Tales from Wales: Cornstalks, Cars, and Criminals

It started out as a usual tuesday morning at London Paddington Station with a general feeling of business in the air as people hustled their way to work in suits and skirts, and briefcases in hand. While everyone bustled by, Abbey and Mabel causually strolled towards their platform, stopping along the way to look at the Paddinton bear merchandise scattered throughout the station. They were used to rush hour of that sort but since they were on vacation, they were in no rush. Abbey was a tall, hilariously funny painter who loved birds and Mabel was an incredibly fast marathon runner who loved to cook. The two had just graduated from university and to celebrate they decided to take a trip to Europe.

On this part of their trip, they were to journey to the south of Wales with Samael, an overly large disgruntled janitor who worked at a run down school in Hackney. The girls had befriended Samael at a small café in Convent Garden Market the week before during their visit to London. Samael had no friends and no family and was to marry Lilura, a lonely chiromancer from Monmouth. Abbey and Mabel, being the generous people that they were, agreed to come along to see Samael and Lilura wed the next day since Samael needed a witness and complained of melancholy over the fact that he had nobody to see him tie the knot.


When the three boarded the first train headed towards Swindon, it wasn't very busy. Mabel was tired from her early morning run and quickly fell asleep. Samael spent the rest of the train ride showing Abbey the treasures of his dirty old backpack, which amongst a lot of dirty clothes included a fake id, Wet Ones, and a half eaten stalk of celery. Samael seemed very excited to boast about his belongings, leaving Abbey thoroughly bored. Her thoughts drifted as he bragged about his fake id to how much she looked forward to a relaxing time out in the countryside, where the wedding was suppose to take place. Other than the wedding, the only solid plans they had their minds set on was to watch the World Cup soccer game. England was to played Algeria that day. The train chugged on and Samael gleamed at his back pack with pride as Abbey fell in to a midday dream...

Things turned uncomfortable by the time they got to the train station in Swindon. Although Abbey had won a free bag of chips with the coupon she received from the sandwich she bought while waiting for the next train and was in a generally happy state, Mabel could sense that something was wrong. As the girls were enjoying their snacks they heard Samael yelling on the phone. The two girls looked at each other with perplexed faces but remained silent. Samael hung up the phone quickly when the train arrived, walked over to the girls as if nothing was wrong, smiled, and hastily ushered them on to the train before Mabel could ask what was wrong

When they boarded, he pick up the phone again whilst a second cell phone went off in his other pocket. After the third ring, he picked up it up also. Abbey and Mabel watched as he began yelling the same incoherent garbage in two receivers. He seemed to be worked up about something, though they couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. In a fury of loud voices and swear words, he put both phones up to each of Abbey's ears, expecting her to do something about it, like the 6ft2, 28 year old childish janitor that he was. Abbey proceeded to talk to two different women, Lilura being one of them, and the other, Samael's mistress, Nukpana, who sounded pretty sassy, at the exact same time. It was really confusing and eventually Abbey was able to calm Lilura (who sobbed hysterically from her end of the phone) down for long enough to tell Nukpana that she had to get off the line. Abbey learned from Lilura, that contrary to what Samael had told the girls, the wedding had been called off because Samael had beaten her up causing a restraining order to be placed on him!

What an evil man Samael was when he seemed to be so unassuming and generous to the girls on their first encounter.
Abbey and Mabel were mortified by the scene he had caused. Disappointed by his behaviour, Abbey handed back the two phones and walked all the way to the end of the train with Mabel. Neither of them wanted to talk to him ever again. Unfortunately, the seats were all taken and they had to stand by the door with their bags for the rest of the train ride. It was long and tiring but the view outside of the passing landscape of fresh, green Welsh countryside was beautiful and Abbey tried to enjoy the time by sticking her head out the window to take in the air as it blew fast past the speeding train and made her cheeks feel cool and her hair wind-blown and messy while Mabel laughed at her.

The girls knew the wedding was called off, but they absolutely had to watch the game that day. It could possibly be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and they would settle for nothing less. So with time running out till kick-off they decided it would be best to wait it out and watch the game in Newport rather than train all the way back in to London right away. When they got off the train, they passed by Samael who tried to apologize to them as they waited for Lilura to pick them up. Mabel shot him a stern look as they walked away. Lilura was there waiting to pick up the girls, and the three ladies went off to a pub to watch the game.

At the pub, a cozy little place packed with friendly soccer fans crowded around a large TV at the back of the restaurant, Lilura, Abbey and Mabel enjoyed nachos and beer. The evening was turning out nicely as Abbey and Mabel quickly learned that Lilura was a very sweet natured chiromancer as well as an excellant conversationalist. As for the game, it was a draw and the travellers did not end up getting to see any worked up fans, soccer chants, or billigerent drunken celebrations, but it also meant that everyone was in an O.K mood.
That was, until Lilura's phone rang. The first call that she picked up she only noticed after the 26th ring. This was because everyone was too busy happily chatting with absolutely no care in the world for the measly Samael for her to notice her phone. When Lilura did finally pick up, Samael had a nasty conversation with her. Through the receiver Mabel could hear his voice sounding livid from across the table.

The next time he called, Abbey picked up. She thought she might be able to find a way to calm him down if he was stressed out about something and it sounded like he was. But when she picked up the phone, she could barley get the h-e-l-l out of the hello before he laid, well, Hell on her. Abbey had never heard someone sound more stark-raving mad in her entire life. She didn't know insanity had such a special frequency, as his voice reverberated with rage, and cringed with craze, piercing Abbey's ears with a powerful sense of evil. She listened as Samael told her he would kill her if he ever saw her again. Abbey had no idea why he was so angry at her but before she could get in even the first syllable of a word Samael hung up, leaving her holding the phone with her mouth open almost in tears over the hurtful things he had said.

She went inside and walked over to Mabel, shell-shocked over the conversation she had just had. Abbey looked at Mabel with the straightest face Mabel had seen for the entire trip and said, "I think I just got my first official death threat. This is probably the point where we should call the cops". Lilura and Mabel looked at Abbey with astonished faces but before they could say anything the phone rang again. This time it was Lilura's landlord, Luke.
"Lilura, you better get over here now, Samael is at the house and if the cops find out, we'll all be in deep trouble.", he said nervously. Lilura could sense Luke's fear and immediatly began to panic, hyperventalting right there in the pub. All the two girls could do to calm her down was to agree to go with her to the house although Abbey had no desire to go closer to a person who just told her they would kill her. But looking at the poor disheveled victimized state of Lilura, and being the sympathetic girls that they were, they hadn't much time to think of a better solution as they focused on calming her down. Little did they know that choosing to get in that car was like unknowingly signing up for a potential suicide mission.

It was dusk dark, and the temperature had cooled down as clouds rolled in over the horizon and the sun set low in the West. They traveled through the small, narrow lane ways of the countryside. Abbey felt like she was in a game of Mario Kart, as Lilura's tiny car kept swerving off the dirt roads every time they hit a corner at insanely fast speeds, spitting up dirt behind them. Meanwhile, in the back seat, Mabel's adrenaline kicked in and and her body prepared itself for fight-or-flight mode. Her heart beat increased, pupils dilated, and hair stood up in it's pores. You know, the stuff movies are made of. Abbey peered at her friend through the rearview mirror and cuing in, gulped, fastened her seat belt and grabbed a hold of the door handle. As the car turned in to a tiny road lined with high stalks of corn, ahead they could see a car wobbling fast toward them. Lilura knew that it was common courtesy to slow down her car to establish who would be the Good Samaritan and inch to the side to let the other car pass. However the car in front did not do the same. As the car approached quickly, Lilura realized it was Samael as she stepped on the brakes and came to a full stop. For a moment they remained in one spot with the car in idle. Samael kept speeding forward. As the three sat still watching a car come at them full throttle ahead, time slowed down for a brief moment between their brains rationalizing what was happening and what was about to happen next. Abbey's body moved in reaction but she felt as though she was almost paralyzed as she tried to calculate if she had enough time to do anything to save them. Finally her mind made up the helpless decision that she did not, as her life flashed before her. In the split of a second, the most important things to Abbey came to the surface. She felt for those she loved. She felt for the love she would loose; love she would never get to give. She thought about her parents, and her pets. Both Love and Fear filled her heart as he reached to the back of the car to grab her friend Mabel's hand.

And then in an instant Samael hit them head on with his car. When his car bounced back from Lilura's with force, Abbey had a moment to piece together that they were still alive. Everything happened very quickly. By the time she had thought about it, he reversed and hit them again. The second blow hurt far more than the first. The first time Mabel was just happy to be alive and could not think about the pain. But by the second hit she could feel her stomach drop within her as her body flung forward towards the seat in front of her.
The girls' car had plummeted in to the ditch at the side of the road, and Abbey's door was rammed up against 6 feet of cornstalk, making it impossible to get out. She yelled at Lilura to reverse the car, but the engine had stalled. Then to their extreme horror, they watched as Samael got out of his car and came charging towards them on foot. His face looked like it had transformed in to an evil demon, with wide, horrifying eyes, a gaping mouth and hair that stood up in all different directions. Even from metres away, his look made the girls freeze in terror for a brief moment before Abbey snapped out of it and slammed her hands down on the automatic locks.
Samael reached the side of their car and immediately started punching at Lilura's window in an angry fit as Lilura began to sobb hysterically. Abbey continued to yell at her to reverse and Lilura, confused and overwhemled, threw Mabel the cell phone to call the cops.

Mabel began dialing 911 as it is in in their country, when in fact it was 999 that she should have been dialing from Wales. However even if she were to be dialing the correct number, it didn't matter much because the phone kept loosing signal since they were in the middle of a cornfield and from the distance, they could see a convoy of heavy storm clounds rolling in from the East further tampering with the signal.

Abruptly, Samael quit punching the glass and walked away as if some switch inside his twisted head had gone off. Abbey assumed he had stormed away to find a hard object to smash in the window with. They never knew what he would have done next because in that time, Lilura was finally able to get a hold of the cops and explain exactly where they were.

The rest of the night was slightly less painful and unsafe. Mabel and Abbey had never seen police officers come so quickly to the scene, nor had they been as happy as they were then to them. The officers had gotten there in somewhere under 3 minutes, and for a small town and a large patch of field that was pretty quick. Abbey was so relieved and excited to see them that she felt like jumping over the cornstalks from her side of the car when she saw the blue flashing lights before she realized it was easier to climb over the driver's seat to dislodge herself from the horrific scene of the crime.

Back at the station when the two police officers came in to the room Abbey was pretty shocked at how much one of them resembled her friend from back home named Alistair. She was so amused by it that for a second she thought of taking a picture of him to show her friends. While baffling about it quietly to herself and considering if it would be odd for her to ask to take his picture for that solid reason, she hardly noticed the other police officer looking right at her. He was a tall handsome young man with a gentle look, strong well defined hands and brown hair. He quickly jumped in to action mode, indicating that he would interview Abbey and the other officer would speak with Mabel.

Abbey and the officer whose name was Kai, choose a separate room to speak about what had happened. Abbey was too anxious and scared to even so much as look at him at first. But then in the most charming Welsh accent she had ever heard, Kai told Abbey that everything would be okay and that she had nothing to be nervous or unhappy about. It was then that Abbey really noticed him. She admired his consoling nature and the calm way his voice sounded. When he smiled at her, it was the first time for the entire night that she had felt any feeling of remote familiarity, and it made her feel warm inside, despite the cold chill of the night, her lack of sleep, and the eerie lingering intensity of the horrendous events. Kai told Abbey that one day she would look back on this and it would all seem like just a very good story. Despite her state, Abbey enjoyed the rest of the conversation that she had with Kai, which lasted for the entire night, well in to the morning when the sun came up and he drove the two girls to the train station to catch the earliest ride back in to London.

Abbey had no idea a police report could take as long as it did or contain as many side conversations as they had managed to squeeze in between her dramatic account of what had happened. It had been such a terrifying experience, but as Abbey rested her head against the seat of the train, the most vivid memory she had when she closed her eyes was of Kai's handsome smile, soft dimples and the sweet look on his face the times their eyes had met. She found it bizarre that she could have both melted from that and blown up from a car crash all in the same night. And thanks to him and the Alistair-look-a-like, the girls were able to make it out alive. While Abbey sat waiting in the kitchen for Kai to finish up the report so that they could leave the station that night, she watched as Lilura somberly removed her engagement ring. Abbey went over to Lilura and took her hand in hers looking directly in to her eyes as she told her that she sincerely hoped that Lilura would make the right decision about Samael from now on. They parted ways and Abbey and Mabel made their way back to the train station. That morning the sun rose over the valleys casting the most pure rays of light over the grass creating a peacefully pastoral scene as the train speed south towards London.

When Abbey and Mabel got back to the city, they were extremely mentally, emotionally, and physically drained. They spent the majority of the day in bed on one of the sunniest days and were too tired to make it to their friend's party across town the following night. They struggled to see the light at the end of the tunnel as they looked back on the events of the last 48 hours. In the end, Abbey decided to think that they at least ended up saving Lilura from a potentially lethal union with such a low-life like Samael. It made the experience, to some degree, worth it. Little did they know, at the time, before the story hit the news, that it wasn't the end for Lilura. Luckily, by this point, they were already safe back home knowing it was the end of that tale for them. Of course, as for the green-eyed bobby, that story may be to be continued... ;)

Disclaimer

RE: You should date an immature man

Nobody was specifically targeted in the making of this blog. It was a spontaneous, extremist, hyperbolic, dualistic, panegyric literary blurb meant to be taken, well, not so literally.

You Should Date An Immature Man

Re: Charles Warnke "You should date an Illiterate girl" please read, click here.
You should date an immature man. You can find them in every size, shape, colour, and age anyway. Don't even be surprised if your guy is in his 30's and you are his lesser in age by a half a decade or more. Age is of no real factor for the male plagued with an unprecedented, permanent case of immaturity characterized by a lack of brain development in some (but not all ;) areas, particularly in the regions of planning, attention span and long term memory...)  You can find them in all sorts of places. At blockbuster, on a bike, at the corner store buying a bag of chips, or by the lake, mindlessly skipping rocks in to the water. But chances are you'll meet him at a bar after having a few drinks so you might be willing to cut him just enough slack for his ineptness (only because it makes for a better excuse later down the road when you find yourself sitting completely shell-shocked at the realization that you’ve been grueling over a child trapped in the heavy guise of a man, or left bewildered over the fact that you always knew this but chose to live in denial)

To date him, you won't have to worry about finding him; he'll find you. So the next time you're out and about being social, stick to the quo. You know, sit around look pretty, playfully sip your martini with your girlfriends, maybe you can all order shots and cause a little commotion, and then keep watch. Keep watch for a little flicker, the sharp glare of his eyes in the light. Notice how his stare moves in a perfunctory fashion towards the space between your eyes, in an attempt to grab your attention, since the immature guy will never really look you in the eye. A simple gesture such as eye contact is beyond the scope of his interaction. Or perhaps, somehow, deep beneath all of his boyishness is a soul that knows it’s terminally condemned to a lackluster existence just aching to break free but in full acknowledgment that it will never ever happened. One would hope for the latter, since it might imply even the slightest level of post-conventional moral reasoning. When he comes over to talk to you, immediately allow your brain to fog over and become absent from any thought, motivation or inspiration. Get used to this state, practice it. This will make you appear mildly interested instead of coming across as a total bitch, when he blurts out his generic pick up line probably related to what type of drink you have or how pretty your earrings look in the light. In those painstaking moments when he first opens his mouth to woo you, there is only one thing you have to remember to survive the conversation without feeling the compelling urge to walk away. This is where the mind-body technique comes in...you must engage both the mind and the body at the same time, start first by physically (body) resisting your instinct to walk away while physically (mind) walking away from you're mind. Yes, send your mind on a little vacation, loose it. Picture leaving it on a jet plane playing in your headphones, "don't know when I'll be back again...", in a nutshell:

Forget all about yourself.

Forget all about your own wants and desires, standards, ideals and pretty pink childhood fantasies about meeting Prince Charming and marrying him in a beautiful field of grass on the most blissfully perfect, sunny day. Give up the dreams of living happily ever after with your one and only soul mate, having a family and passing down mutual wisdom and deep insights to your children as they grow up and you both watch them, hand in hand, as they blossom in their own successful lives, following in both your shoes.

Forget about these things, goddamit, because all of your efforts at this point in the night will need to be siphoned in to stroking his ego. Stroke his ego with the same vigorous efforts that you'd put in to rubbing out a fresh red wine stain on your favorite white satin blouse. When he opens his mouth to speak, bend in a little closer and flash your cleavage as he begins to tell you about every single f[bleep]king high school sport he used to be play. Make eye contact and bat your lashes while he explains, in his best possible diction, why he ended up studying some random subject in University because he has no real intellectual interests and doesn't actually know what he wants to do with his life. Touch his arm lightly when he mentions his mother and how terribly close he is to her. Giggle and make a comment about how cute that is. Take note about how you feel when he says this one particular statement. Keep stroking. Allow him your number and the very next day when he calls to ask you out for dinner, agree, and repeat the aforementioned. This time, keep stroking well in to the night, until he's all stroked out, and falls asleep in your arms. Cook him delicious meals and eventually this guy will realized you've satisfied his every need; to be praised for his mediocre sense of humor and wit, pleasured, coddled and fed. At this point he'll think of you as the golden girl of his dreams.

I use the seemingly contradictory terms “immature” and “man” together because the “immature man” is in a constant, dichotomous internal struggle to balance his highly elevated testosterone levels with his incompetent inability to put it to any good use. He assumes getting a girlfriend/wife to sport around on his arm and make his parents proud is all that he needs to exert his manliness. You’ll eventually find this man vying for all of your quality time and consuming it with his own dilapidation. Prepare yourself for countless upon countless of hours of mindless TV watching and sports commentary. Don’t expect to engage in any meaningful conversations during commercials about how much of a rip off it all is or how much of a waste of time it is that you’ve spent watching TV. In fact, don’t be surprised if you never engage in any meaningful conversations at all and eventually find yourself forgetting what it even feels like to mindfully connect with another person, as you’re consciousness slowly freezes over and your heart grows numb.

Never mind any of those depressing things because you’ll have absolutely no time to wallow in self-pity. While he is busy playing his video games, or going to the gym, or doing chin ups in the doorway, you’ll find yourself running around like Martha Stewart trying to make your lives normal and livable, tend to the house, work a 9-5 job, consuming your thoughts and energy with what you two will eat for dinner that night, and then trudging, your sore, tired feet to the grocery store after work every other day after printing out recipes at the office. In your lamentable state, your memory will sudden flash back to the painstaking moment when he first told you how close he was to his mother. It will suddenly all make sense to you that the feeling you had when he disclosed that information wasn’t your heart fluttering by the thought of how cute that is and how much you’d fallen for him. It was actually a tiny, little red flag flapping violently within you, like a pirate’s flag amass a large ship coursing through a treacherous hurricane in the high seas. This is when you realize that the immature man only became a man long enough to secure you in his life as a symbol of maturity to replace his mother thereby making him appear less “immature” in his superficial, highly egotistical macho mentality. So don’t pine over the fact that you’ll find yourself having to pull all of the weight in the relationship, manning both the duties of grocery shopping, cooking to feed his large wolf-like appetite (as he insists his work-out regiment absolutely most imperatively NEEDS to contains X amount of protein), cleaning the bathroom because he pays no attention to detail, and setting up every household account since he has absolutely zero concept of responsibility or taxes for that matter. Be prepared to be the only one planning all of your social events, anniversaries, and host dinner parties in which YOU are the one left sweating your ass off in the kitchen while he kicks back on the couch with a beer and gleams at you from the corner of his eye when his best friend is watching as if to show you off the whole world. Assign him a few foolproof tasks like taking out the garbage and calling the television company when the cable signal goes out so he feels like a man (I never said to stop stroking) to avoid unnecessary domestic disputes. Spend ridiculous amounts of hours in the same room never picking each others brains, never challenging his point of view, or contemplating the meaning of life. Don’t be surprised if you’ve become more familiar with which teams made the playoffs and which players have been benched because of injuries more so than what’s currently going on in the Middle East.
You will be so wrapped up in this existence that you wont even realize that you’ve lost your soul. It will take you months of being engulfed in obsessive, materialistic activities such as online shopping before you realize that the last thing that made you feel any sort of thrill, devastatingly, was the pair of shoes you found for a good deal on eBay. By this point, you’ll be so far gone you wont even remember what it’s like to feel any sort of genuine, feeling, be it true passion or pain. You wont even realize that the immature guy sucked the light out of you, the inspiration and the creativity, until you, like a transformer, become a stoic, empty, shell of a person.
Whatever you do, don’t keep tabs, because if you do you’ll realize you have far more points than he does and therefore are being severely taken advantage of. It seems horrible, but it’s easy to do. And don’t worry because life will be ok. You will survive to the end and fulfill basics desires you know, such as fitting in to society, having kids, and dying old with a companion. Everything will be OK as long as you just stop thinking, feeling, and most importantly, stroke away, stroke away…
Stick to dating immature guys and never EVER date a man who has grown up. A numb, meaningless, soulless waste of a lifetime where you reluctantly are forced to call all the shots, make all the decisions, and maintain a reputably status in society for the both of you with an immature guy is better than dating the mature man. Here’s why. The man who has grown up, in all his rarity, will bulldoze his way in to every area and aspect of your life, both mentally and physically. He will do this because he’s actually aware of the fact that you there are other planes to your existence beyond the mounds on your chest and the vast space between your eyes. You will no longer be able to live with your current, untouched belief systems because from the moment he comes in to your periphery, he will infiltrate your mental space, stroking your ego and picking your brain, until he’s got a pretty solid idea of all of your own person doctrines, theories, and mantras and has already imposed his own perspective on it. Not only will he have a pretty good ability to figure you out, he’s got himself figured out. He knows what he wants and he’s not afraid to say it. This unique attribute in itself will shock you and leave you speechless. He has no time for television and he knows about what’s going on in sports but he isn’t obsessed with it and furthermore, his gotten over his childhood fantasy of becoming a pro baseball player because he’s actually in tune with his own strengths and abilities and has already accepted the fact that he’s better at crunching numbers than chasing balls. The mature guy has an acute awareness of you’re needs, and of the mutual give and take of a relationship. He’ll surprise you with his acute awareness of balancing responsibilities, effort, and energy spent on love-making.
The man who has grown up will permanently taint your memory of all the other boys you’ve ever dated, younger or older in age, blasting them far off in to outer space never to return to your mind or heart. He will raise the bar well above average, officially casting away a large sum of the rest of the men on this planet by heightening your awareness of their immaturity, their bull[bleep]t lines, and stark stares. He may leave you speechless as to what you actually want and desire. Above all else, he’ll consume you with desire. He will open your eyes and change your vision. He will challenge your current beliefs. He’ll listen to you, actually listen to you, and then he’ll have something to say about it. He will open your eyes up to ideas, feelings, and thoughts, you solely believed could never be shared. The way he will make you feel will have you questioning your own sanity. This will drive you insane. He will sear his way in to your mind, memory and heart. I could go on, but hey, I'll just date an immature guy instead.
And so, you will no longer be able to accept the life I described above.
Don’t date the man who has grown up for one simple reason: He will change life and dating as you know it and you’ll never give in to stroking the immature guy’s –anything- ever again. So as Charles Warnke, would say “So out with you girl [guy] who reads [is mature]…I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.”

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