Dark ideas arise from dark situations. Dangerous ideas, notions that under other conditions wouldn’t infest the cerebrum, make themselves known in the form of an unrelenting scourge. My eyes have fogged over and my sinuses are full, and I’m sitting on the train tracks with a sedative in my left hand, right leg crossed over the left to the extent that my circulation is lost. All tingly, butterflies in the stomach, unable to process what I saw today, or what I should do next.
There’s a man locked in there, a human being. If the legal system was aware- which there’s no possible way they could be, and still let it go on- but if they were- they’d be complicit in one of the greatest human rights abuses in history. I can’t buy into it. Bradford is lying, somehow.
Here comes the dark, intrusive thought, however. What if the system endorses this? What if Nil, through some impossible loophole, is allowed by the Government to live in those conditions? It might seem insane, but behavior like this is nothing new. MK Ultra by the CIA, Unit 731 in Imperial Japan, psychological warfare the world over, a spectrum of atrocities without public record.
Body parts being pushed to their absolute limit, mental torture beyond comprehension, drugged electroshock victims walked through silent corridors by clean figures in white smocks, all in the name of some greater end to which the means must submit themselves. The quiet heartbeat of a scalpel.
I got the sedative at the Walgreens on Fortino and it’s strong stuff, not prescription strength but enough to kill a horse if you take enough of it, I paid for two massive bottles and I’m weighing my options. The crinkly plastic bag blows a little in the evening wind, strong because there are hills around. I’m parked on Wildhorse Road, walked to the end and then east to the tracks, and I’m waiting for one of the Union Pacific freighters to come along. Of course, if I do want that, I’ll need to take a lot of painkillers in advance.
I know I can’t tell Sheila. She would believe me, that’s not the issue, she’d never turn her back on me or have me committed. Deep down, I fear I’m too much of a spineless weakling to reveal the ugly truth to her, have her be complicit in this awful enterprise. And I can’t take part in what Bradford suggests. I need a third option. An easy way out.
So it is that I’m unscrewing the lid on the first bottle, my fingers burning from the cycles of frigid decay out here, the mindless terrain with its clods of dirt, the track splayed out infinitely to either end of my horrible form. I guess this is the last thing I’ll see, a few hundred splintered wooden bars vanishing into the landscape. I lie down, gracefully, with my face dead center staring straight north, and pour some of the poison into my palm.
I’ve just placed the initial tablet on my tongue, it’s smooth and supple and well-engineered, and I’m just beginning to swallow when my eye catches something unexpected. A glint of something on the rail. A light. Yes. The headlight of a massive engine, puffing away with its solemn beckoning horn, smoke pouring from its top, mysterious graffiti on the sides of its coal cars, here to carry me on to the great mystery. I take three more doses, shovel them in, hope they take effect in time. Thank you, John Henry.
But no train comes. Not so much as the distant chatter of wheels.
Instead, the thick crunch of gravel under boots, and from the West an oncoming handheld flashlight. Yes, that’s it. The cops are here. To give me a ticket, or a citation, either for parking the Camry out on Wildhorse, or for trespassing on the tracks. That’s fine, I have a couple hundred on me and they must be easy to bribe out here. I’ll make small talk, they’ll go away, and I can resume my important work, or go home and crash into oblivion if I’m not up to it.
“H-hello?” I sit up, prop myself onto my elbow. Already, the sedative is kicking in. Vision getting blurry, speech is getting slurred. They’ll probably assume I’m drunk.
The figure doesn’t say anything, just nears further with its infernal beam, shining right into my eyes like a thousand suns, my pupils are all dilated and it burns. They seem to crouch down, then dash forward, break into a sprint, and grab my shoulder. I’m hauled up onto their knee, then I’m staring at the face.
I’ll never forget that face. Thin, wiry, like that of a starving rodent, One meager pencil mustache split down the middle right at the philtrum, stark piercing glare behind the thick coke-bottle lenses, bangs hanging in front every which way like the wires of a fence. Extremely pronounced pores, pores so wide you don’t know how some form of acne hadn’t taken up residency there. Coated in perspiration, pupils darting from side to side like a scared rabbit.
“I’m sorry,” I say, letting myself free from his grasp, dusting my legs off. “Is it illegal to sit out here? I can leave if you want.”
I step back, he lowers the beam a little until it’s pointing at the ground right between us. A small lizard is caught in the beam and darts off. I turn my attention to his clothes. He’s no cop. Green button-down, black pants, a leather biker’s cap- and a trenchcoat. A dark, flowing thing that ripples behind him, something out of Dickensian London, soft velvet that envelops the neck and shoulders and lasts well until the ankles.
“No, that’s alright,” He says in a smoky accent, and grins. “Don’t need that. You some kind of a- a train enthusiast? Into the great leadbellies of our country?”
“Yeah,” I nod. “You could say that. Out here tonight for a little peace and quiet. Watch the cars roll by, maybe count them. You know, for fun. You know how it is. Sometimes you get tired- tire of everything around you, and when you do, well, watching trains is a nice way to relax-”
“Yeah, sure. Relax.” He knows what I’m doing, has probably seen thirty cases like this in his lifetime, and I feel so monumentally stupid for having put some random stranger through this hassle, how selfish of me. God, what was I going to do? Kill myself? Over a simple moral dilemma? Go home, go to sleep, think it over tomorrow- but I can’t sleep with his lenses reflecting light, or his yellow stained teeth poised in gaudy anticipation.
“Can I go home?” I make a move to the left, but he cuts me off.
“I seen you around, stranger,” he says. Seen you around and I like what you do. You add character around here, character I ain’t seen in a long time.”
“Where?”
“Oh, lots of places,” he drones in that strange accent, which I can’t quite place. “The park. The library, once. I see you sometimes in that car of yours, matter of fact I knew you’d be out here somewhere ‘cause I caught your car sittin’ out there. I know you, friend. Know you need companionship, we all do around here. Small town, no use in bein’ unfriendly.” He turns the flashlight off and we’re alone in the depths again, he sits down right where I was and I follow suit. He takes a deep breath, nostrils expand substantially.
“You’re right,” I say. “I do need someone to talk to. I have a horrible decision to make.”
“I face horrible decisions all the time,” he replies casually. “Horrible things happen, you gotta make horrible choices and resolve ‘em. Ain’t nothin’ unusual about that, per se.” I notice him rooting around in my bag. He pulls out the unopened bottle, turns it over.
“Hey, gimme that.”
“What is it?”
“Sleeping medication. I’m narcoleptic.”
“Sure, sure,” he continues. “Yeah, I’ve seen this stuff. Tried it once. Doesn’t do much good. I have a more effective remedy, if you’re interested.”
“For narcolepsy?” I ask incredulously.
“Well, not exactly,” he admits. “But good for another sort of what ails ya. You need someone you can trust, first and foremost. That’s all too rare these days, someone who’s willing to walk out here to these very tracks at this time of night, who gives enough of a shit and don’t just stay home all the time, ignore everyone else’s problems. Rare to come by here in Pueb.”
“True. I do need someone.”
“Well, you want to come with me a while, get your bearings? Then you can go home- but I have someone I’d like ya to meet first, and some food, and you can process what’s happened tonight. I think that would be nice, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I realize, standing up. ‘I’ve got to get home, my wife will be worried about me. Some other time, sure-” But he steps in front of me again before I can politely run off.
“You ain’t in no condition to drive home alone,” he reiterates. “You need a navigator. Someone to keep you in check. I’ll offer that much if we can stop at my place real quick. No more’n 15 minutes, scout’s honor.”
“You didn’t drive here?”
“Course not. I walk everywhere. Pure coincidence I happened to be out here tonight.”
I think it over. Have to make the right choice. I do need rest. And it’s been so lonely, and here’s someone who seems like he might understand at least a fraction of the endless torture my life has become. Misery loves company.
“You’re on.” I extend my hand and he grabs it, shakes long and good and hard, rising from the ground like a beanstalk, shuffling his boots forward as we leave the tracks behind and make for my car. He twirls his flashlight around by the end of its lanyard.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Eydrich Verwus,” he says, “But you can call me Eddie for short. How ‘bout you?”
“You can call me Jerry.”
Highway 50 is in full force tonight, thin line of red lights stretching on out to Canon City, usual traffic slightly rejuvenated. I notice many of the vehicles around here are from the 1970s or earlier. Just like in Cuba, economically depleted areas have to make do with the assets at their disposal rather than upgrading every few years. Need to learn how to stretch resources.
Eddie is in the passenger’s seat, arms crossed, glasses steaming up. I’m trying to stay cool under pressure but he keeps fidgeting with his collar, muttering something dangerous under his breath, and it’s not helping.
“We’ll get you home,” I reassure him. “Where’d you say you are?”
“Up this way,” he points to a road on the left. “Just hug the curve, and you’ll make it in alright.” Above us, an LED display warns against the financial repercussions of drunk driving, blinking on and off with ceaseless intensity.
We bounce along the path. This is even worse than in Pueblo West, completely unpaved, it looks as though the county hasn’t maintained it in years. We’re somewhere between the two Pueblos, in that strange wilderness limbo, the undeveloped bit, and my lights bounce off ragged weed growth, dangerous-looking boulders which I swerve to avoid running into. I’m pushing the Camry’s limits, but Eddie remains strangely calm, even giddy.
He rocks back and forth, trying to counter the inertia, and I do the same, shifting into 2nd and then 3rd as the road becomes increasingly unwieldy. At last, the tires grind to a halt and I hear a horrible noise. I think the engine got too much dirt in it.
“Well, fuck,” I exhale.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie points ahead. ‘Home’s just right up there. You can come in, bite to eat, an’ then I’ll push you out when you go. Can’t be more’n half a mile or so from this distance. In fact, I even see the windows. Come on, out we go.”
I’m in no position to argue. I step out, my shoes noticeably filthy, Eddie’s thick leather boots are comparatively a smarter choice for desert terrain, but I didn’t know I’;d be out here this morning when I left for the office. I didn’t know a lot of things would go down today, as a matter of fact. Have to take the cards I’ve been dealt. At least he’s got a flashlight.
“Oh, man,” Eddie says. “Company in the house. Ain’t had company in years. Don’t mind the mess, it’s to be expected but it’s cozy. And warm, too.”
I nod, and we begin the long trek, which feels like forever. Eddie is pumping his fists up and down for some reason, the flashlight is bobbing to and fro, and the whole while my thoughts wander back to Sheila, who hasn’t heard a thing from me all day and she’s probably bored to tears waiting for some convincing explanation of what my new role at the facility is.
Now I see what Eddie was able to see. Of course, the sedative. Makes long distance things blurry, only now wearing off. I’m getting some pep in my step, energy is coming back, a moderate awareness of my surroundings. I should be able to make it. I’m not even particularly tired anymore.
“Fuck yeah!” Eddie hollers, hurrying me on. “Check this out.” The beam of the flashlight lands squarely on a quiet, broken-down shack fifty feet away from us- a dilapidated, forgotten square of plywood and asbestos, lost to time in the emptiness. I reach out to touch the mailbox which is lying on the ground, its post snapped roughly in two by some unspecified impact. It’s rusted inside and its baby blue paint is chipping off.
“You live here?” I reiterate.
“Yeah, pal,” Eddie says. “I do live here, indeed, that is what happens. Pretty sweet, huh?”
“It’s awful,” I say, lowering my nose beneath my collar to avoid the radiating stench of raw sewage. “Unfit. Should be demolished.”
“Aw, c’mon, Man,” he pleads. “That’s why I love it. Just give it a try, huh?”
“Okay,” I concede. “I’ve come this far. Lead on.”
“It’s pretty cool, actually,” he spouts, picking through something barely resembling a front yard which has transformed into a jungle via neglect. “They were planning something out here, a long time ago. Sixties, maybe, predates West. Whole new development, they were going to call it Fascination City. Planned out roads for it, charters, detailed maps. But when time came to begin construction, the company behind it was a fraud. Packed out. So now, as it happens, I’m the only resident. This’s the only house they built, as a prototype.” He climbs onto the creaking porch and pries open the front, which looks about to fall off its hinges.
“Nadene!” he hollers.
“Shut the fuckin’ door, Eddie.”
I step in behind him, narrowly missing a filthy nail to my left. The inside is only slightly less decrepit than the outside- furnishings from at least the nineties, a brown duvet in the center of the room, a futon to the left. Strewn around are bags of chips, jumbo cookies, flat bottles of dollar store soda. I take particular notice of a hole punched through the wall, letting in the chill desert air. It’s shoddily patched with three strips of duct tape.
“Who’s this?”
“Nadene, I want you to meet Jerry. He’s a- uh, train enthusiast.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.”
Reclining on the futon, her head initially obscured, is a girl in her early twenties, pink tank top and wild brunette hair. Looks about three years younger than Eddie, has sores all over her legs, deep brown things she probably picks at constantly. I avert my eyes. She’s taking a drag on a cigarette, deep inhalation, then pauses to consider me.
“Same to you, Nadene,” I murmur, maintaining a friendly tone. “Gosh, this is a lovely place. Such nice people.” I’d usually be a little more honest about my misgivings and apprehensions- but after what I’ve seen in the hours immediately preceding this encounter, Eddie does appear to be a lesser threat. I could probably take him. My heart rate ramps up.
“How is that light working?” I gesture to a lamp at the far end of the room. “Surely they don’t supply you with electricity if they don’t know you’re here.”
“Solar generator,” Eddie says. “So long as we don’t overuse it, we never run out of sun.”
“Water?” I stammer.
“Years ago I dug a ditch from here to the Arkansas, created a little tributary I subsequently purify with a filter. Disguised it with rocks and branches, nobody’s ever noticed. Drank bottled water before that.”
“Wow,” I remark in genuine awe. “You’ve really got it all figured out.”
“Eddie’s an engineer at heart,” Nadene croons. “At least, that’s what I keep telling him.”
She falls back onto a plaid pillow, nestles it beneath her head, looks out onto the monument of filth with a general contented enthusiasm. Eddie pulls up a frail wooden chair and hangs his trenchcoat on it, and offers me a stool which has much of the cushion ripped out.
“How long have you known him?” I ask.
“Well, hard to say,” she responds. “Met him when- yeah. I was 15. Ran away. Dad was no good, ma drank alla time and they were just generally- well, you know. Unhinged people. So I come across him on the Riverwalk one night, he’s 18 and just dropped out of high school, he sees I’m in a bind, he’s also in a bind, things make sense. He shows me this, had been working on it a while beforehand, but I helped him. That was- what?”
“Seven years,” Eddie states. “Seven calendars of bliss.”
“Wow,” she says, and laughs. “It doesn’t feel like that. Not with you.”
Eddie pulls out a film canister from an antique oak drawer, raises it to the light cast by the lampshade, as if to scan it for impurities. He opens the top and pours out a thin trail of a dark, powdery-looking substance on his palm. Lowers his matted head, goes in for the kill. Snorts it up loudly, then sits back up and shivers.
“What you got there? Old hickory?” Nadene reaches for it, her thin arm barely able to grasp.
“Yeah. Save some for our guest, though.”
She repeats the custom, though in a more frenetic manner, then hands me the rest. I look inside. There are flakes of the stuff congealed around the edge, little microscopic triangles. I stare into the unwavering depths.
“Hold on,” Nadene exclaims. “I have an idea! This is your first time. Let’s make it special.” She reaches behind the futon, pulls out one of those cheap portable suitcase record players with a considerable effort, plugs it into a fire hazard socket in the wall. Eddie retrieves a warped record from the same drawer, tosses it like a frisbee to her. She pulls the arm over to a very specific spot, lets it drop.
From the tinny speaker, a recognizable guitar lick emerges. It’s “Last of The Steam Powered Trains” by The Kinks, off their Village Green album.
“Now,” she orders. “Snort it. Now.”
As Ray Davies’ unmistakable lyrics pick up, I lower my head, pour about a teaspoon of the stuff out, and just like Eddie did, I inhale sharply. I can feel the flakes entering my nostril, notice their horrible descent down my nasal passage, straight into my olfactory receptors. I emerge, feeling as if I’ve been splashed with water, and the verse gives way to the chorus:
“I’m the laaast of the good-old fashioned steaaaam...”
I open my eyes. The details of the room fade into sharp, crystal clear focus. I see every exaggerated pore on Eddie’s sharp cheeks, every groove the needle passes through, and the notes and meter of the song become instinctive, the shrill harmonica initiates a psychosomatic muscle response. My foot begins tapping along to the rhythm. I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to. I’m suddenly aware that this is one of my favorite albums, that I played it over and over again in my room back in Brooklyn, and haven’t heard it in years. It’s been too long. I look over at Nadine, who’s propped up on her knees, throwing her hair back with wild abandon.
“Yeah!” I bark. “Yeah! This is wonderful!”
Here it is, kaleidoscopic fervor. The shack is no longer just a shack, it’s a palatial environment, its cracked wood now far more appealing, in that I can make out every splinter, see directly the history of each nail, each screw as they were carried across the Great Basin in a plastic tub. I can see the wrinkles in Eddie’s trenchcoat, the subtle vibrations in his forearms as he snaps on every alternating beat.
I raise my hands to my eyes and turn them over. I feel as if I could make out the molecules in them if I stared hard enough.
“This really is your first time, huh?” Eddie asks.
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Old Hickory never fails to disappoint!” Nadene shrieks. “Expands your fuckin’ perspective beyond belief! God, you’re beautiful. You’re both so beautiful, but you, Jerry- You look so good tonight.” She bounces into the air, crashes back onto the futon like dynamite.
“That’s what it does,” Eddie explains. “Expands your perspective. Gives you insight into things you maybe didn’t have before. Can learn a lot using this stuff. Gives you an edge.”
“Like what?” I stand up, feeling as if all my nerve endings are lit up, all systems go, my neurons firing simultaneously, engrams forever imprinted with all this extraneous information, I’m going to burst open like a ripe watermelon, juices spilling from my core.
“Like try this,” Eddie points to his face. “Look at me. Focus on yourself, and the song, and me. See what happens.”
I do as I’m told.
Suddenly, the furniture warps, and everything grows long, and my field of vision lengthens, as if the room were placed into a spaghetti grinder, I feel something warm and tangible, and then suddenly I’m looking up at myself. Not at Eddie. At me. Office suit, worn-down shoes, baggy flesh. The initial shock wears off, I feel my shirt. Green. Which means-
You’re in me,” he says. “I’m in you.”
No. This can’t be happening. Everything I know about neurology says this can’t be happening, that no psychoactive substance in existence can initiate mind transference, that this must be some kind of collective hallucination I’m having with Eddie, either that or it’s just my hallucination and I’m actually passed out from the stuff on the floor, I must have overdosed. In a blind panic I reach up toward my face, hoping that I don’t feel what I think I’m about to feel, that my senses don’t betray me.
Coke bottle lenses. Thick, ugly, coke bottle lenses. And matted hair.
“Like I said,” he relays, still jamming out to the music, using my body like a spasmodic puppet “Gives you a whole new lease on life, new feel to things when you’re someone else. Go ahead. Root around in my memories, they’re open for you.”
I leave my consciousness, enter a weird new realm, my eyes- or rather, Eddies- eyes- roll back into his skull and I’m suddenly amid a Stygian orange morass, I don’t have limbs but I do have some sort of extremities which I use to traverse a long, abstract list of things, things which don’t quite materialize into concrete form. I can still hear the damned record from way off, echoing through this cave, and I feel as if someone is holding me beneath the waves of a crashing ocean and I’m getting rapture of the deep.
I settle on one of the forms, and it expands around me.
I’m Eddie Verwus, 12 years old and I’ve lived in Pueblo my entire life, have never left. All I know is the enduring sun and the cheap wax cones my mother sometimes buys for me at Dairy Queen when she goes to get her hair done at the salon. My father has his hand on my knee.
“Don’t you listen?” He grabs my chin with his thick, muscular fingers and forces me to make direct, visceral eye contact with him. He’s wearing faded overalls and smells like motor oil.
“Wha-?
“I said! Get better grades! You have ears?” He’s holding my report card, it’s printed on a faded tan fax sheet and is mostly D’s, with two C’s in home economics and wood shop, respectively. Waving it as if it’s the most important thing in the world to him...
He blurs out of focus and now I’m being stretched out again like taffy, pulled and transmuted, and now I’m lying on the mattress- I think I fell down, fainted or something- and Eddie is sitting cross-legged on the floor as the much softer, waning croon of “Monica” drifts out into the space, calm Caribbean beat that eases my tension and helps me breathe.
“It’s about obsolescence,” Eddie goes on from something he had been saying. “About how we’re the last trains. Me, you, Jerry here, all of us. Free thought in a world that discourages it. Refusal to die in a place that’s openly against your existence.”
“What...?” I blink twice. “Did that... did that happen?”
“Oh, look who’s back!” he jests, and Nadene giggles. “Yes, goofball. That happened. Ain’t your imagination. Like I said, you’re just getting used to it. You’ll be able to down twice as much next time. Ain’t he funny, Nad?”
“Yeah. A riot. You’re a riot, Jerry!”
“Oh, fuck,” I mutter, rising to get my coat. “I need to get home. How long was I out?”
“Thirty minutes, maybe. ‘Course, you’ve been here an hour. I’m not sure, we don’t have a clock here.”
“Look here,” I state bluntly, rising to meet him at eye level. “I’ve been more than polite, and I even tried some of your- whatever you call it. But this has gone on long enough, I need to get out of here and back to my normal life or I’ll end up like... like you.”
“Like us, huh?” Eddie says with a note of contempt. “Look, mister doctor man. You might think you know it, think you’ve been around the block, but you ain’t if THIS is so shocking to you. You ain’t seen nothing. Now, I’m more than willing to entertain your hurry, get you out of here in time so’s your wife won’t suspect anything. But we need to think this through, I needed to gather my strength up to push your car out of the muck-”
“It wouldn’t have gotten in the muck if I hadn’t driven it here and you had walked back yourself like you claim you’re so fond of.” The record stops, needle drifts into the center and begins skipping against the paper cutout.
“Right, you have it there,” he expounds. “But it ain’t my fault you’re an ingrate. I’ll help you out, I’ll prove my worth to you. Let me get on my boots.” He sits down, ties both of them thoroughly in under ten seconds.
“I appreciate you, Eddie. But I do need to get home.”
“Right, right.” He picks up a randomly scattered newspaper, holds it aloft. “Lookit this.”
The headline reads, in bold fervent text: “DEATH BY UNION PACIFIC 844.”
“This’s about what I was saying,” he explains. “Happened in 2018, up in Henderson. Some lady got flattened by 844, last steam-powered train in the country, operated by Union Pacific. Only fatality in that engine’s existence.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“It sure is. You know, I think the engine got a mind of its own. You can only go so long being told you’re obsolete, you ain’t worth nothin’, that the world has moved on and forgotten about you- before ya start taking things into your own hands. Think that’s what the train did. Still in operation today. Not going anywhere anytime soon.” I look at his gaze, study his overall demeanor. I’ve been around people like him before, seen them in waiting rooms across the Denver Metro area. His veiled threat is useless on me, and he knows that.
“Well, we’d better get going,” I chime politely.
“Yeah, we’d better,” he agrees, ending the standoff. “You think you’ll be okay here, Nad?”
“Of course. You’re a riot, Jerry.”