Chapter 5: Runaway

Sarek: Spock, you are fully capable of deciding your own destiny. The question you face is: which path will you choose? This is something only you can decide.

-- Star Trek (2009 Movie)

Thursday, July 21 2011
Munich, Germany

Rebecca had shown Sabrina to the place under a bridge where she lived. There they had eaten the provisions Rebecca had stored in a small box. Afterwards Sabrina told her about her last year and the adventures that led her to Munich.

Rebecca had put her friend into the old sleeping bag that she ironically called her bed, and wondered a bit about how little protest she offered about taking over her hosts bedding. Rebecca had then built herself a new bed made mainly from old newspapers and clothes, as she had learned when she first came to Munich.

Both woke up at the same time due to an exceptionally loud car horn. The sky was just starting to brighten up.

"Good morning, sister" Rebecca greeted Sabrina.

"Good morning, yourself" Sabrina replied. "Wow, I actually slept pretty well in your sleeping bag. Sorry for taking it from you, we will have to find a new solution for tomorrow night. I can't come visiting my friend and kick her out of her bed."

"Don't worry; I'm more hardened than you are. You learn to live with what you have out here."

"I noticed you seem to be doing pretty well. How did you get here and how did you learn to survive out here?"

"That's a very long story; let's wait until after breakfast before I tell you. I haven't really woken up yet, anyway. First of all, let's clean up a bit before we go shopping for something to eat – we have eaten everything I had yesterday."

"Sorry, I kinda expected to come and make your life better, maybe get you into a hotel or something. I didn't plan to come and eat up your last reserves."

"That's okay; it wouldn't have been enough for today anyway."

While talking, Rebecca had led Sabrina to the edge of the river under the bridge. She stripped down to her underwear, stepped into the river and started to roughly clean herself using water and an old rag.

"No soap?" Sabrina inquired ironically.

"Nope, it's bad for the river. It's not exactly legal to live here, but the city does nothing as they don't have a better solution. They do however make sure you play by the rules, and one of those rules is to not contaminate the water. It makes you wonder if they don't have bigger problems, don't you think?"

"Uh, well, I didn't think about that to be honest. Aren't you worried somebody could see you?"

"What would they see? I'm wearing as much as others wear when swimming in this river, too. It's just a different fabric and not called a bikini but underwear. You learn to lose those inhibitions over time when living here."

"Err, okay" she replied, hoping that she wouldn't be told to lose her own inhibitions and undress, too.

"I'm done. Come on and get out of your clothes, you stink way more than I do. Time to clean you up, girl."

And so, with much looking around to see if someone was near, she slowly removed her dirty clothes and started to wash herself. While she was standing in the river, Rebecca got her first good glance in daylight at the wound on her friend's arm. It was swollen and didn't look very good to her.

"How is your arm?" Rebecca inquired.

"Still hurts. It seems to be a deeper wound than I expected. But don't worry, it'll be okay."

"Uh huh."

Autobahn A8, Germany

Daniel woke up under the dense crown of a tree. It took him only a few seconds to orient himself, but what was really unusual for him was the fact that by the time he had woken up the sun was already up in the sky. It was the first time he could remember having slept past 6:30. Oh well, obviously the previous day had been even more draining than he thought.

Taking his bag, he went back to the motorway station and entered the bathroom that was available for the truck drivers that had to overnight there. He brushed his teeth, and then took the hair dyeing paste out of his bag. After he worked it into his thick hair, he had to wait for ten minutes for it to work and used that time to go to the toilet. Finally he took a much needed shower, which combined getting clean with washing the paste out of his hair. The whole time nobody had come in, and he was equally happy and sad that he hadn't needed the carefully designed story about why he was in a trucker's bathroom dyeing his hair. That was the one good thing about sleeping so long.

Putting on clothes and some fake glasses from his bag, he had a last look in the mirror. Well, he didn't recognize himself very much, so other people probably wouldn't, either. Of course there were computer programs that still could, but he hoped they weren't yet used for the search.

Just as he started to move away from the mirror, a trucker entered the bathroom. He looked just like a typical trucker, with long hair and a long beard. That made it difficult for Daniel to estimate his age, but he thought he was about thirty years old. What made him stand out was the way he had to find something to hold on to for every step he took.

"Hey there little boy, whatcha doin here?" the trucker babbled. Daniel could actually see a thin trail of spit running down his chin.

"I've just finished, I'm on my way."

"Your daddy left you here all alone?" the trucker grinned.

Daniel decided it was best to just get out before the trucker tried to start a fight or do something similarly idiotic. He moved by the drunk so fast that he was out of the door before the trucker had even realized he had started to move.

Daniel wondered how long it would take the trucker to realize his keys were gone. No need for that idiot to go back out to the street while being stone drunk. That truck he was driving was a deadly weapon if used incorrectly.

Ten minutes later Daniel entered the restaurant. He found a nice small one person table where he could sit with his back to the wall. He waited for the waitress to come.

"Hi, I was wondering if you could help me with a little problem," he told her.

"Depends on the problem, I would say" she replied.

"I met a trucker in the bathroom. He seemed stone drunk to me. He dropped his keys and, well, I didn't give them back to him. Didn't want him to drive before he got sober again. Could I give the keys to you and you just 'find' them when the time is right? I'm sure he will come in here soon enough."

"Err; yes I think we can do that. This is the first time I've had that happen, but we do sometimes keep the keys of truckers who drink too much in the evening. This is the first time it's happened at ten in the morning, however."

"Thank you. I don't want him to know it was me, he looked ready to kick some ass."

"No problem. So, what can I bring?"

"What would you recommend?"

Munich, Germany

The two girls walked to a store about one kilometer from their sleeping place. There Rebecca put two six-packs of 1.5 liter bottles of water into the shopping cart.

"We can buy two of these today, normally it's too difficult to carry when I'm alone" she told Sabrina.

Then she put packed bread, cheese and salami in the cart, explaining that they could be kept clean at her home and wouldn't spoil too fast. At the checkout she paid 12.73€.

"Where do you get the money to pay for this?" Sabrina wondered.

"That's part of my story; you'll have to be patient for a little longer."

While they ate, Rebecca began to tell Sabrina her tale.

After escaping from the house, the first few kilometers she went on foot, trying to stay hidden all the time. Then she decided that it would be more important to gain distance than to hide. At the next large street she stood on the side and held her thumb out, the universal hitchhiker's sign. The first car to stop was driven by a young woman who had her baby in a safety seat on the front passenger's seat. When asked where she wanted to go she answered Munich, because that was what was on the license plate as the car's home and because it was as good a destination as any. The woman drove carefully with her baby on board, it took them about five hours to arrive in Munich.

It was also when meeting this woman that Maria decided on her new name, as she didn't feel it would be safe to give her real one. She gave her the first name that came to mind, and in that moment Rebecca was born.

In Munich she was at a loss as to what to do. She couldn't go to a motel, as she didn't have enough money with her and she feared she would be recognized anyway. Wandering around she got to the bridge she used as home to this day. She just wanted to hide under it and think for a while, and it took her a while to notice there was someone else there already, eying her suspiciously.

The man sitting there was, as she learned later, twenty years old and had lived there for the last seven years. He had made the bridge his home, and he had learned everything about survival that this life could teach him. First he wanted to shoo her away, used to the fact that he had to defend his place against others regularly. But looking into her eyes, he saw the haunted look and decided to help the little girl.

Over the next two months, she learned everything from him she needed to survive. Then, one day, he didn't come back. There was no sign as to what happened to him, and her means to find out were little. She wondered if he would come back one day and tell her what happened. At least when she wasn't wondering if he were still alive.

She had learned where in Munich she could go to get a free meal. There were a number of non-profit organizations that worked based on donations of food and money and provided meals to those who were in need. Rebecca didn't want to be dependent on others goodwill yet again, so the first time she saw an opportunity to make money she took it.

That opportunity was an old man who offered her five Euros for a blowjob. It was a lot of work because the man had difficulties getting it up any more, but when he found out she had no idea what to do he was delighted to teach her. He liked it so much her paid her ten Euros instead of five. For the next few weeks he was her only customer, he paid her to teach her everything he knew about sex. While she didn't like it very much, she made enough money to at least pay for some of her meals herself.

Over time she became known as the whore to go to if you didn't have much money. She never got much, especially because she insisted on the use of rubbers. But these days she almost always made enough to purchase her own meals. She hoped it would soon be enough to give something back to the organizations that had provided her meals when she needed them. She didn't take pride in her job, but sometimes it was actually fun when she liked the customer.