Chimera

Box Car Funeral

Chapter One

There is no place to advance from this point. No place to grow, nor expand. Nathan’s seemingly hopeful career had come to a standstill—dormant in the damned dining car of a train. The sound of the rotting rails hitting the rusting tracks was disorienting. Two months of confinement in a velocity addicted box was his idea of Hell. Nathan could no longer differentiate the sound of the train tracks from his own heartbeat. It was as if the two had merged into a metallic yet blood filled beast.

Had they ever asked the Queen of England to drop down from her lofty position in the monarchy to stand in for a Janitor in the London Underground? Then how could he of all the young professionals be demoted to such a remedial placement. He thought venomously and bitterly—while also overvaluing his own importance.

He was a train attendant; his sole purpose was to take care of the passengers (when there were passengers on board, that is). For the past few weeks, the train had been running ineffectually, picking up no passengers and in return dropping no one off anywhere. It was as if the entire world was raptured, save for the train and its crew. In many ways he enjoyed not having to clean up the vomit of overexcited, obese children, but at the same time it was an extremely lonely position.

Nathan wore his black vest of his white dress shirt with distain. He cursed his superiors for having assigned him this monotonous task. He knew that another stop would be inevitable close, so he left on the nagging burden of his uniform. The tie strangled him and the vest felt like it was weaved by an angry seamstress. He pondered going to talk to some of the other crew members aboard the ghost car. He shuddered at the idea—the only other workers were: the illegal immigrant mixing drinks in the back kitchen of the dining cart, who didn’t speak a word of English; the alcoholic conductor, who hasn’t talked about anything but the Vietnam War in his entire time aboard the train; and finally, the onboard mechanic who spends more time listening to ‘ABBA’s greatest Hits’ than fixing the abysmal mechanicals of the train.

He left the dining car, struggling slightly to account for the fast moving train and the ever changing center of gravity. He stumbled down the hallway until arriving at the guest’s quarters. He slid open the door to a dormant room, he collapsed into the small bed and turned on the complimentary television. The television was about thirteen inches across, and was totally engulfed in black and white. He flipped through some of the onboard movies available through the cable service. The only movies available—like always---were educational tourism films that endorsed Ohio as a one stop travel destination.

“I would take a plane over this; or a bike, or I’d even walk! Hell, I’d rather take a city bus with a group of pedophilic clowns than take this train.” He thought to himself: without the break of intelligent human contact or delving into the clean air of the outside world, his mind was stuck in a dark state of malign brooding.

The past months working on the train were in sharp contrast to the usually regal qualities of his life. These dark days had put him into a bad place. His thoughts and mind were so profusely vile that even an on-looking Post Office Worker would think that he was an “asshole”.

The train breached and groaned as the flame tamed its acceleration and its momentum cooled. The train was pulling into a station.

As Nathan heard the lurching sound he immediately arose and dashed back to the dining cart to prepare some snacks and unpack a few bottles of alcohol (considering the slight chance that a passenger may come aboard). Suddenly he heard a laugh in the distance, and people scurrying about: he looked out the window and saw a crowd of approximately fifty people lining the sides of the tracks and the station. Life shot back through Nathan as if he had been restored to his initial purpose.

He rushed to the front door and emphatically took and clipped the tickets of the boarding passengers. The rushed boarders took their places in the dining car. He made certain that each passenger had been seated with accuracy and precision—his suspicions had become aloof, perhaps this was the day he had so long prepared and trained for!

Although, perhaps not. The train had once again begun to move, nothing had gone to chaos and anarchy as he had anticipated, and for that he was somewhat relieved. He looked into the dining car and saw that several of the passengers were quickly becoming agitated. He wielded his cart full of strong alcohol and proceeded down the aisles. Glass after glass of wine and shot after shot of vodka, the nerves of the passengers began to cool and their angers and fears both blurred and became distorted.

Just as he was pouring a glass of rum for an elderly Irish woman, a violent crash came from the front of the train. The cart was flipped and both Nathan and the passengers were painfully ejected from their restful positions. Vodka was spilling everywhere and the sparks of the crashing light bulbs lit up the cart like a scene from a tragic ballet. Several of the passengers had blood stains and cuts from unpleasant falls, but even Nathan had not the time to tend to them. He instead ran through the front of the train from where the explosion had erupted. He made his way to the conductor car, only to see that the alcoholic conductor was dead. His head had smashed into the windshield ahead of him; the blunt force trauma would have killed him instantly.

Blood had splattered all over the windshield, making it next to impossible to see from the front, however, Nathan could make out something, in the front train, on the tracks that must have caused the abrupt stop. It appeared to be a large truck or obstacle of some sort that the conductor may not have seen. As expected, when Nathan examined the corpse in front of him, there was a bottle of rum spilled over his stomach. The alcohol and the bloodstains on his clothing looked the same. His body must have been at least seventy-five percent rum by now regardless.

Nathan had to know what had stopped the train; he would go outside the train and get a closer look. By the time that he had opened the hatch leading to the exterior, he could  hear the screams of the passengers in the back—searching for loved ones—and possibly limbs, in the dark wreckage of the dining car. He put the screams of the passengers out of his head, he must focus at the investigation at hand. He jumped down from the large step onto the tracks; there were slight fires all throughout the grass in the field in which the train was passing. He went to the obstacle in front and saw a large produce truck blocking escape via the tracks. He looked inside the charred and disfigured fuselage of the truck. There had been a driver inside. Although now wildly decapitated, it was clear that he was dead even before impact. There were too bullet holes in his forehead. It appeared as if they were 2mm shells from a Magnum handgun. Nathan crossed himself out of respect, thinking that perhaps the dead man was catholic and that he would have wanted it that way.

There was a strange connection between the stranger’s corpse and himself. As if the dead man had revealed his darkest and most intimate secrets to Nathan. He could see his final expression, that engrained expression on his eternal face was one of terror and awe, an emotion that quickly awakened Nathan to the present dangers. Nathan was certain that this was not an accident, but in fact, this was the day he had prepared for.