales, really. And on top of that.
He CRASHED his plane. Well that fit. He was on coke the whole time tho. But now he was stuck and to spend the night he must do coke the whole night or some such back story.
He was from South Italy, Napels. Or like he liked to say the whole night “Napoli”
So those were his favorite disrupted, off beat, jarring, drunk verbal tics.
Napoli.
Im so drunk, sorry. Yeah sorry for that, haha fml.
And ofcourse the famous Italian swear words, mixed in between, sprinkled here and there, to make him seem all the more friendlier.
Famous hits such as: porco dio – loosely translates as gods dick or something, literally pork of god, yeah maybe like shlong or sausage. Funnily enough I knew this one, from a student party back in the day, this is how we picked up Italian chicks, not.
And of course there was CULO. That one had a nice ring to it.
He would say a sentence and then CULO. Sentence CULO. It means BALLS. Like blablabla BALLS. Blablabla BALLS. It had, to be honest, given the situation, an extremely humoristic effect.
To this day this experience is so heightened, so surreal, so meta to me. It feels like I wasnt there even, that day, that night, and everything, every little detail makes it all the more weird.
So this cat was shady, and the whole time he was trying to get in your face. Up close, nice and tight, like shoo shoo, keep your distance dude (this was pre covid and social distancing mind you, but still).
But of course he stank of booze, and ofcourse he wanted more liquor, which we promised to get him, but we didnt.
And the whole fucking time the Mexican just SAT there. Chill, and talking to him. Minutes went by, and then longer.
The whole fucking time I thought what in the flying f dude, why the fuck do you keep asking him shit?
By now the coke dude got polite, somehow and started fumbling in pockets. At first I thought he was gonna grab a knife and stab us and rob us and leave us for dead. Right then and there. Well, can you blame me? This was the day after.
And this guy’s face looked wrong. Like distorted, re-altered, by coke, you might have seen them on documentaries, or in movies, or on the streets. He had that real ugly mug thing going on, because of too much drugs. And the whole time slurring his words. Twitching his face. And like a Zombie, canting his neck left and right, as if wanting to crack his neck and spine. Or like a wild animal thinking, thinking, as if to eat his prey.
Yeah this was eerie ass weird creepy motherfucking shit. Then his hand would come out. Not a knife.
But a small plastic little bag. With white stuff in it. Coke. Of course. He was trying to be polite. OF COURSE. He offered us. We refused. Of course.
So I’m supremely suspicious of this guy, and that’s when the Mexican has to go the bathroom. He just gets up, starts walking, passed the junky, and he then stops in the middle of the road, this narrow alley. In between the doors, and the steps we were sitting on. It was dark and night and no one there.
He looks at me.
He said, “I’m going to the bathroom. You good?”
I look at him, while in my peripheral vision keeping an eye on the junky, never having lost sight of him since the moment he came into our lives.
I think one second. Look at the Mexican.
I said nothing. Just nodded. The Mexican turned around and walked towards a door which was his hostel. He was gone for a couple minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.
Just junky and me. Saying nothing. Not that I remember. I was still sitting, he was still twitching, drunk, saying sorry for it, and grabbing new bags of coke, then offering it, me saying no, and he sniffing a bit. And then more twitching.
At one point the Mexican came back, and the junky had offered us coke up to five or six times. It was a personal record, for me, to be honest. This crazy coke junky was kinda rich. Street rich. The stash he had on him was worth more than three hundred dollars. Plus he had some loose bills of fifties lying around, here and there, in all those secret pockets he fumbled into. From which I thought devious devices and weapons would appear, but money came instead, haha.
This is when the Mexican suggested we started walking. Again. Surely this time everything was closed and we just walked back, to the square. It was now between four and five and everything was closed.
The FUCKING junky FOLLOWED us. It was strange asfffff. He just tailed us and I swear if you were looking at us, or made a movie, or a tv show of us right then and there, it was the strangest wolfpack you’d ever seen.
Somehow this junky had become like a stray dog following us around. We did nothing with him, he nothing with us, and we continued the dry slow conversation with the low humming quiet energy and dark undertones that are accustomed at that time of day.
At one point we found the main street away from the square, and Mexican wanted some coffee or the Mcbreakfast but it was way too early, so we decided to go to the Starbucks.
And that’s where the story gets just a tad juicier.
Chapter 4
There must’ve been something in the air that night. Or it was Amsterdam, always like this. Or perhaps in some esoteric weird way I brought a curse with me along, from the night before, the stabbing. Tell you this, it was freaky, but somehow so surreal, and you had to be there.
We order some coffee, all three of us, I get an espresso, and at the counter when the cute barista asks who is gonna pay. The Mexican pauses. He looks at me.
I look at him. Then at the coke junky. Which happened to be rich, that night at least. The pockets, the depths, the fumbling, the loose fifties.
I look at the barista, then at the rich italian coke junky. That guy.
The guy whips out one of the most ugliest, filthiest bills out of one of his million pockets. Girl accepts it, pausing a beat, whilst looking at the bill, the guy, us. The situation.
We take our coffees and go sit at a table, if you were to look at us, the brady bunch, you’d see an odd trio, but it was fun, I even let someone take a photo of us. I was smiling. It doesnt happen often enough, or not anymore. But I was smiling, then, it was a lot of fun and it was a strange story to this day.
Then something outside made it stranger.
Noise. Guys arguing. And there was a girl. It all happened lightning fast. I recognized them, from when we were prowling on the streets, in one alley I had seen them in the dark, arguing before, just like they were doing now. It was about the girl, it always is. But they were too far away for me to see or hear what it was all about. It seemed to be typical nighttime jealous BS, but I had a hunch it was the girl making one of them jealous. Something like that.
Well this something got a whole lot worse. So outside these two guys were arguing. Things heated up. Outside the Starbucks. The Mexican, and the junky, kept looking too. So did I. We were inside. We sipped coffee.
It heated up more outside. There was this truck, parked in front. Obscuring my sight, so I couldnt see all the sloppy moves that happened.
But a fight broke out. Between the two boys. Somehow, suddenly, the girl was innocent and took cover. In the darkness and in the mayhem I lost sight of her.
The guys were doing their sloppy night moves. Haymakers, rubber punches, bolos, and whippy movements. Lots of shouting, it was loud, and by now the whole Starbucks was on full alert.
Guess we got more than our money’s worth. A spectacle. A night show.
Some people got up, and moved near the entrance, and the windows. To get a better peak at what was going on.
Damn, that shit escalated.
In the dark, this one dude, he crouched, got to the ground. Found something. Important. Secret. Dark. Devastating and primal but effective. It reflected a sliver of outside light with unknown origins, ample light, atmospherical. It was phallic, or oblong, something of a pipe.
A weapon.
This was the force multiplier. Instinctively he knew it and pushed forward once more. Braver, and faster, and cockier. He whipped it out and forward, whacking the other dude. Just a couple times.
Tjak-tjak-tjak.
Just a couple times. But enough. It was enough because in this one flurry. One. This one series of whippings, a flash and daze of a mini-Blitzkrieg he got the better out of the other guy and the guy went down, hit the pavement.
At first I thought he was just down, beaten, hard and fast and surprised. But then there was something ashen on the other guy’s face. Bleak. Grey. Like he seen a ghost. He ran away. Of course. Understandable. If you knew what he did.
So one guy and the girl were long gone and that’s when the mayhem happened. Lots of shouting, inside. The people by the window. Legit people started crying, some of the baristas too, the cute one too.
The wolfpack, us, was a little further away, so we didnt see what was happening straight away.
Then someone, I think it was one of the barista, she was responsible, which you’ll see later.
But she let the kid in, who was on the cold ground, seconds before. Someone dragged the kid in.
He was bleeding. Fast. It was pulsing out of em. Thick, and gory. Out of his neck. Someone had propped him up, against a concret wall.
We could see him, now.
The kid, with his last strengths, clutched his neck with his hands. Not that was much use, the blood like water through a broken dam found its way through. I swear he looked a goner.
Somehow he made eye contact with me, or rather the space that was occupying me, or in front, or the back, or somewhere of in the hazy ghastly vast existence of time and space. Nowhere really.
I could see his eyes. Dewy. Like a deer, on top of a desolate icy mountain road, who got startled by incoming headlights, then got hit, and just lay still and alone, dying.
It took me a long time to register, deep down, under the mask of coolness, but this was some heavy shit. I kept my cool though, as did the Mexican. The Favela history and stories. As did the junky. He tried to explain to us, with lots of culo, and Italian hand gestures, that this was normal practice where he was from. Somehow through the slurred speech and sobered up coke demeanor we understood him now (coffee must’ve kicked in by now).
Someone called 911. And outside, I dont know who it was, it surely wasnt the guy who stabbed the kid in the neck, but it might’ve been another friend or the girl who had come back, they were hitting the door.
LET ME IN.
The same barista who had let in the kid, bleeding to death now, on the ground, she locked up the door. She shook her head as she did it.
NO CANT DO. I am TAKING RESPONSIBILITY. Taking care of the safety of ALL these people, she said.
She was right to be honest. In an insane chaotic situation she had managed to do the right thing. Let out anybody who was NOT important, and try to bring the kid in from danger, and let someone call 911. That was all one could do really.
Time moved differently near death and danger. It was supremely surreal, who I was with, another stab story (I’d been nicked in the arm, yesterday), and all these people holding their breath in the Starbucks. With ample hope if the kid was gonna make it, or not.
I went to console the cute barista, she was from Romania. I kept my voice level and calm, and soothing, like many have said I have. She had a shy warm smile, and I think I got her contact, but somehow, and looking back, it wasnt really that important, it was just two people keeping eachother warm through conversation.
Time moved forward and normal again as the cops came. With the medics. They rapped on the door, and the girl let them in, and they came for the kid. Who still looked liveless. They took him away, but I dont think it was a carotid artery in the neck, or else he’d be dead in five seconds.
I never did know what happened to him, but at least he was with the ambulance and long gone.
The wolfpack got up and the Mexican suggested we hit the McDonalds once more. For some coffee, and breakfast, and juice.
We got up and left the Starbucks, the bloodstains on the floor, and outside, right in front of the door.
Chapter 5
The McDonald’s was open this time, and we went in and ordered McBreakfast and some orange juice and coffee. All three of us. The Mexican, me, and the junky. We were these funny looking people, these oddballs, and the Italian junky stood out, his coat shaggy, and prolly smelly, and by now he was twitching less, but he must’ve had a strange aura.
The Mexican ordered. The guy behind the counter said the usual:
“Anything else?”
“Beer,” the junky said.
The Mexican and I burst out in laughter, we roared, it was insane. It was the timing, the situation, everything we had gone true, and just came out this instant gut reflex. Beer haha.
The first time was funny, but the second time was still funny, and the time he did it afterwards, because he kept saying it as the guy finished up the order, thinking he was a clown now or something.
The guy behind the counter he was just barely awake, and it was morning, and he was doing his job, and shit wasnt funny for him, at all.
The junky paid again.
We went to our booth somewhere in back, and munched down. And drank. We got awake and ready for the next day, which was technically right now and already started.
By now the junky was even normal, and sobered up, and then it took a turn.
He started conversing. NORMALLY. Talking about his plane. And how he needed to get back. And that party time was over.
“Do you guys have a car?” he asked.
We shook our heads. Then he wanted to exchange business cards. And told us he was in wholesale bolts and manufacturing of construction equipment or something.
He suddenly wanted to do business for crying out loud!
Haha, it was so jarring and so sudden and strange asf. Moments ago he was twitching of the liquor and coke, and offering it to us, and whipping out bills, and saying culo and sorry I’m drunk the whole time, and now he wanted to get your Linkedin. What in the flying f.
I don’t know where he went, to be honest, but he left, and then there was just the Mexican and I.
We finished up and I took him back to the hostel, where we met the junky, where he was supposed to go to bed and go to his New Year’s party after. Along the way, in a small narrow alley, cobblestoned too, near the alley where we had seen the guys and the girl arguing actually.
But in this alley the morning had broken through and a cold dim white light came through, and a guy was already at work, high above us. He was painting the windows, or washing it, something like that.
He overheard us, or we him. The topic was danger, and the stabbing.
Then the guy, on his ladder, against the facade, said, “Hey, you guys heard?”
“You talking about the stabbing?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, we just came from there. It was brutal, man. We were sitting right there, inside the Starbucks, when it happened in front of the shop.”
“Huh, Starbucks?”
I looked at the Mexican. Chill eyes, blank face, small crooked smirk toying on the corner of his lips.
The guy continued, “Nah I’m talking about the stabbing right here around the corner.”
We just agreed and walked away.
The Mexican got home safely at the hostel and I walked back for a long walk to the central station home.
It was a sunny day already.
