Cellar Dweller
02-09-2009, 07:16 PM
The Train
By Eric Shea
Jason knew that-look in the Fat Man’s face as he approached Aaron and him. It was a look he had seen many times before. The Fat Man was planning to piss him off. The snide smile that curled his cheeks up as if he had two golf balls stuffed in his mouth. The same look that a child has when tormenting another just out of cruelty. Anymore this just served as an inconvenience where Jason was forced to talk to his supervisor of Laminating Express, Tony Ruth lovingly referred to as “The Fat Man” by all of his coworkers.
Aaron was still having a conversation with Jason across their worktable. None of this registered to Jason as the Fat Man slid his feet against the cement floor as he walked towards them. Pick up your damn feet when you walk. Jason thought in disgust as the Fat Man stepped behind Aaron and smiled at him.
“Hey guess what I heard the other day,” said Tony, slowly turning his head back and forth between Jason and Aaron to see who would fall into his trap and actually respond.
“Is it that people actually work around here?” replied Jason with his own smart -ass smile in retaliation. He expected at least Aaron to laugh at this but he barely got a smile out of either of them. But then Aaron had only worked there for five months and was still nervous about being around the ups of the company. Jason though he had worked there right out of high school for the last five years and could care less what anyone thought about him here, (especially the ups).
“I heard that Emma finally has a reeeeaaaall boyfriend,” Tony exclaimed, now waiting for Jason’s reaction. Jason felt his insides become hollow, and dead. His eyes drifted down to the table between them, wanting more than anything at that moment that one of his classic retorts would come to him. But it seemed his mind had become hollow as well. There was no comeback to throw in the Fat Man’s face. Jason dove deep into the well, back to something that had worked most of his adolescent life in Junior High, in High school; hell when his father told him he’d never make it as an artist.
“Hey man, go fuck yourself!” Jason finally responded. The lack of cleverness only fueled the Fat Man’s fire. The smile on his face moved from simple golf balls to baseballs. The utter delight the Fat Man had in pissing him off was too much for Jason to stand there and take anymore. Jason lifted his hand in a dismissive wave that in Jason’s mind said Piss off, and walked out of the area the other employees called “Lamiville”, and walked toward the bathroom.
By the time he got there and closed the door his face was beet red in the mirror. He ignored the over powering smell of bleach and urine as he turned on the sink. He bathed his hands in the cold water and wiped his face with it trying to calm himself. Thinking again about Emma, and how he’d wasted five years of his life here. Laminating Express, or Lamiville wasn’t just a place of work to Jason; it was a train that he called The Lamityville Horror Express. This train didn’t have any stops for him to get off, it just kept going and it scared the hell out of him that he’d be riding it until he was dead. Like all these other old bastards he worked with that in his mind just gave up on what they wanted in life. Gave up just so they would get their weekly paycheck and live their lives of mediocrity upon the train.
Emma had done this to him, from when they were still dating early on, when he told her he wanted to be an artist. She in turn scoffed and said “But your not making any money at it, and these little part time jobs you take on won’t support us.” Jason just sat in his bedroom of his parent’s house as she paced around him lecturing. “You have to grow up! You don’t have a car-you don’t have an apartment. I’m not supporting us after I graduate college!”
“Look I’m trying,” Jason said. “This is all I ever wanted to be and it’s all I know how to be. I’ll get my portfolio around some galleries and with a little luck someone will want to buy one of my pieces.”
“I’m not going to live on luck Jason! Just grow up!” Emma finished, and walked out of the room. It wasn’t long after that, that Emma’s father approached Jason after a dinner at her house and asked him if he’d like a job at his company. Choo Choo, all aboard.
The water from the sink of the bathroom cooled down Jason’s face but now with the news of Emma’s reeeaaall boyfriend, his entire day was ruined. Jason cranked out some paper towels from the dispenser and wiped his face knowing that the rough material of the towel would just make his face red again. He threw the towel away and stood there with his arms out against the dispenser looking at his old Nikes and the putrid green of the floor trying to compose himself before he went back to his workstation. That’s all he needed was to walk back out looking upset. Give all the old bastards something to see and gossip about, and if the Fat Man saw, and gave him that queer smile he was sure he was going to choke the life out of him. “Get cool, calm down” he told himself. He straightened up off the dispenser and looked at his watch a half hour before quitting time, perfect he thought. That fat fuck ruined my entire day with only a half hour left.
“Fuck it.”
Jason walked back out and Aaron was looking at him as he approached.
“Hey man you all right?” Aaron said.
“Yeah I’m golden, but I’m taking off. Dapper’s and me have an early appointment today. You wanna slide by after work and have a few?”
“No I can’t. Amber is at my house and I told her I’d be home right after work.”
Jason walked over to the coat hooks on the side of the wall and grabbed his jacket. While trying to wrestle his arms in the leather holes he responded, “alright suit yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You want me to tell Tony or someone your leaving?”
“Nah don’t bother. Its not my style.” He said as he walked out of the door, on his way to the punch clock. As he walked the thought of Emma came back into his mind. He was still in love with her and as much as he hated that, he hated himself more for feeling it. She was gone. She said in very plain English, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” How more simple can it be? She moved on and I’m stuck on this horror train on the way to my grave. I got the job she wanted me to have so I would “grow up.” I haven’t painted anything in a year, and here I am going to the fucking bar to pine about it. Fucking beautiful.
Outside the cold caught him right away. Burning his face and hands, stiffening his nipples, and making his balls and penis shrivel into something that looked like it belonged to a five year old. Then the basic thought you hear every old-timer say when they’ve been out in the cold comes to you, and you can’t help but hate yourself when you realize it just crossed your mind. It ain’t the cold that’s the problem; it’s the wind that gets ya.
Jason’s jacket flapped in the breeze and he remembers the zipper has been broken for months. He moves his hands out of his denim jeans into the pockets of the leather, bunching the jacket together to try and break the wind until he reaches his car at the far end of the parking lot. “Last in, first to leave,” he says with a grin as if to put a point of exclamation into his cursing out the Fat Man. He looks up to see the overcast day, thinking to himself that he’d probably see snow tonight, the first of the season. Emma loved it when it snowed.
“I need a drink bad.”
He got to the bar in three minutes. Dapper’s is right down the street, no need to warm up the car, he could deal with the cold and the sooner he got there the better in his mind. Batman had the Bat Cave; Superman had the Fortress of Solitude. Jason O’Connell had Dapper’s. He walked in smelling the refreshing sent of stale beer and hearing the calming hum of the Miller Lite sign next to the entrance. In front of him was the poolroom empty for now, but the day was young. To his right was the doorway to the horseshoe shaped bar. Jason moved down this side, passing two bikers, and found his usual seat on the opposite end. Removing his wallet and his Marlboros from his jacket as he hung it on the back of the chair, he pulled out a twenty and laid it on the bar as he sat down.
The bartender, Johnny Gibson, John-Boy to his friends walked out from the back room as Jason sat down. His baldhead glowed red from a neon sign that just read BAR above him. It seemed he was about to say, “What can I get ya” until he saw it was Jason and smiled. Instead of his rushing out to serve the customer, whom he no doubt was cursing to himself for interrupting his count of his daily tips, he stopped in his tracks and stepped back a little to the cash register and lit up a Pall Mall. Jason knew this routine, but it didn’t bother him as he had told John-Boy several times in the past. “No matter what you do, even with you’re to cool for the room attitude. You’re still going to get my beer and a bad tip. John-Boy seemed to take a liking to Jason almost as soon as he started showing up at Dapper’s three years earlier, even though Jason was at least twenty years younger than him. John-Boy would try to talk women into going home with Jason. Using lines like “he’s a famous artist”, “he’s a sweet guy”, and even once; “he’s hung like a horse, you should see it!” What ever it was Jason was certainly one of Johnny’s favorite customers. He had come up to Jason one night at the bar when he was off of work, but still working to put on a load. He put his arm around Jason’s neck and pulled him close, spitting in his face a bit, and getting Jason intoxicated off of his breath alone and said, “I want you to know I think you’re a real patron here. You come in on weekends and make it a party…a real patron, that’s what you are.” He let go of Jason’s neck and the only thought Jason had was, what was his definition of patron? But then he realized what it was; he was a young alcoholic on the up and up. I’m one of the ups
“Let me get a shot and a beer,” Jason said while lighting a cigarette.
“Bad day at the office?” Johnny replied.
“Nope, just trying to make my father proud.”
The one thing Jason liked best about this bar with the exception of being a real patron was that they knew what he drank and he didn’t have to tell them. Unlike some bars he had gone to with friends, where he had to yell what he wanted to the bartender until his vocal cords rang with pain, because the DJ was playing the music loud enough that the bar across town didn’t need a jukebox, it just needed to keep the doors open. It was worse than trying to have a conversation at an AC/DC concert. Fire!
Jason lifted his shot glass looking at the whiskey inside of it and said to John-Boy, “here’s to forgetting.” He quickly put an image of Emma into his mind and sloshed the drink down. Having the image quickly wiped from his mind, as the burning in his throat and the grimace on his face took up the residence of his senses, until he chased it with his beer and a quick drag of his smoke.
Jason had sat there relaxed for about and hour and a half. John-Boy had told him all about this “Sweet piece of ass” he had gotten last week, and after the steady increase of drinks, he had finally calmed down the thoughts that seemed determined to come to the surface and continue to torment him. Right now they were silenced, at least a little. He talked to the other “patrons” around the bar. Shooting the shit about sports, women, and work. But every time someone would bitch about their job, the Fat Man would enter Jason’s mind wearing over-alls and holding a shovel of coal in his hands. He had a thick patch of soot on his face, smiling that wide cheeked smile reminding him of how the old cartoons would depict black people with the dark face, and the bright pink lips. The Fat Man didn’t seem to stop smiling as he said, “Guess what I heard?” Then turn and shove the coals in the furnace adding fuel to the fire. Then the image would leave and Jason would immediately flag down John-Boy and ask for a shot.
But now he was relaxed drinking his beer and smoking his cigarette while listening to the jukebox. When the next song came on Jason didn’t take much notice until the chorus started and when he heard it, he couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you’d better watch your speed
Trouble a head trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.”
Jason was dazed for a minute thinking to himself about the song and trying to remember if he had played it because he didn’t remember putting it on, but how sardonic it was with the day he was having. “The universe is fucking with me,” he said loud enough for two people having a conversation to stop and look at him puzzled. As the chorus played again he imagined Emma’s father being the conductor of the train with white powder all over his nose saying, “Has the notion crossed your mind?” Jason shook this image from his head. “This is that Fat Bastards fault,” he said disgustedly as he leaned back in his chair. But now he was thinking of whose fault it really was. Who was in his mind he could pass the blame on? “God Jason, you’re an asshole.” He closed the thoughts out, refusing to take the easy way out and play the victim. Jason looked up at the clock and it was a quarter till six. He had been there too long and needed to go home. To paint, to sleep off the pity party he was holding, or get something to eat and veg out in front of the television. Either way he needed to go home. Jason sat up straight in his chair and looked at the four singles he had left on the bar. He grabbed three of them and placed them in his wallet while smiling in John-Boys direction. John-Boy didn’t notice. But Jason was sure John-Boy would be calling him a prick by the time the door closed behind him. Jason downed the rest of his beer while putting out the burning filter of his cigarette into the ashtray. He stood up, putting on his jacket. He moved down and around the bar putting up his hand in a wave.
“Later Johnny.”
“Hey, be safe man,” John-Boy replied
“You know I will.”
Jason started moving towards the door again when John-Boy said “Oh yeah, guess what I heard the other day?” Jason stopped dead. Scared to move and scared to face John-Boy. Thinking that when he turned around John-Boy would of some how turned into the Fat Man wearing that smile, taunting him waiting for a response. But when he turned it was still John-Boy with his baldhead, and no sign of a smile. “The cops are going to be having DUI check points this weekend, so be careful.” Jason let out a small sigh of relief. “Alright will do, later man.” He walked out of the bar.
John-Boy walked over to clean up Jason’s area, and saw the dollar tip just as the door to the bar closed.
“Prick.”
The door to Dapper’s closed and the wind took away all of Jason’s prior warmth at once. The parking lot was coated with freshly fallen snow and the image of Emma and him building a snowman entered his mind. They had done this when they first started dating on the first real snowfall of that year. It wasn’t cold on that day, with the sun above them. She giggled and stuck a handful of snow down the back of Jason’s shirt and started laughing harder and screaming as Jason chased after her with a snowball. He tackled Emma lightly and they landed in the snow, they kissed deeply as young lovers do and stared into one another’s eyes until Jason got up and helped her to her feet. They moved back to the snowman to finish, but now the memory was wrong. They had finished the snowman and had gone inside for coffee, but the snowman was different now. Jason stood there staring at the snowman, which now looked like the Fat Man with his wide smile. The face was covered in soot, and down its chest were three pieces of coal for buttons. In the distance Jason heard the whistle of a train. He turned around and Emma was gone. Jason snapped back to reality, actually scared. Something wasn’t right and he knew it. As he stood there, trying to get a bearing on the real world, an older man walked up to him and asked, “You alright kid?” Jason didn’t notice the man and flinched at his voice. Wiping his forehead from the accumulation of sweat that had started from the memory/nightmare, Jason answered with limited breath.
“Yeah I’m fine.”
“You look like someone walked all over your grave. You sure you alright?” The man asked.
Jason was about to respond when he heard the train whistle in the distance again. He coiled around to look over his shoulder then realized it must be the Whitley Train coming in. Then Jason turned back to the man and said, “I shouldn’t be here. I gotta catch a train.” Jason turned and walked to his car, without giving the man another glance, and got inside.
Jason started his car and the radio came on. It was playing “Crazy Train”. This time there was no laughter from Jason. He quickly turned his radio off saying “this isn’t funny anymore”, in a nervous voice. He sat there for a moment thinking that he must be going crazy. Ozzy had it right. The Fat Man had actually done it, he pushed and pushed and now I’m actually bat shit insane, He thought. The sudden urge to see Emma consumed him. He needed to see her and have her tell him it was all right and if the reeeaaal boyfriend happened to be there he would kill him.
“No!”
That wasn’t a thought a sane man would think. Calm down be rational, he thought, more scared now but still needing to see Emma.
He put the car in reverse and sped out of his parking spot, quickly putting it into drive and not stopping to look for oncoming traffic, as he raced out of the parking lot and down the street. Emma lived in Harrow, the next town over; he could be there in ten minutes. He drove down the normally dark streets that the snow had illuminated and he thought, just follow the white snow road. Jason looked to his right and the image of a train racing beside him took the place of the normal tree covered surrounding. He flinched again but this time he wasn’t stricken by fear. He was stricken by determination. He bit his lower lip and looked to his right again. “You aren’t going to beat me!” He said as loud as he could. He stepped on the accelerator and now was nose to nose with the giant. Even with the cold, the sweat had reappeared on his forehead and the thought of Super Man entered his mind. More powerful than a locomotive. That’s right he thought, but was startled again by the sounding off of the train as if in protest, and almost heard the words “I think I can, I think I can,” hidden within the whistle of the phantom beside him. “Oh no you can’t!” Jason shouted as he approached ninety on his speedometer. Jason stared over at the train beside him unable to look away, becoming hypnotized by it. Jason was suddenly aboard the steel monster, sitting in the dinner car of the beast. A waitress came over to him and placed a beer and a shot in front of him on the table. Jason looked up and saw that the waitress was Emma. She leaned down close to him and whispered in his ear, “I hope you enjoyed your ride,” then walked away. Jason looked back at the table where the beer and shot had been in front of him and was back in his car. There was a slight scream as he looked through his windshield and saw the oncoming tree, but at the speed he was going, there wasn’t enough time to complete the sound of terror before he was ejected through the windshield head first into the thick oak.
The bottom half of his body was lying on the demolished hood of his car while his upper half hung upside down off the side of it. He was terribly cold and thought, it aint the cold that’s the problem, its the wind that gets ya. He knew there was a large piece of glass in his throat, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. His body was completely numb. Just before Jason O’Connell bled to death, he heard the whistle of the train sounding off as it left the Whitley Train Station. But he wasn’t sure if trains today still made that sound or if it was all in his head. The thought faded, it was finally time to step off the train. The wind howled, the snow fell, and Jason thought of Emma.
By Eric Shea
Jason knew that-look in the Fat Man’s face as he approached Aaron and him. It was a look he had seen many times before. The Fat Man was planning to piss him off. The snide smile that curled his cheeks up as if he had two golf balls stuffed in his mouth. The same look that a child has when tormenting another just out of cruelty. Anymore this just served as an inconvenience where Jason was forced to talk to his supervisor of Laminating Express, Tony Ruth lovingly referred to as “The Fat Man” by all of his coworkers.
Aaron was still having a conversation with Jason across their worktable. None of this registered to Jason as the Fat Man slid his feet against the cement floor as he walked towards them. Pick up your damn feet when you walk. Jason thought in disgust as the Fat Man stepped behind Aaron and smiled at him.
“Hey guess what I heard the other day,” said Tony, slowly turning his head back and forth between Jason and Aaron to see who would fall into his trap and actually respond.
“Is it that people actually work around here?” replied Jason with his own smart -ass smile in retaliation. He expected at least Aaron to laugh at this but he barely got a smile out of either of them. But then Aaron had only worked there for five months and was still nervous about being around the ups of the company. Jason though he had worked there right out of high school for the last five years and could care less what anyone thought about him here, (especially the ups).
“I heard that Emma finally has a reeeeaaaall boyfriend,” Tony exclaimed, now waiting for Jason’s reaction. Jason felt his insides become hollow, and dead. His eyes drifted down to the table between them, wanting more than anything at that moment that one of his classic retorts would come to him. But it seemed his mind had become hollow as well. There was no comeback to throw in the Fat Man’s face. Jason dove deep into the well, back to something that had worked most of his adolescent life in Junior High, in High school; hell when his father told him he’d never make it as an artist.
“Hey man, go fuck yourself!” Jason finally responded. The lack of cleverness only fueled the Fat Man’s fire. The smile on his face moved from simple golf balls to baseballs. The utter delight the Fat Man had in pissing him off was too much for Jason to stand there and take anymore. Jason lifted his hand in a dismissive wave that in Jason’s mind said Piss off, and walked out of the area the other employees called “Lamiville”, and walked toward the bathroom.
By the time he got there and closed the door his face was beet red in the mirror. He ignored the over powering smell of bleach and urine as he turned on the sink. He bathed his hands in the cold water and wiped his face with it trying to calm himself. Thinking again about Emma, and how he’d wasted five years of his life here. Laminating Express, or Lamiville wasn’t just a place of work to Jason; it was a train that he called The Lamityville Horror Express. This train didn’t have any stops for him to get off, it just kept going and it scared the hell out of him that he’d be riding it until he was dead. Like all these other old bastards he worked with that in his mind just gave up on what they wanted in life. Gave up just so they would get their weekly paycheck and live their lives of mediocrity upon the train.
Emma had done this to him, from when they were still dating early on, when he told her he wanted to be an artist. She in turn scoffed and said “But your not making any money at it, and these little part time jobs you take on won’t support us.” Jason just sat in his bedroom of his parent’s house as she paced around him lecturing. “You have to grow up! You don’t have a car-you don’t have an apartment. I’m not supporting us after I graduate college!”
“Look I’m trying,” Jason said. “This is all I ever wanted to be and it’s all I know how to be. I’ll get my portfolio around some galleries and with a little luck someone will want to buy one of my pieces.”
“I’m not going to live on luck Jason! Just grow up!” Emma finished, and walked out of the room. It wasn’t long after that, that Emma’s father approached Jason after a dinner at her house and asked him if he’d like a job at his company. Choo Choo, all aboard.
The water from the sink of the bathroom cooled down Jason’s face but now with the news of Emma’s reeeaaall boyfriend, his entire day was ruined. Jason cranked out some paper towels from the dispenser and wiped his face knowing that the rough material of the towel would just make his face red again. He threw the towel away and stood there with his arms out against the dispenser looking at his old Nikes and the putrid green of the floor trying to compose himself before he went back to his workstation. That’s all he needed was to walk back out looking upset. Give all the old bastards something to see and gossip about, and if the Fat Man saw, and gave him that queer smile he was sure he was going to choke the life out of him. “Get cool, calm down” he told himself. He straightened up off the dispenser and looked at his watch a half hour before quitting time, perfect he thought. That fat fuck ruined my entire day with only a half hour left.
“Fuck it.”
Jason walked back out and Aaron was looking at him as he approached.
“Hey man you all right?” Aaron said.
“Yeah I’m golden, but I’m taking off. Dapper’s and me have an early appointment today. You wanna slide by after work and have a few?”
“No I can’t. Amber is at my house and I told her I’d be home right after work.”
Jason walked over to the coat hooks on the side of the wall and grabbed his jacket. While trying to wrestle his arms in the leather holes he responded, “alright suit yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You want me to tell Tony or someone your leaving?”
“Nah don’t bother. Its not my style.” He said as he walked out of the door, on his way to the punch clock. As he walked the thought of Emma came back into his mind. He was still in love with her and as much as he hated that, he hated himself more for feeling it. She was gone. She said in very plain English, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” How more simple can it be? She moved on and I’m stuck on this horror train on the way to my grave. I got the job she wanted me to have so I would “grow up.” I haven’t painted anything in a year, and here I am going to the fucking bar to pine about it. Fucking beautiful.
Outside the cold caught him right away. Burning his face and hands, stiffening his nipples, and making his balls and penis shrivel into something that looked like it belonged to a five year old. Then the basic thought you hear every old-timer say when they’ve been out in the cold comes to you, and you can’t help but hate yourself when you realize it just crossed your mind. It ain’t the cold that’s the problem; it’s the wind that gets ya.
Jason’s jacket flapped in the breeze and he remembers the zipper has been broken for months. He moves his hands out of his denim jeans into the pockets of the leather, bunching the jacket together to try and break the wind until he reaches his car at the far end of the parking lot. “Last in, first to leave,” he says with a grin as if to put a point of exclamation into his cursing out the Fat Man. He looks up to see the overcast day, thinking to himself that he’d probably see snow tonight, the first of the season. Emma loved it when it snowed.
“I need a drink bad.”
He got to the bar in three minutes. Dapper’s is right down the street, no need to warm up the car, he could deal with the cold and the sooner he got there the better in his mind. Batman had the Bat Cave; Superman had the Fortress of Solitude. Jason O’Connell had Dapper’s. He walked in smelling the refreshing sent of stale beer and hearing the calming hum of the Miller Lite sign next to the entrance. In front of him was the poolroom empty for now, but the day was young. To his right was the doorway to the horseshoe shaped bar. Jason moved down this side, passing two bikers, and found his usual seat on the opposite end. Removing his wallet and his Marlboros from his jacket as he hung it on the back of the chair, he pulled out a twenty and laid it on the bar as he sat down.
The bartender, Johnny Gibson, John-Boy to his friends walked out from the back room as Jason sat down. His baldhead glowed red from a neon sign that just read BAR above him. It seemed he was about to say, “What can I get ya” until he saw it was Jason and smiled. Instead of his rushing out to serve the customer, whom he no doubt was cursing to himself for interrupting his count of his daily tips, he stopped in his tracks and stepped back a little to the cash register and lit up a Pall Mall. Jason knew this routine, but it didn’t bother him as he had told John-Boy several times in the past. “No matter what you do, even with you’re to cool for the room attitude. You’re still going to get my beer and a bad tip. John-Boy seemed to take a liking to Jason almost as soon as he started showing up at Dapper’s three years earlier, even though Jason was at least twenty years younger than him. John-Boy would try to talk women into going home with Jason. Using lines like “he’s a famous artist”, “he’s a sweet guy”, and even once; “he’s hung like a horse, you should see it!” What ever it was Jason was certainly one of Johnny’s favorite customers. He had come up to Jason one night at the bar when he was off of work, but still working to put on a load. He put his arm around Jason’s neck and pulled him close, spitting in his face a bit, and getting Jason intoxicated off of his breath alone and said, “I want you to know I think you’re a real patron here. You come in on weekends and make it a party…a real patron, that’s what you are.” He let go of Jason’s neck and the only thought Jason had was, what was his definition of patron? But then he realized what it was; he was a young alcoholic on the up and up. I’m one of the ups
“Let me get a shot and a beer,” Jason said while lighting a cigarette.
“Bad day at the office?” Johnny replied.
“Nope, just trying to make my father proud.”
The one thing Jason liked best about this bar with the exception of being a real patron was that they knew what he drank and he didn’t have to tell them. Unlike some bars he had gone to with friends, where he had to yell what he wanted to the bartender until his vocal cords rang with pain, because the DJ was playing the music loud enough that the bar across town didn’t need a jukebox, it just needed to keep the doors open. It was worse than trying to have a conversation at an AC/DC concert. Fire!
Jason lifted his shot glass looking at the whiskey inside of it and said to John-Boy, “here’s to forgetting.” He quickly put an image of Emma into his mind and sloshed the drink down. Having the image quickly wiped from his mind, as the burning in his throat and the grimace on his face took up the residence of his senses, until he chased it with his beer and a quick drag of his smoke.
Jason had sat there relaxed for about and hour and a half. John-Boy had told him all about this “Sweet piece of ass” he had gotten last week, and after the steady increase of drinks, he had finally calmed down the thoughts that seemed determined to come to the surface and continue to torment him. Right now they were silenced, at least a little. He talked to the other “patrons” around the bar. Shooting the shit about sports, women, and work. But every time someone would bitch about their job, the Fat Man would enter Jason’s mind wearing over-alls and holding a shovel of coal in his hands. He had a thick patch of soot on his face, smiling that wide cheeked smile reminding him of how the old cartoons would depict black people with the dark face, and the bright pink lips. The Fat Man didn’t seem to stop smiling as he said, “Guess what I heard?” Then turn and shove the coals in the furnace adding fuel to the fire. Then the image would leave and Jason would immediately flag down John-Boy and ask for a shot.
But now he was relaxed drinking his beer and smoking his cigarette while listening to the jukebox. When the next song came on Jason didn’t take much notice until the chorus started and when he heard it, he couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you’d better watch your speed
Trouble a head trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.”
Jason was dazed for a minute thinking to himself about the song and trying to remember if he had played it because he didn’t remember putting it on, but how sardonic it was with the day he was having. “The universe is fucking with me,” he said loud enough for two people having a conversation to stop and look at him puzzled. As the chorus played again he imagined Emma’s father being the conductor of the train with white powder all over his nose saying, “Has the notion crossed your mind?” Jason shook this image from his head. “This is that Fat Bastards fault,” he said disgustedly as he leaned back in his chair. But now he was thinking of whose fault it really was. Who was in his mind he could pass the blame on? “God Jason, you’re an asshole.” He closed the thoughts out, refusing to take the easy way out and play the victim. Jason looked up at the clock and it was a quarter till six. He had been there too long and needed to go home. To paint, to sleep off the pity party he was holding, or get something to eat and veg out in front of the television. Either way he needed to go home. Jason sat up straight in his chair and looked at the four singles he had left on the bar. He grabbed three of them and placed them in his wallet while smiling in John-Boys direction. John-Boy didn’t notice. But Jason was sure John-Boy would be calling him a prick by the time the door closed behind him. Jason downed the rest of his beer while putting out the burning filter of his cigarette into the ashtray. He stood up, putting on his jacket. He moved down and around the bar putting up his hand in a wave.
“Later Johnny.”
“Hey, be safe man,” John-Boy replied
“You know I will.”
Jason started moving towards the door again when John-Boy said “Oh yeah, guess what I heard the other day?” Jason stopped dead. Scared to move and scared to face John-Boy. Thinking that when he turned around John-Boy would of some how turned into the Fat Man wearing that smile, taunting him waiting for a response. But when he turned it was still John-Boy with his baldhead, and no sign of a smile. “The cops are going to be having DUI check points this weekend, so be careful.” Jason let out a small sigh of relief. “Alright will do, later man.” He walked out of the bar.
John-Boy walked over to clean up Jason’s area, and saw the dollar tip just as the door to the bar closed.
“Prick.”
The door to Dapper’s closed and the wind took away all of Jason’s prior warmth at once. The parking lot was coated with freshly fallen snow and the image of Emma and him building a snowman entered his mind. They had done this when they first started dating on the first real snowfall of that year. It wasn’t cold on that day, with the sun above them. She giggled and stuck a handful of snow down the back of Jason’s shirt and started laughing harder and screaming as Jason chased after her with a snowball. He tackled Emma lightly and they landed in the snow, they kissed deeply as young lovers do and stared into one another’s eyes until Jason got up and helped her to her feet. They moved back to the snowman to finish, but now the memory was wrong. They had finished the snowman and had gone inside for coffee, but the snowman was different now. Jason stood there staring at the snowman, which now looked like the Fat Man with his wide smile. The face was covered in soot, and down its chest were three pieces of coal for buttons. In the distance Jason heard the whistle of a train. He turned around and Emma was gone. Jason snapped back to reality, actually scared. Something wasn’t right and he knew it. As he stood there, trying to get a bearing on the real world, an older man walked up to him and asked, “You alright kid?” Jason didn’t notice the man and flinched at his voice. Wiping his forehead from the accumulation of sweat that had started from the memory/nightmare, Jason answered with limited breath.
“Yeah I’m fine.”
“You look like someone walked all over your grave. You sure you alright?” The man asked.
Jason was about to respond when he heard the train whistle in the distance again. He coiled around to look over his shoulder then realized it must be the Whitley Train coming in. Then Jason turned back to the man and said, “I shouldn’t be here. I gotta catch a train.” Jason turned and walked to his car, without giving the man another glance, and got inside.
Jason started his car and the radio came on. It was playing “Crazy Train”. This time there was no laughter from Jason. He quickly turned his radio off saying “this isn’t funny anymore”, in a nervous voice. He sat there for a moment thinking that he must be going crazy. Ozzy had it right. The Fat Man had actually done it, he pushed and pushed and now I’m actually bat shit insane, He thought. The sudden urge to see Emma consumed him. He needed to see her and have her tell him it was all right and if the reeeaaal boyfriend happened to be there he would kill him.
“No!”
That wasn’t a thought a sane man would think. Calm down be rational, he thought, more scared now but still needing to see Emma.
He put the car in reverse and sped out of his parking spot, quickly putting it into drive and not stopping to look for oncoming traffic, as he raced out of the parking lot and down the street. Emma lived in Harrow, the next town over; he could be there in ten minutes. He drove down the normally dark streets that the snow had illuminated and he thought, just follow the white snow road. Jason looked to his right and the image of a train racing beside him took the place of the normal tree covered surrounding. He flinched again but this time he wasn’t stricken by fear. He was stricken by determination. He bit his lower lip and looked to his right again. “You aren’t going to beat me!” He said as loud as he could. He stepped on the accelerator and now was nose to nose with the giant. Even with the cold, the sweat had reappeared on his forehead and the thought of Super Man entered his mind. More powerful than a locomotive. That’s right he thought, but was startled again by the sounding off of the train as if in protest, and almost heard the words “I think I can, I think I can,” hidden within the whistle of the phantom beside him. “Oh no you can’t!” Jason shouted as he approached ninety on his speedometer. Jason stared over at the train beside him unable to look away, becoming hypnotized by it. Jason was suddenly aboard the steel monster, sitting in the dinner car of the beast. A waitress came over to him and placed a beer and a shot in front of him on the table. Jason looked up and saw that the waitress was Emma. She leaned down close to him and whispered in his ear, “I hope you enjoyed your ride,” then walked away. Jason looked back at the table where the beer and shot had been in front of him and was back in his car. There was a slight scream as he looked through his windshield and saw the oncoming tree, but at the speed he was going, there wasn’t enough time to complete the sound of terror before he was ejected through the windshield head first into the thick oak.
The bottom half of his body was lying on the demolished hood of his car while his upper half hung upside down off the side of it. He was terribly cold and thought, it aint the cold that’s the problem, its the wind that gets ya. He knew there was a large piece of glass in his throat, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. His body was completely numb. Just before Jason O’Connell bled to death, he heard the whistle of the train sounding off as it left the Whitley Train Station. But he wasn’t sure if trains today still made that sound or if it was all in his head. The thought faded, it was finally time to step off the train. The wind howled, the snow fell, and Jason thought of Emma.