I watched the vulture looking at me hungrily as I lay on the ground bleeding and injured.

Saturday night I was coming back from a friend’s party when my car decided to fail me. Well, I’m in Rio, and you don’t want to be alone on a dark street in the middle of the night in Rio. You just don’t.

But that was where I found myself, and that’s exactly how my worse nightmare started.

They came from the road side, attacked me, robbed everything they could, and shot me. I fainted, so they took me for dead and dumped me close to Rio Centro. That’s where I woke up at dawn, surrounded by the vultures.

I was weak and hurt, but I wasn’t dead and I could still walk. I walked to Rio Centro’s entrance to be helped by security guys.

The vultures will have to find another meal…

This post was written in response to Monday’s Finish the Story challenge of this week.

Just as background information, Rio Centro is a conference center in a not so populated area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I used to live close to that place and one of the streets surrounding it was too dark and didn’t have much movement. So criminals (and there are tons of them in Rio…) did use to dump bodies in there. I was always afraid of driving on that road at night, fearing to see more than I should and have people come after me. So I used to do a bigger but relatively safer route back home.

Now, I’m leaving in the US for almost 15 years and last time I visited Brazil was at about 4.5 years ago. But just the thought of going back to visit family and friends, makes me have nightmares that I’m being robbed, mugged, followed…. so the situation above would indeed have been one of my worse nightmares.

And about the happy ending, I just couldn’t be able to kill myself, even in fiction….

To see other stories inspired by the same picture, click the blue frog below: