{"id":18716,"date":"2023-12-15T12:01:25","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T18:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=18716"},"modified":"2023-12-15T12:01:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T18:01:28","slug":"be-careful-of-train-76b2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2023\/12\/15\/be-careful-of-train-76b2\/","title":{"rendered":"Be careful of Train 76b2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Hi! I was supposed to have a blog coming up that turned out much bigger than I expected! So that's gonna take a while! Anyway this is an old story from around August that I never finished but I think it constitutes for flash fiction. cheers!<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve always been familiar with the subway; could probably take it better than most of my family. I\u2019ve never gotten my license. Even if cars have never been my thing, trains have never, not once, scared me. They\u2019re just big hunks of metal, ones that I don\u2019t drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And whenever I get on the train, there\u2019s always an empty car waiting for me. Somehow, in a crowd of people all processioning into our big, long hunks of metal, I find the empty car. No one ever gets in it, not until I get off. Then I see all sorts of people flood into it again. I\u2019d come to not question it, just my simple stroke of luck, I get on and off all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess today was strange. Bag tipped over He\u2019s got a cigarette in his mouth, an overcoat covered in soot, and the most prominent feature, the stench of bleach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It stinks up the entire car, and I curl my scarf around my mouth because one whiff already makes it hard to breathe. But I don\u2019t think he notices. He just takes his cigarettes, rids his mouth of smoke, and taps the bum of it on the ground. I thought I only saw that in movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then he looks at me.\nOr he sees me looking at him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And for a moment he turns around, turns back, and I speak: \u201cHello.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cigarette drops from his mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can see me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A cold, dead feeling sticks to the back of my neck, just as the words linger from his throat, like the smell of death is permeating off of him. I\u2019ve never been afraid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can,\u201d and the words feel all sorts of wrong as if I\u2019m not supposed to be talking to this man, maybe because I\u2019m not, but he smiles. \u201cThat means I\u2019m finally leaving, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He doesn\u2019t answer, he pushes hair out of his face and repeats himself. \u201cIt\u2019s felt like years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSir, I really don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He doesn\u2019t hear me, doesn\u2019t see me just smiles, smiles, smiles, smiles. My back presses to the seat of the train, and that\u2019s when I see it; what I thought was a darkened subway wasn\u2019t a subway at all. It was an inky blackness, nothing there but a void. A lump of bile presses to the back of my throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My breath sounds just as ragged as his as I ask, horrified, \u201cWhere am I?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I look at him, and suddenly there\u2019s another cigarette in his mouth where there wasn’t before. He takes it out of his mouth and examines the car around us, almost as if he were a carnival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He looks around the car. \u201cAre we going to Hammond? I\u2019ve always loved going out to Hammond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s Hammond?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He thinks, brushes it off, and closes his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere do you think we are?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He shrugs. Then he turns the question on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere do you think we\u2019re going?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My answer comes up empty. He chuckles and turns out the window, taking the cigarette out and blowing the longest plume of smoke I\u2019ve ever seen. It floats to the top of the train car. It forms a cloud, bigger than the car. The cloud turns darker and darker until it begins to rain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi! I was supposed to have a blog coming up that turned out much bigger than I expected! So that’s gonna take a while! Anyway this is an old story from around August that I never finished but I think it constitutes for flash fiction. cheers! I\u2019ve always been familiar with the subway; could probably … Continue reading “Be careful of Train 76b2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18716"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18724,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18716\/revisions\/18724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}