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Excerpt for The Train Demons (The Promiscuist Collection, Single 14) by Al Vee, available in its entirety at Smashwords

The Train Demons (The Promiscuist Collection, Single 14)

Al Vee

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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In this issue:

SINGLE 14

The Promiscuist (Collection 1)

Single 14: The Train Demons

1 Grand Central Terminal 44 platforms 67 tracks 16 Demon Wheels 1 train car 100 passengers 1 redhead 1 complete stop 1 wrong station

The train moved slowly through the bowels of Grand Central Terminal. This underground [1] station was built in the early twentieth century. Since then, an army of faceless drones had built many booths, vaults, tiny offices, and shops in the steel guts of this monster. All those additions swam by in the dark, peering through the dusty windows of the old, ratty train. On the dirty glass, some drops of morning moisture rolled down, washing out winding paths. By evening, the windows will be covered with fresh dust, and a couple of microns of new dirt will stick to the glass over the etched letters «GE Fra Type I & II ».[2]

Despite their shabby appearance, the tracks had been joined to form one of the most subtle wonders of the world: Grand Central brings together 44 platforms and 67 tracks and is the greatest railway station on earth.

Sleepy Photographer ate a banana, desperately watching the floating behind the window plexuses of drifting cables, illuminated by the dead light of scattered, dirty bulbs. He craved a quick shot of whiskey, or even vodka. The smell of Balantine’s followed him all morning, like the scent of an old memory.

Dark reflections of the rectangular ceiling lights shone in the blind train car windowpanes. Behind the passengers in the train, the gray depths of the tunnel penetrated the black patches covering the holes in the walls, crumbling masonry and concrete. They were plastered with cobwebs hiding the aging ventilation ducts. A hundred-year-old brickwork was framed in beads of perspiration above the whitish incrustations of oozing yellow ichor born there in big rains.

In a quick flash of the lamp flowing past, the nickel-sided body of the nearby sleeping train suddenly leaped into the window’s view. Photographer twitched in surprise and straightened his hair. He rummaged in his memory, trying to build an action plan for the week. The thoughts were confused, tangled just like those cobwebs covering the aging ventilation ducts. He didn’t drink coffee after waking in the mornings at home; he drank it at work – one cup as soon as he walked through the door, the second an hour later. Every day the same routine, a repetitious circuit like the needles traveling across the façade of a clock without cease. His two cups of coffee were like AA batteries, if they ran dry, he would stop in midsentence, a toy vibrator needing to be recharged. What's the point in getting a coffee hit at home, if while riding in to Greenville you’ll just fall asleep again?

The train sped up and rushed to the surface, frightening a couple patches of fog. Two passengers – one in front, the other behind – rustled with the music streaming from their headphones, covering the rattle of rails and the lonely wheels’ creaks. The guy who sat in front was hissing extraordinarily loud.

Photographer was trying to avoid thinking about his job, but it didn’t work. The man behind him groaned hoarsely and squeezed out small laughs into his cell, distracting Photographer from distant, pleasant memories.

If someone chatters in front of you – it is half as bad, but when somebody yaps directly into the back of your head, then concentrating on the right things is very difficult, and the brain slips into a groove of everyday worries and anxieties, biting like a drill into the head of every man.

The train sped up and ran briskly, gritting at the rail seams. This sweet metal monster was at least forty years old. She probably caught the hippie days in her prime, and a few seats could be found with the remains of the dried gum and rusted saliva of that generation, firmly adhered to the steel crossbeams.

Morning fog gradually dried up, melting the shreds of litter on rocky embankments of the railway. People jumped up into line at the portal and got off through the open door; shivering, yawning and rubbing their stiff shoulders and backs.

Two stops before Greenville, the train jerked and added the screech of brakes to the usual creaking. The car swayed, and Photographer started leaping up and down, every time a drawn “uuuuh, fuuuuuuuuuck!” being uttered from his lips. The train slowly stopped and snapped her secret levers, somewhere under the floor of the last car. The air conditioners switched off and froze in a stuffy silence. At times some conversation came from the nearby conductors’ compartment. An ugly older brother of the Photographer’s train rushed by and tapped with a crash on the windows, forcing a cloud of obscure dust through the half-open conductor’s window frame.

The passengers remained silent, anxiously looking about themselves. Some of them were still asleep, revealing a pair of teeth or hanging their heads on their chests. Finally, the speakers started wheezing and a hillbilly-accented male voice announced that they had a problem with the wheels on the last car, so all passengers would be taken off the train at the next station.

People sighed obediently. The train groaned and moved slowly. In the last car one could hear the sound of the Demon Wheels. They pushed into the steel bottom and growled at rail irregularities that were invisible to the passengers. The train crawled at a turtle’s pace, and the last car was jerking at the blows from the bottom. Dark forces were attacking the lower compartment, pushing the terrified humanoids out of the last car. The women rolled their eyes, and the men grinned wryly, looking around cautiously and skewing their eyes at the doors between the cars. It seemed that the Demons had climbed in there and were trying to destroy the remaining passengers in the last car. The door slammed all the stronger, and people were jumping out of that twitching shell of scrap metal, like lobsters out of boiling water. Many of them had red faces – they had already been cooked.

Photographer was sitting in his seat and helplessly, torturously burning with rage. He was hot, he was late for work by at least half an hour, and the old train was trying to commit suicide by riding off the tracks. In addition to imbecilic fury, intelligible fear pushed its way through the stale crumbs of unborn words in his throat and whispered weary words of wisdom. The train could really jump off the rails any second. Next to him sat a little girl in pink cloth slippers. She bobbed up and down with her toy store catalogue at every bump, bang, and blow of the wheels, but stubbornly continued dreaming over the new toys she’d later beg mommy and daddy to buy her, screaming to get her way. The colorful freckles on her cheeks blended smoothly into the thin, shiny porcelain skin on her neck. A black scrunchy held her red hair tight at the back of her head.

“A copy of Lola,” thought Photographer, “though she is thinner. And older.”

He recovered from his rage and carefully wiped the red images from his memory, then grabbed his diary. After turning on the yellow Notes screen of his iPhone, he slowly thumbed in the upper left corner: “The Head of a Demon.” Again the train car jumped a few times and came to complete stop near the platform at Portford station, vomiting commuters, most of whom were not fully awake. Photographer stepped onto the platform, pushed in the back by the mighty beer gut of a financial broker in a blue-checkered shirt and a pink tie.

To be continued

Coming Next – Single 15: The Demonoids of Manhattan

1 dream 1 night 100 visions 1 Demon of Morning Twitching

1 incredible day 1 illusion 100 000 pussies

Available at all fine online retailers

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Endnotes

ⁱ Technically, only the platforms are underground. Grand Central Terminal (GCT) – often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central – is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Built by and named for the New York Central Railroad in the heyday of American long-distance passenger trains, it is the largest train station in the world by number of platforms: 44, with 67 tracks along them. They are on two levels, both below ground, with 41 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower, though the total number of tracks along platforms and in rail yards exceeds 100. When the Long Island Rail Road's new station opens in 2016, Grand Central will offer a total of 75 tracks and 48 platforms. The terminal covers an area of 48 acres (19 ha).

The terminal serves commuters traveling on the Metro-North Railroad to Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties in New York State, and Fairfield and New Haven counties in Connecticut. The terminal used to be served by Amtrak, but in 1991 their trains moved to nearby Pennsylvania Station as a result of the completion of the Empire Connection.

Although the terminal has been properly called “Grand Central Terminal” since 1913, many people continue to refer to it as “Grand Central Station.” “Grand Central Station” is the name of the nearby post office, as well as the name of a previous rail station on the site, and it is also used to refer to a New York City subway station at the same location. (Wikipedia)

ⁱⁱ GE – General Electric, FRA – Federal Railroad Administration