A Late Night Train “2:03 am.” I always liked the train at…
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A Late Night Train
“2:03 am.”
I always liked the train at this time. My friends say it creeps them out to be here this late, some of them offered to drive me home, but I like it here. My phone shined on my face with different notifications, on top of them all was a text from Mark: “Stay safe man, don't forget to text back when you reach.”
I thought of what I’d reply with, or when I should reply, maybe a sticker? He has my location anyway, maybe I don't need to send anything. Before all this I met up with him and Scott on Thursdays, it was like an unspoken agreement. Cheap drinks, good food, and cycling through the same complaints at work until one of us got kicked out for causing too much of a commotion, we had very heated complaints. Though after I missed one I stopped going – no one asked why, they all just assumed with small reassurances like “I’m here for you” or “you can always talk to us.” Made it easier to miss the next.
With my vision hazy I gazed around, The smell of cakes and piss lined the station, the bakery must’ve ran past closing today. The air was filled with a thick musk from cheap cleaners that accompanied the walls cracked by time. I felt calm, every place I went to expected something of me, but here no one could say anything but myself, here I could be here and drown with my own thoughts and feelings, here it was peaceful.
A noise echoed through the tunnel, a couple minutes later the deep rumbling of a car shook the station. My body moved with the vibrations on the ground, I let it take me.
Stumbling onto the car I crashed down in a seat, a sinking feeling filled my stomach and echoed through the empty train. Glancing around, the car was muddled by a monochrome grey, an ad for sparkling water shined on a screen, the bleak lighting of it all reminded me of a surgical suite, it was all too familiar. In front of me was a window, the only thing to greet me back was my reflection.
I was alone.
As the doors closed I caught myself glancing past them, almost anticipating someone to come running in the car at the very last second, apologizing for being so late. I don't know when I picked up on that habit, on all the waiting. Lately that’s been my only real skill – waiting for anything to happen, my shift to end, for it to get quiet enough that I’d hear something underneath it. I don’t know when it happened, I still enjoyed talking to Mark and Scott, and I appreciated it whenever they reached out, but I might’ve appreciated it more in theory than practice.
I slumped further down in my seat, some tissues fell on the ground. I stared at them for a while, I can pick those up later. I fiddled around with some stuff in my pockets trying to entertain myself: a lighter I forgot to throw away, some more tissues. I started to carry them around without realizing it. They showed up in every jacket, bag, pants, like loose change. I told myself it was allergies.
The train moved, I moved with it. The lights slid past. The glass was pressed up against my face. I thought about nothing. I thought about the next stop. I thought about the stop after. I thought about the walk home, nothing again. My body stayed still. Nothing changed, nothing will change, it’ll stay that way.
“Where are you headed to, sonny?”
The voice didn't come from anywhere. It didn't echo or carry. I didn't move right away, the train didn't stop, the doors never opened. I hadn't heard any footsteps or shifts of a seat. The space beside me was still empty, it had to have been.
I turned, Someone was sitting next to me. When the hell did he get here? He was covered completely with barely anything visible: he had a long coat, gloves, and a hat on. The light seemingly slid right past him, almost like his face was unfinished.
“So where you headed to?”
I swallowed, my throat had to be reminded how it worked. I turned away from him. I could feel the seat beneath me, the vibration of the tracks. My mouth opened to speak, my jaw stayed locked in place though, muscles refusing to cooperate. I just stayed silent, staring ahead.
He waited. He didn't blink, didn't shift. He kept his gaze piercing me while the rails shook below. He spoke to me again in an almost bored tone.
“You’re headed to your apartment on Seventh Avenue, you’re going to walk in the front door and say a corny greeting as if someone else lives there, and you’re going to pass out on your couch.”
Something tightened in my chest, not fear but pressure. Like a hand closing on me,
“How did yo-”
“Arent you, Isaiah?”
I stood up way too fast, my body didn't check with me to see if my mind was okay with it first.
“Okay who the hell are you!” My voice came out louder than expected “Are you stalking me? Tell me now or I'll call the police!” The words tumbled over each other. I braced myself for something, a bead of sweat came down my neck.
“Sit down.” His tone was calm, though I could feel the bitterness behind it. “You’re not going to hit me,” he looked past me at the empty seat across “you wouldn't swing first. And you’re not going to call the police, then you'd have to admit where you’re coming from.” He paused and stared at me. “You’re shaking.”
I looked down to see my hand pointed at him, the tremor went all the way up to my shoulders. This is normal, I told myself. I’m not acting weird in this, this stranger is cornering me!
I looked back up at him, something about him wouldn't hold still. Besides his cold eyes the rest of him seemed to soften and shift, like oil trying to slide across water. The edges around him blurred, I couldn't make out his outline. *All* of him looked like the outline.
I squint, maybe it’s just dark, it’s late, I’d been drinking earlier. No, I’m sober. I’ve been sober for a while.
“I’m not trying to threaten you,” he said in a very threatening manner “tell me, if you were to call the police, what would you say to them?”
I opened my mouth, nothing could come out. A shadow guy who appeared right in front of me and knows who I am?
“I don’t know” I finally rasped out.
“Exactly, and that is why you’re going to sit back down.”
I sat. What am I doing? He smiled at me. His smile was cold, no sympathy, no malice behind it. It was a fake attempt at reassurement, I could tell.
“New topic, where are you coming from?” he remained still, his gaze shot through me while he was quietly anticipating an answer. “Dont’t keep me waiting forever.”
My eyes wandered away from him, my head followed. “Would’nt you know that already, the bar.”
He stood up. I didn't see him get up to move, his body just shifted from one place to another. “No that's not it,” his tone got more impatient with me. That's when I noticed it, parts of him melting and reshaping itself back together “you and I both know that’s not what this is about.” he began to change.
Almost like a primitive instinct I fell back on the ground trying to get away – His gloves and coat seemingly melted into itself, I could almost feel the crunch of bones breaking and reshaping itself while he grew right in front of me. The car groaned under his weight. The floor beneath him bowed inward in retaliation, but did not break. It should have. The metal wrapped and fitted his new shape, as if the train itself had allowed this to happen.
I scrambled backward, palms slipping against the wet floor. I got hit with the smell of formaldehyde and rust, rot and something sweet underneath, like flowers left too long in water. Lights above flickered, dimmed, steadied, casting his shape in pieces.
He was something else entirely, too many angles stacked where there should be one. His arms bent backwards, one of them much bigger and filled than the other. Joints rotated where no joints had existed before. He was crawling on all fours, no fives, no – limbs were twisting and knitting back together, as if it was undecided how much there should be. It did not look like a painless transformation for him.
I could hear each vertebrae *pop* and place back in their sockets as his face hovered toward and above me, supporting an angle that betrayed his anatomy. Everything but his eyes shifted, those remained the same, always familiar.
“Stay away from me,” my voice sounded small, carried only a couple feet in front of me “get the hell away from me!”
He didn't react. No flinch, not even a tilt of what I thought was his head, nothing. The train kept moving, something was wrong. I didn’t know what was going to happen, or what he would do to me – as the willpower left my soul I decided to just accept anything that would happen to me.
He lowered himself, his neck grossly elongated as he met my gaze, for the first time his eyes seemed like something else. They were tired.
“You ran from her, her *service*.”
Physically the words came out barely coherent, yet I could make it out clearly. His voice came from everywhere – the walls, inside my head, the moving rails – in accents not from this world in languages not invented yet. The train kept moving, his words didn't echo. They just sat there between us, obsolete.
Words couldn’t escape my mouth, they refused to be spoken. I could see his malformed neck tilting, anticipating something, anything from me. The only thing I could muster out of my mouth were a few suggestions of a word – I was confused, scared, and just waiting for my stop to come so I can get the hell out of here.
“You don't have to worry about that,” he slurred out while looking over towards the windows “It might take a while before your stop.”
The train finally came out of the tunnel. Outside there wasn't a station to greet me, or a city, not even the dark night. Outside, there was infinity – no horizon to look past, not even a sky. Nothing but an impossible track running along an untextured, endless space of white nothingness, with no destination in sight. Numbness spread through my body – starting at my fingers, moving its way up to my legs, and then reached the space behind my eyes. I should get out of here, but my body wouldn't move. I looked over at the creature, his focus was leaning back on me, still anticipating an answer. I finally started to speak.
“She wouldn't have wanted that,” my voice was almost lost to the rumbling below. “She wouldn’t want a last memory of her to be a decayed corpse.” the words echoed throughout us, I felt sick. He kept silent, still waiting. “She told me once, years ago, if she died – she didn’t want people standing around her lifeless husk, pretending to know what it was thinking.” I spoke with more confidence, the sound echoing louder than before.
“So yeah, I didn’t stay,” I finished. “It was a way of respecting her.” My voice started to flatten. He just looked at me, no response coming from him.
His eyes stayed focused on me – not as tired, but replaced with something else, anger*?* The silence became uncomfortably apparent, thick and suffocating. The car felt smaller, like the train was listening in on us now. I swallowed, the silence grew too loud. “I left, got in the car, waited till it was over, and drove off. she would’ve wanted…” my voice trailed off, I turned away from him.
“You waited.” he emphasized, his words sliding across the floor, through the walls, under the seats “Your lines are well rehearsed.”
He began twitching, his movements became sporadic, tendons jumped beneath his skin, ligaments moved independently without permission from physics, his form jittered frame by frame, tightening. Loosening. Tightening again, like a choppy stop motion.
A sharp pain came rushing from my abdomen, looking down I saw one of his hands piercing through me, I was bleeding out. The lights dulled, the car pressed in from all sides, my chest burned, hands up to my face. I screamed, not from pain, but from something else, everything came to me all at once: I heard a voice calling from a long hallway – machines making promises never kept – the smell of ammonia and flowers – a room kept preserved in a better time – and the weight of dirt hitting a casket. My hands came off my face wet. With a hazy sight I looked back up at him, his body looked more normal than before, it was almost human.
“You avoid the bedroom,” his words stumbled on itself. “you sleep on the couch. The bed still holds onto a smell you can't have.”
My breath grew heavy.
“You haven't opened the last drawer in your kitchen,” He went on, “you refuse to say her name, even when you’re alone.”
The floor beneath me felt so far away. I could only muster a whisper, “Stop.”
“You let her mail pile up, but there’s no use for it anymore. *She's gone.*” The rails slowed down, the rumbling grew soft, then fizzled away completely. He turned to face the windows “This is your stop.”
I heard the doors begin to open, we weren't in a void anymore. The hallway in front of me bled into a church parking lot, fluorescent lights lit up the building. There were folding chairs, dark coats. In the corner of my eye was a casket. It was a funeral. Her funeral.
“No, I can't,” my eyes burned. “I can’t get off here.” he faced me again.
For the first time his shape settled, human. “You need to accept it,” his voice was soft. The doors opened wider, his hand gestured to the exit.
I swallowed, I tried to get up, my body didn’t listen. It remained still. In desperation I asked “What happens if I don't get off here?”
His eyes locked in on me, tired, then turned away, “Then you keep riding, crash on your couch. Tomorrow you get back on here, and we have this conversation again, and again. Until this train goes somewhere you can't get off of.” His words sounded defeated.
I looked outside. I looked back. I turned to the empty seat. I smelled rot. I smelled flowers. I thought of the apartment. I thought of her. I turned to the casket, I tried to get up. My body however, remained still, fighting what little willpower I had left.
I stayed seated, still, as the rumbling of moving rails could be heard below. As the doors closed my body moved along with the train, it was good at doing that.
#entertainment
source
“2:03 am.”
I always liked the train at this time. My friends say it creeps them out to be here this late, some of them offered to drive me home, but I like it here. My phone shined on my face with different notifications, on top of them all was a text from Mark: “Stay safe man, don't forget to text back when you reach.”
I thought of what I’d reply with, or when I should reply, maybe a sticker? He has my location anyway, maybe I don't need to send anything. Before all this I met up with him and Scott on Thursdays, it was like an unspoken agreement. Cheap drinks, good food, and cycling through the same complaints at work until one of us got kicked out for causing too much of a commotion, we had very heated complaints. Though after I missed one I stopped going – no one asked why, they all just assumed with small reassurances like “I’m here for you” or “you can always talk to us.” Made it easier to miss the next.
With my vision hazy I gazed around, The smell of cakes and piss lined the station, the bakery must’ve ran past closing today. The air was filled with a thick musk from cheap cleaners that accompanied the walls cracked by time. I felt calm, every place I went to expected something of me, but here no one could say anything but myself, here I could be here and drown with my own thoughts and feelings, here it was peaceful.
A noise echoed through the tunnel, a couple minutes later the deep rumbling of a car shook the station. My body moved with the vibrations on the ground, I let it take me.
Stumbling onto the car I crashed down in a seat, a sinking feeling filled my stomach and echoed through the empty train. Glancing around, the car was muddled by a monochrome grey, an ad for sparkling water shined on a screen, the bleak lighting of it all reminded me of a surgical suite, it was all too familiar. In front of me was a window, the only thing to greet me back was my reflection.
I was alone.
As the doors closed I caught myself glancing past them, almost anticipating someone to come running in the car at the very last second, apologizing for being so late. I don't know when I picked up on that habit, on all the waiting. Lately that’s been my only real skill – waiting for anything to happen, my shift to end, for it to get quiet enough that I’d hear something underneath it. I don’t know when it happened, I still enjoyed talking to Mark and Scott, and I appreciated it whenever they reached out, but I might’ve appreciated it more in theory than practice.
I slumped further down in my seat, some tissues fell on the ground. I stared at them for a while, I can pick those up later. I fiddled around with some stuff in my pockets trying to entertain myself: a lighter I forgot to throw away, some more tissues. I started to carry them around without realizing it. They showed up in every jacket, bag, pants, like loose change. I told myself it was allergies.
The train moved, I moved with it. The lights slid past. The glass was pressed up against my face. I thought about nothing. I thought about the next stop. I thought about the stop after. I thought about the walk home, nothing again. My body stayed still. Nothing changed, nothing will change, it’ll stay that way.
“Where are you headed to, sonny?”
The voice didn't come from anywhere. It didn't echo or carry. I didn't move right away, the train didn't stop, the doors never opened. I hadn't heard any footsteps or shifts of a seat. The space beside me was still empty, it had to have been.
I turned, Someone was sitting next to me. When the hell did he get here? He was covered completely with barely anything visible: he had a long coat, gloves, and a hat on. The light seemingly slid right past him, almost like his face was unfinished.
“So where you headed to?”
I swallowed, my throat had to be reminded how it worked. I turned away from him. I could feel the seat beneath me, the vibration of the tracks. My mouth opened to speak, my jaw stayed locked in place though, muscles refusing to cooperate. I just stayed silent, staring ahead.
He waited. He didn't blink, didn't shift. He kept his gaze piercing me while the rails shook below. He spoke to me again in an almost bored tone.
“You’re headed to your apartment on Seventh Avenue, you’re going to walk in the front door and say a corny greeting as if someone else lives there, and you’re going to pass out on your couch.”
Something tightened in my chest, not fear but pressure. Like a hand closing on me,
“How did yo-”
“Arent you, Isaiah?”
I stood up way too fast, my body didn't check with me to see if my mind was okay with it first.
“Okay who the hell are you!” My voice came out louder than expected “Are you stalking me? Tell me now or I'll call the police!” The words tumbled over each other. I braced myself for something, a bead of sweat came down my neck.
“Sit down.” His tone was calm, though I could feel the bitterness behind it. “You’re not going to hit me,” he looked past me at the empty seat across “you wouldn't swing first. And you’re not going to call the police, then you'd have to admit where you’re coming from.” He paused and stared at me. “You’re shaking.”
I looked down to see my hand pointed at him, the tremor went all the way up to my shoulders. This is normal, I told myself. I’m not acting weird in this, this stranger is cornering me!
I looked back up at him, something about him wouldn't hold still. Besides his cold eyes the rest of him seemed to soften and shift, like oil trying to slide across water. The edges around him blurred, I couldn't make out his outline. *All* of him looked like the outline.
I squint, maybe it’s just dark, it’s late, I’d been drinking earlier. No, I’m sober. I’ve been sober for a while.
“I’m not trying to threaten you,” he said in a very threatening manner “tell me, if you were to call the police, what would you say to them?”
I opened my mouth, nothing could come out. A shadow guy who appeared right in front of me and knows who I am?
“I don’t know” I finally rasped out.
“Exactly, and that is why you’re going to sit back down.”
I sat. What am I doing? He smiled at me. His smile was cold, no sympathy, no malice behind it. It was a fake attempt at reassurement, I could tell.
“New topic, where are you coming from?” he remained still, his gaze shot through me while he was quietly anticipating an answer. “Dont’t keep me waiting forever.”
My eyes wandered away from him, my head followed. “Would’nt you know that already, the bar.”
He stood up. I didn't see him get up to move, his body just shifted from one place to another. “No that's not it,” his tone got more impatient with me. That's when I noticed it, parts of him melting and reshaping itself back together “you and I both know that’s not what this is about.” he began to change.
Almost like a primitive instinct I fell back on the ground trying to get away – His gloves and coat seemingly melted into itself, I could almost feel the crunch of bones breaking and reshaping itself while he grew right in front of me. The car groaned under his weight. The floor beneath him bowed inward in retaliation, but did not break. It should have. The metal wrapped and fitted his new shape, as if the train itself had allowed this to happen.
I scrambled backward, palms slipping against the wet floor. I got hit with the smell of formaldehyde and rust, rot and something sweet underneath, like flowers left too long in water. Lights above flickered, dimmed, steadied, casting his shape in pieces.
He was something else entirely, too many angles stacked where there should be one. His arms bent backwards, one of them much bigger and filled than the other. Joints rotated where no joints had existed before. He was crawling on all fours, no fives, no – limbs were twisting and knitting back together, as if it was undecided how much there should be. It did not look like a painless transformation for him.
I could hear each vertebrae *pop* and place back in their sockets as his face hovered toward and above me, supporting an angle that betrayed his anatomy. Everything but his eyes shifted, those remained the same, always familiar.
“Stay away from me,” my voice sounded small, carried only a couple feet in front of me “get the hell away from me!”
He didn't react. No flinch, not even a tilt of what I thought was his head, nothing. The train kept moving, something was wrong. I didn’t know what was going to happen, or what he would do to me – as the willpower left my soul I decided to just accept anything that would happen to me.
He lowered himself, his neck grossly elongated as he met my gaze, for the first time his eyes seemed like something else. They were tired.
“You ran from her, her *service*.”
Physically the words came out barely coherent, yet I could make it out clearly. His voice came from everywhere – the walls, inside my head, the moving rails – in accents not from this world in languages not invented yet. The train kept moving, his words didn't echo. They just sat there between us, obsolete.
Words couldn’t escape my mouth, they refused to be spoken. I could see his malformed neck tilting, anticipating something, anything from me. The only thing I could muster out of my mouth were a few suggestions of a word – I was confused, scared, and just waiting for my stop to come so I can get the hell out of here.
“You don't have to worry about that,” he slurred out while looking over towards the windows “It might take a while before your stop.”
The train finally came out of the tunnel. Outside there wasn't a station to greet me, or a city, not even the dark night. Outside, there was infinity – no horizon to look past, not even a sky. Nothing but an impossible track running along an untextured, endless space of white nothingness, with no destination in sight. Numbness spread through my body – starting at my fingers, moving its way up to my legs, and then reached the space behind my eyes. I should get out of here, but my body wouldn't move. I looked over at the creature, his focus was leaning back on me, still anticipating an answer. I finally started to speak.
“She wouldn't have wanted that,” my voice was almost lost to the rumbling below. “She wouldn’t want a last memory of her to be a decayed corpse.” the words echoed throughout us, I felt sick. He kept silent, still waiting. “She told me once, years ago, if she died – she didn’t want people standing around her lifeless husk, pretending to know what it was thinking.” I spoke with more confidence, the sound echoing louder than before.
“So yeah, I didn’t stay,” I finished. “It was a way of respecting her.” My voice started to flatten. He just looked at me, no response coming from him.
His eyes stayed focused on me – not as tired, but replaced with something else, anger*?* The silence became uncomfortably apparent, thick and suffocating. The car felt smaller, like the train was listening in on us now. I swallowed, the silence grew too loud. “I left, got in the car, waited till it was over, and drove off. she would’ve wanted…” my voice trailed off, I turned away from him.
“You waited.” he emphasized, his words sliding across the floor, through the walls, under the seats “Your lines are well rehearsed.”
He began twitching, his movements became sporadic, tendons jumped beneath his skin, ligaments moved independently without permission from physics, his form jittered frame by frame, tightening. Loosening. Tightening again, like a choppy stop motion.
A sharp pain came rushing from my abdomen, looking down I saw one of his hands piercing through me, I was bleeding out. The lights dulled, the car pressed in from all sides, my chest burned, hands up to my face. I screamed, not from pain, but from something else, everything came to me all at once: I heard a voice calling from a long hallway – machines making promises never kept – the smell of ammonia and flowers – a room kept preserved in a better time – and the weight of dirt hitting a casket. My hands came off my face wet. With a hazy sight I looked back up at him, his body looked more normal than before, it was almost human.
“You avoid the bedroom,” his words stumbled on itself. “you sleep on the couch. The bed still holds onto a smell you can't have.”
My breath grew heavy.
“You haven't opened the last drawer in your kitchen,” He went on, “you refuse to say her name, even when you’re alone.”
The floor beneath me felt so far away. I could only muster a whisper, “Stop.”
“You let her mail pile up, but there’s no use for it anymore. *She's gone.*” The rails slowed down, the rumbling grew soft, then fizzled away completely. He turned to face the windows “This is your stop.”
I heard the doors begin to open, we weren't in a void anymore. The hallway in front of me bled into a church parking lot, fluorescent lights lit up the building. There were folding chairs, dark coats. In the corner of my eye was a casket. It was a funeral. Her funeral.
“No, I can't,” my eyes burned. “I can’t get off here.” he faced me again.
For the first time his shape settled, human. “You need to accept it,” his voice was soft. The doors opened wider, his hand gestured to the exit.
I swallowed, I tried to get up, my body didn’t listen. It remained still. In desperation I asked “What happens if I don't get off here?”
His eyes locked in on me, tired, then turned away, “Then you keep riding, crash on your couch. Tomorrow you get back on here, and we have this conversation again, and again. Until this train goes somewhere you can't get off of.” His words sounded defeated.
I looked outside. I looked back. I turned to the empty seat. I smelled rot. I smelled flowers. I thought of the apartment. I thought of her. I turned to the casket, I tried to get up. My body however, remained still, fighting what little willpower I had left.
I stayed seated, still, as the rumbling of moving rails could be heard below. As the doors closed my body moved along with the train, it was good at doing that.
#entertainment
source
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