Between Stations

A revision of my previous story, 'A Trip to Mars.'

Between Stations

 

by: Patrick Wilson

 

            “So a car is going to be coming to pick me up tomorrow and take me to the launch site in New Mexico,” Jake said. He was looking down at the floorboards when he said it, unable to face his family. After he said it there was silence, save the explosions, reaching in his window on the fourteenth floor from the street. His father and mother were silently listening to the explosions, his brother stood and left the apartment, slamming the door behind him with a smashing sound, which shook the floorboards and drowned out the sounds of the rioting on the street.

            I thank god that the earthquake finally struck after what felt like hours of silence, and we were forced to evacuate the building. We walked down the rickety steps, creaking and shaking with each of our steps. We reached the bottom of the steps and turned the corner around the cracked concrete walls. Graffiti writing, spelling out the words No Hope in red spray paint, were scrawled across the broken grey walls.

 

            Outside of the building the chaos was astounding. People ran across the broken asphalt in a frenzy of panic. Once there was commerce and commotion filling the streets, now the asphalt was lined with cars, smashed into the sides of buildings and each other. Flames spat from within the vehicles spilling black smoke into the grey skies above. Along the street there were people, lying face down, who had decided to take the end into their own hands. They lay on the cracked streets. Pools of blood formed punchbowls around their broken bodies which they drank from.

 

            To the right of my apartments front door were a couple, hand in hand, each of their faces turned to other. The beauty which comes with death is one which is often not heard of but as I looked at the two lovers, flung from the rooftops by their own helplessness, I smiled at the romance of dying together. My smile faded soon when I noticed my father scowling in my direction, holding my mother whose face was nestled in his breast. 

 

. . .

 

            Three years ago that day I was standing in the backyard of my parent’s home, pulling at the bowtie around my neck in an attempt to loosen its grip and allow me to breath. My date laughed at me. I laughed in return. She took hold of the bowtie and re-tied it looser, as she tugged the sides of the bow she looked up at me, the sides of her mouth curled into a smile, and I looked back into her blue eyes and was lost in the green blue world of her eyes. A flash from our right made us burst out laughing.

 

            “No, no! Get me from my good side!” She laughed at the photographer and she turned and backed into the cavity of my bod, my arms wrapped around her waist as we smiled for the next photo. That night we drunkenly had sex in the back seat of a limousine which I rented to get us to and from the senior ball in my high school’s gymnasium. I never saw her after that night. She had earned a fellowship grant to study over summer in New Hampshire, though we promised to stay in touch. I wondered whether or not she was already dead.

 

. . .

 

            When the tremors had subsided enough we returned to the building, through the doorway, stepping over the piles of debris, and around the fire pits the homeless had formed. We went down the hallway leading to my door holding our breath so we did not have to breath in the rotting corpse that sat in the corner missing his head; the shotgun pried from his fingers already.

 

            Upon re-entering my apartment, my father walked directly into the kitchen. He searched the cupboard until he had found one unbroken pint glass and took the glass with him into the pantry, emerging with it full of what looked like flat beer. No, that was whisky. His disconnected expression remained unchanged as he avoided my gaze. My mother walked, silently over the floorboards, to the chair beside the window and sitting next to the overturned hydrangea turned her gaze to the broken world, watching the fights on the streets, observing the chaotic destruction below. My brother was among them.

 

            I continued to stare down at the floorboards. I imagined the person who had looked up in the forest, observing the behemoths rising from the dirt, who thought to himself that he could tear them down, shred them to pieces and walk atop them in the comfort of his four walls. I wished that I could tear apart my ticket for the Ark into four equal pieces, give my family the shreds so that they could walk with me on Mars. I heard an explosion in the distance.

 

. . .

 

            Two years ago I was camping with my friends in the forest. Our tents were zipped closed and full of smoke making it difficult to see.  We sat in a circle and passed around a burning joint, laughing at one another in the darkness of the night. I left the den of smoke and emerged among the trees looking around for one which I could pee next to, far away from the camp, but close enough I wouldn’t be lost.

 

            “Hey! zip up the tent your letting it out!” My friend called from inside, I grabbed the metal zipper and closed them in with the smoke.

 

            Soon enough I found a tree where I could do my business. I looked up at the tree and turned away, to my left there was the light from inside the tent, to my right was more of the dark forest with two yellow lights, hovering from behind a bush. I looked harder at the two dots and noticed they were coming closer. I zipped up y pants and stared into the darkness of the forest. Watching as the two glowing dots came closer, and closer. I felt my heart pounding a rhythm so quick in my chest cavity that I was startled by its own beating and heard a low growl.

 

            I grabbed my gut hoping that I was imagining my stomach screaming at me and then I slowly backed away from the yellow dots. Their growling continued and I imagined I saw fire in their eyes. In the distance a howl broke through the pounding of my heart, and the growling of my stomach, and the eyes turned and jumped back into the brush from behind which they had been standing. I turned away and ran back to the tent, out of breath burst through the door and zipped it up quickly. Someone was already passed out in the corner, a belt looped round their arm, a syringe hanging from the blue vein. Someone else plucked the syringe out of the vein.

 

            “What happened?” Someone asked, “You look like you saw a ghost.”

 

. . .

 

            I could hold back no longer and I burst at the seams, like fire hydrants cracked on a hot summer day my tears burst from my face. My mother stood from her seat by the window and walked over to take a seat beside me on the couch and took my hand. My father took the chair beside the couch and placed a comforting hand on my back. I don’t know if he was comforting me or himself but regardless it was working.

 

            “Son?” He said to me when I had calmed down.

 

. . .

 

            One year ago. I sat in the phone booth for a long time. I was leaning against the glass wall of the booth and looking out at the long stretch of road beside it. The phone hung from its metal coil, the tone still beeping from within the machinery. The long dark road beside me stretched through nothingness. Dotted with flickering yellow lights.

 

            I stood up and left the tiny room, my pocket jingled with the coins that I hadn’t put into the machine. Looking at my watch I realized that I’d been in the booth for nearly twenty minute having not entered a single number.

 

            There was not a single person in the gas station, other than the cashier who was preoccupied with the television, it would be easier than I thought. I went to my car, walked around to the trunk and pulled out the black duffle bag that sat alone in the trunk. I looked around me and pulled from the duffle bag and pulled a black hoodie which I pulled over my face, my eyes and mouth the only things visible. Then began to jog over to the store, I burst through the front door and ripped from the bag of my jeans a pistol which was lodged between my skin and the pants.

 

            “Empty the f*****g register mother f****r!” The f****r raised his hands into the air, his eyes droopy and unfocused. I jumped over the counter he stood behind and held the gun to the back of his head.

 

            “Put the money in right now or you’re taking a little trip to meet your Allah m**********r!” Maybe that was a little racist but I was stealing his money I don’t think he much minded the racism as much as he minded getting his brain blown out.

 

. . .

 

            On the way to the launch site the car I rode in was bombarded with crooks and thieves trying to stop me from making my escape. One man jumped on the hood, raised a crowbar above his head, ready to swing on the hood. He was tackled off the hood of the car by my brother, a gesture that served as his secret way of saying goodbye.

 

. . .

 

 

            After I took the fuckers money I drove down the yellow dotted road as fast as I could into the nearest city. I scored that night and as I sat in an alley between a dumpy old apartment and a Laundromat, pressing down the plunger into my choked off arm, a slow rolling droplet fell on the side of my cheek. Then another chased the first and more fell onto my lap from between the buildings. In the distance a train’s horn broke the silent fall of rain.

 

. . .

 

            As I sat in my cab of the Ark, my bunkmate buried deeply in a book, I looked out at the fast fading buildings.

 

            My father’s hands were clasped on my shoulder and he looked me in the eye. ‘Remember Jake,’ he said, ‘a parent is never meant to outlive their child.’

 

. . .

 

                        I awoke the next day not sure of who I was. I looked up to see the sky which peeked out from between the building that had been sitting in front of me, only to find a grey sky. I was confused and looked forward to see what had happened to the building that had originally formed half of the alley and through the iron bars my mother was held by my father nestled in his breast.

 

. . .

            I watched out the window as the buildings sank into a part of the horizon, replaced instead by mountains poking their heads up out of the earth. I looked out at the expanse of blue which sat behind the mountains. I watched as the mountains sank and became a part of the landscape and watched as the roundness of the earth became visible. Within the curve of the earth sat my high schools’ gym, crumbling into heaps, buried in rubble of memory, the mighty forests whose tall trees sat stagnant until their ultimate fall, the alleyway who now houses the many homeless who were left behind, the blue waters, the green forests and the black streets, now all drowning together beneath the ocean of emptiness, that I was now travelling through, on a ship whose destination was mars. As I looked down at the shrinking planet, slowly fading into only the memories of the people aboard this vessel, I thought to myself, ‘what a wonderful world.’

Author's Note

Respond with all criticism about anything you didn't like, found unclear, or stuff that you liked if that happens. Thank you for reading!