The Murder Tunnel

I was walking down near the bottom of the road in my neighborhood of Kyungnidan on Sunday when I noticed a man staring at me as he was walking past in the opposite direction.  I had just finished eating lunch at Noxa while watching Miles Jai videos on YouTube with my phone.  I was off with no agenda in particular, other than to wander about the city to a rap music soundtrack.  It's one of my favorite pastimes.

Since the man had been staring a bit creepily, I made that stupid decision  to turn around and make sure he wasn't still staring...and he was.

"Machine Gun Funk" blaring in my earphones, I turned back around and kept walking, with purpose, down the stairs into the sketchy underpass I take every day to cross the main road and get to the bus stop or the subway station.  There is no crosswalk there--instead you must go underneath the street through a cold, concrete, semi-frightening tunnel.  My friends and I jokingly call it the "R*** Tunnel," actually, if you want to know the truth.

I do get sketched out pretty much every time I go down there, but it never actually feels dangerous or anything, really.  It's well-lit and there's usually plenty of normal people just passing through.  Sometimes there's a harmless homeless man or a random peddler down there, but that's about it.

But on this particular day, I walked down the stairs and there was a red puddle on the ground.  I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at it, wondering if it was blood or just someone's spillt Kool Aid.

"But...they don't have Kool Aid in Korea..." I was thinking to myself.  It was definitely blood.

That's when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I whipped around and found myself face-to-face with the man who had been staring at me up on the street.  He looked African, and had a strange jet-black splotchy discoloration on his lips.  He was trying to talk to me.

I removed an earphone so I could hear what he was saying.  "I sed 'ello to you up dere," he said.  He wasn't really smiling, which didn't seem normal.

I smiled artificially as my brain did some quick calculations.  Yep--this was definitely the killer.  And I didn't want to be next.

"Oh, sorry!" I replied.  "My earphones were in and I didn't hear you!"  I eyed the puddle of human blood next to me.

He proceeded to try and woo me by telling me my "beauty was much," and that he just wanted to be my friend.  Haha...yeah right.  I knew there was probably something he wanted to stab me with.

"What's your name?" I said, sounding interested.  "Where are you from?"

"Wallace," he answered.  "I am from Afreeca."

"Well, yes, but, what country?"

"Nigeeria," he told me.  He wasn't very lively with his response.  He seemed cold and calculating.  His voice was distinctly lackluster.

I knew he was about to ask for my phone number so I quickly asked him for his instead.  He gave it to me and asked me where I was going.

Didn't he realize we were STANDING NEXT TO A PUDDLE OF HUMAN BLOOD?  What was WRONG with this guy?  I had to get rid of him, quick.

"I'm going to meet a friend," I said nicely.

"Are you een a hooree?" he said.  His eyes were glazed over.  He was looking towards the exit behind me.

"Murder, Ink" by Dr. Dre was now blaring in my left ear.

"Yes, sorry!  But, I'll send you a text, ok?  Nice to meet you!"  He turned around and headed back out the way he came.  I turned around, laughing, because of how insane that had just been.  Then I reached the exit I was headed for, the one he had been eyeing.

Blood was EVERYWHERE.  It was dripped all over the stairs and sprayed all the way up to the ceiling!  WTF???  Who got MURDERED here last night???

I texted Kim as I emerged from the underpass.  "I just got hit on by some Nigerian next to a puddle of human blood in the R*** Tunnel!"  I decided right then and there to change the name of it to the "Murder Tunnel."  I told Gene about it, too.

"Nigerian, huh?  Dodgy buggers," she replied.

Then I took the subway to the exotic pet market and bought myself a betta fish.  He's kind of white with a red gash-looking area on his neck and fin.  Carrying him back through the Murder Tunnel on my way home, I figured I should name him, "Stabby."

Stabby

The next morning the blood was still there.  My friends and I discussed how it could have gotten there.

"I understand how it got on the floor...but how did it get on the ceiling?" Amy wondered.

"Someone got stabbed in the head and it squirted up!" I said with authority, while motioning with my hands.

"But then...how is it clean all the way through the tunnel, and then there's another puddle of blood on the other side?  I feel like CSI or something," Amy laughed.

It really is a mystery.  We decided that it was probably just some drunk American G.I.'s acting stupid or something.  After all, the tunnel is right next to the base.  We've all been out at 3AM on a Sunday morning before...we know how these guys can act.

By Tuesday, it had finally been cleaned up.  That afternoon, I took a cab from work to Itaewon to pick up a burrito for dinner and go to the bank to pay my bills.  On my way out of the bank, another African man hurried after me.  This one had crooked eyes.

"What eez your name?" he asked.

Oh, boy.  Here we go again!  "I'm Annie.  Where are you from?" I asked.  Like I even needed to.

"Nigeeria!" he said.  At least this one was smiling.  Not sure where he was looking at exactly, though.

He followed me all the way across the street, using the exact same lines as the last guy...that my "beauty was much" and he "just wanted to be my friend--that's all."  Do they take a class for this or something?  Where do you take the class on learning how to shake these guys a little quicker?  I guess I need to stop responding to them at all before one follows me all the way home.

At least this street had a crosswalk, though.