Void

There you are, going about your business in the underground--not hurting anyone not even the purpley bugs that keep trying to remind you they were here first--a massive hole just opens up in the ground, right in your home! It opened up and now it's just there, hanging out, taking up most of the floor. Damn thing isn't very considerate.

So you try to do what you normally do on normal days but of course it's not normal anymore because there's a giant fucking hole in the middle of the floor so now all that you normally do on normal days involves a lot more edging and dancing around on your tiptoes. Try to get some food, gotta walk around the hole first. Need to meed your bathroom needs, make sure you're on the side of the room where the bathroom connects or else you won't make it there. And you don't even think about meeting your bathroom needs in the hole because that's just plain unsanitary.

You stare at it and it stares at you. Of course it wins every time because isn't a pupil a hole anyway? That makes your wonder if maybe all this edging and dancing around on your tiptoes that you've been doing has been on one huge iris around one huge pupil. In any case, it's hard to avoid the hole and you worry occasionally that you'll edge and dance right into the hole itself if you don't concentrate enough. Suddenly being holed up in the underground became significantly less relaxing. Too bad it's already nightfall outside and everyone knows that there are strange predatory things out there where it's more cold than hot and the closest train tracks are high above the ground and don't host crazy siamese boxcars. None that you've seen, anyway.

Next Time

It stabs into your brain, and all you can see is sparks.

Over and over, like it's probing for something, like you could have hidden something in there one purpose just to spite it, but it's still poking around so you don't know what the fuck.

I mean, you broke your head open last night, and something fell out and splat on the ground, so wasn't that it? It keeps stabbing, trying to find whatever you might have hidden from it. Because apparently you're trying to hide something from an inanimate probe.

Before you know it, you're hundreds of miles away, and the train tracks and siamese boxcars and appendages are nowhere in sight. The heat of the ground long dissipated, though once you lived in the sky you now call underground your home. Too bad the bugs got there first because now they won't leave you alone, not even long enough to make a sandwich. You try to get rid of them but they leave a bright purple stain in the wall so you never forget that they were there first.

An avalanche could start at any moment because you won't bother to clear the rocks. You waited too long and now one has gone through your head. Guess how it found its way in?

All the while you emerge from underground occasionally but don't bother trying to fight its gravitational field. Too bad it will inevitably seal you in when the ground turns to ice and all you can see are tiny little points that stick together one on top of the other until all you can see are the insides of your own eyeballs. Try living with that.

And it continues to drill.

Melt

It's done. The coal cars are gone. The siamese boxcar has moved on from your apartment complex, sloughing off the appendage and letting it rot into nothing before you knew it. It fluttered a little but left after a while. The coal cars haven't come back but now the wooden bridge that smells like tar groans from the weight of the siamese boxcar. But it just sits there like it has been, all through the heat and cold and rain and snow and heat. It just sits there and you keep walking like you do every day. All the while red clay mixes with brown grit and nothing's moving but things are changing. They are changing and you can feel it.

The sun will be gone by the time you pass the train tracks tonight. The coal cars are gone and the siamese boxcar is gone and the snow has long melted away but still waits to slip you up on the sidewalk if you're not careful--even if you are careful. You hear a train coming but never see it pass.

Scratches

Oh for god's sake the coal cars are back.



No, nevermind.



Shit, there they are!



. . . well they were here yesterday . . .

You wonder if all this business with the boxcars and flatcars and coal cars is making you insane. The siamese boxcar sits like a bloated whale corpse on the tracks--is it dead? You can't tell. It hasn't moved in months but doesn't smell any different so there's no real way to tell. But with it just sitting there doing nothing other things have started doing something.

Like the damn coal cars. Everything started with the coal cars and then they vanished and now they're appearing and vanishing more rapidly like some distorted film strip. You noticed them for the first time as you made your way by the siamese boxcar and toward the efficient path through the wood--there, further down the tracks behind the siamese boxcar, just sitting there as if they'd been there the entire time. But they hadn't been there when you finally came up for air because even though you were focused so much on how damn hot it was you know you'd noticed if those coal cars were back. You notice them now and continue on your way through the wood but when you return you realize the coal cars aren't there anymore.

The train track behind the siamese boxcar is empty of anything but wood and steel and long wild plants and there are no coal cars to be seen. But then the next day they were there again, and they were still there when night fell, but then they left again the next day. This continued irregularly for days at time and you can never remember what days you saw the coal cars or what days you didn't but you know you saw them there regardless.

But they haven't appeared in some time and now you're not sure if they were ever there at all. You never actually approached the coal cars and how can someone be sure something is there without ever approaching it? You don't even know if there was coal inside. So you decide then that the next time the coal cars appear you will approach them and be sure that they are actually there.

Does the siamese boxcar know?

Coming Up for Air

Coming up for air is hard to do when said air is so bloody hot.

You find it odd that that is the first thing you think of when you do finally succeed in coming up for air--the whole idea that coming up for air is hard to do etc. etc. hot. But you come up for air and breathe it in and wonder just what time it is to make the air so hot in the first place. You don't have time to wonder however because there are more important things to wonder about--such as the boxcar.

The boxcar had grown an appendage back when it was cold and rainy out and not so bloody hot. It had grown an appendage that stretched out toward your apartment complex and it grew and grew and grew until it stretched over a long portion of the tracks, trapping you inside your apartment complex. So what to do in such a situation where you are trapped inside your apartment complex? Well you buckle down and climb over the damn thing.

So you approach the boxcar and its massive appendage and sniff at it. You hoist yourself up onto the nearest flatcar and realize just how dirty it is and wonder where it might have come from. Only a moment later you tumble awkwardly over the other side, landing brilliantly on your knees and scrambling away before the boxcar and its massive appendage can react. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Only, the boxcar and its massive appendage isn't going anywhere. It sits with its enormous girth on the train tracks trapping you in your apartment complex before awkwardly tumbling over it for weeks and weeks--until it gets tired. And by getting tired it begins to change things.

The chain link fence allowing you to tumble awkwardly over to the other side of the boxcar and its massive appendage suddenly closes up like a holey wound. Instead of climbing over the train you decide to simply walk around it, following the train tracks until you find a bit of woods to travel through. And you do.

Until the boxcar and its massive appendage then sends the trees toppling over in the middle of the night blocking your route through the wood before you discover a more efficient path through the wood that doesn't involve vaulting over trees or tumbling awkwardly. Life goes on in such a manner until one day it doesn't.

It doesn't and you find yourself coming up for air that is so bloody hot. Crawling out of the dirt between the tracks of the railroad you realize in wonder that the boxcar has somehow sloughed off its massive appendage, leaving it a siamese boxcar instead. How curious. The fence is still closed up and the trees are still knocked over but at least you have that efficient path through the wood and no need for awkwardly tumbling or even touching the siamese boxcar anymore. Although you did notice as you stumbled wearily toward your apartment complex that there is a large white bag inside one of its two boxcars and it looks quite full.

But first, a good bath would be nice.

Appendage.

It's still there--and it has friends.

Every day, back and forth, you see that boxcar. In fact, it's been there, unmoving, for nearly a (leap year) month now. Only thing is, as mentioned, it has friends. A few days after the boxcar mysteriously appeared, several flatcars appeared behind it--a whole army of them. If you can consider eight to be sufficient for an army.

Nevertheless, they're there and somehow someone managed to attach them to the back of the boxcar without having to move the boxcar itself, as if the transporter just sunk into the ground back to hell from which it came. Hellcars, perhaps? Yes, it would be a damn good theory if hell was an actual place but because it isn't it's not.

Every day, back and forth, you see that boxcar and its flatcars behind it, seemingly growing appendages to snake into your apartment complex, getting longer and longer the more time passes without its departure. Yes, you see it but does it see you?

It's been cold and raining these past two days so perhaps the boxcar is too busy being cold and rainy to worry about you now you know. You should be busy worrying about being cold and rainy as you pass the boxcar and its flatcar appendage just as the sun wanders down the horizon, unseen behind the grey ink all splattered and covering everything up and leaking onto the ground, making it cold and rainy.

Strange Company

You saw it. Saw it with your own eyes, as opposed to someone else's, which would certainly be one hell of an anecdote to tell at parties, wouldn't it, but anyway you did--you saw it and it wasn't moving but it wasn't coal cars.

It was a boxcar, a single boxcar sitting on the train tracks in front of your apartment complex. Just sitting there as if it had been there the whole time, an unassuming lump of steel and god knows what else. Why? Who in all the drecks of this planet would just leave a boxcar sitting on the train tracks in front of your apartment complex just yards away from where those apparitious coal cars had once been? Where the hell is the train and how the hell is it going to get its boxcar? The mind boggles.

But then again it's also the same day that the sun was shining bright and it wasn't too cold out but there were still clouds the color of pitch lumbering through the sky so who has time to think of boxcars, really? It was going to rain at any moment and yet it's been hours since you were outside but it is plain to see that the sun is still shining just as carefree as it's been since nine a m that morn.

But damn, that boxcar.