by Myrrick J. Liontonia
The Station:
I only had ten dollars to my name and even less left on the tab of my soul. It was one of those late freakishly impossibly hot end-of-October scorchers where you lay around your dump of an apartment like a fly buffet. One of those days the devil reminds us that even in the fall we are fair game to fry.
After I fried the third over easy egg on my belly. My tummy was swollen like one of those Ethiopian babies you see Sally Struthers saving in between her trips to KFC. I decided it was time for me to drag my sweaty rump to the mirror in the John to see kinda wretch is about to walk out into certain Hell. I needed to clean up all the pizza’n’beer face grease that had developed in my shady, swampy hibernation because today was the day to see Rosemary again.
Rosemary, or Rosie as I liked to call her, was a polish gal that lived in on the south side of Chicago, in Pilsen to be more specific, while I resided in the polish neighborhood. She was about five foot seven, somewhat broadly built; hazel eyes the size of silver half dollars, and ruby red lips to match her corkscrew hair & name. When I first met her she was into dyeing her hair many colors but after seeing her natural hair color in pics from late high school/early college I eventually convinced her to strip most of the dye out of her head. She listened but the damn blonde dye was strong and it left her with an exotic accidental head of fire. Hot damn, hot gorgeousness. I couldn’t resist, I also couldn’t resist her cooking, ya’ know, the way to a man’s heart and all that jazz. Like I mentioned before I live in the Polska side of town so I considered myself an aficionado on kielbasa and the like, but she rocked my yankee world with the best homemade slaska sausage, potatoes and sauerkraut (super-secret-family-recipe) this side of Warsaw.
So there I was a spring bee in the middle of the fall buzzin’ an’ a courtin’, buzzin’ an a courtin’ until she invited me into “the rose garden” the only place that I assumed could surpass “krautland”. After our first close encounter of the carnal kind I had to admit that the finest meat she had in her arsenal was her tongue, diamond shaped and crimson to be enjoyed with a fine Chianti. The shape of her body made hourglasses scream and jump off the table in hopes to join Lake Michigan beaches’ fine assortment of broken glass and sand over competing with her curves, I’d seen it with my own two eyes. Good God I had a sickness for that thickness and I take off my hat on behalf of me and all the other wolves before me. But I digress...
I had to meet up with my sweetness so I washed my face, shaved, took a good’n’wet shit and scrambled out the door towards the Blue Line. I had fucked my leg up the week before from Fred Flintstoning the asphalt to slow my bike down. This was done to keep some drunkard from trampling me under his BMW rims when he peeled out of that royal douche club Excalibur. Figures ya’ know. It always seems to be the mega rich or mega poor that’ll hit ya with their cars, the middle class is too afraid of the lawyers that another person of greater, equal, or lower social status has in their back pocket. Lawyers can take a soft-scoop looking pile of shit you just accidentally stepped in and turn it into a turd whirlpool for you to drown in.
Point is I was limping towards the giant iron horse with the goal of coitus. Not boots of cement swirled with lead could keep me away from Rosie on this particular day my friends. She had promised me that this specific visit a rather paradisiacal one, one in which all pleasure would be delivered to me sitting down as to not agitate my leg. She said that I shouldn’t even get up to scratch myself. Bless that sweet woman and her pity towards the gimp that was me. If Rosie only knew how much of a hard-on the sun was getting from cooking me she’d know that I’d be incapable of much more than that. Seriously, the purple flowers of the Green family browned before my black irises that planned the blue steps of my feet, which were shot red with pangs of agony. Needless to say my endeavor to the CTA via blue line platform was a hobbled one; one where once I arrived, I dizzily watched the 90/94 traffic whiz by like gnats towards a broken jar of Ain’t-Jo’-Mama syrup.
Then the gimp (me) heard a message from the CTA speaker along the platform; the CTA guard was apparently underwater.
(This next sentence is to be read in garbled-practically-unin-fucking-telligible-distorted-english)
“Psh, psh-bac, bac-we regret to -psh, psh-ooo- that we - garble- gash-garble will be running ex-ex-psht-press for an’-vuun-kak-number of pst-crack- ‘rain cars-pst-fa-ank you-psttt”Luckily I speak Underwater Conductor and made out from that noisy mash that I had some waiting to do. Furthermore I knew that my ass being gimpy, plus my general CTA luck, plus me being in a hurry for some good ole fashioned sit-down satisfaction, equals gOD making me sit with my thumb up my arse on an uncomfortable bench to cook in the sun. Fortunately, that left my other thumb free to crack open one of the beers that I pack for the trek to Pilsen. “Be prepared” Scout Leader Mark always said, I always liked him.
I’d cracked and drained four brewskis ‘fore the first train Shinkansen’d past me, Osaka style. It barged through at a speed that whipped the toupee off an old man’s cueball head as he sat expressionless looking into the midday sun. The sonic boom of the train carried me in my buzzed, sweaty, disoriented state and I did a backwards somersault over the garbage can and almost butterfly-kicked a six year old girl in the head. Eventually old man James got up, picked up his headpet, and sauntered to the exit. Some people, old and crazies mainly, feel at ease just sitting and watching trains roll in and out. Not me though, nothing is more grating than watching trains go by.
The little girl I nearly decapitated stood over my head licking her butter pecan ice cream cone that she shared happily with the ground. I turned over on to my back at tortoise speed and moaned what would be a sonic equivalent to a “white flag” towards the sun. While I was down I flicked off the CTA speaker that mocked me just the same. I felt bested so it was time for a nap to get well rested.
For a thousand years I must have passed out as the sun’s favorite concubine. A mouse woke me up at one point with a tug to my ear. “Meester! Meester!” he cried “Can ju turn jour can to lay on ee-ts side so me and leester can wet our leettle rat wheeskers?”
I groggily turned the can over and decided that if even the rats are dying of thirst so could I if I moved too much. Sudden or even lethargic movements could equal more sweat and dehydration. It clearly was only in my best interest to lie down until my Freon loaded chariot arrived. I was sure of it. Five more express trains passed and with each passing train I made sloth-like advances in my break for the shady bench of sunless sanctuary. The one near the nearly dessertificated Lake Butter Pecan that little girl left. Clearly this pig-tailed little brat was in cahoots with the one who made the sun so fucking hot as she didn’t care to make the “lake” big enough for late arriving visitors to share. Kids these days.
Just as I pulled myself under the shady bench by the orange-on-white rusted steel base bars a lotus landed on my nose and did a jig. Cross-eyed I queried, “what is meant by all this?” My little green friend kissed the bridge of my schnoz, winked, and then flew off into the big gaseous lemon drop of death in the sky. All I did know what it was time for another drink or maybe something stronger.
Another seven “express” trains dragged on in a fashion that made their misnomer not only an oxy moron but also a hot and cruel joke. I drank my last two beers in the interim of the seventh and eighth train. It was those beers (and probably heat stroke), plus a raging libido charged by Rosie’s sweet red velvet tongue’s songs of sitdown, Good-Times-USA pleasure that caused me to think to myself, “how would one of my favorite action heroes, John McClane of the Die Hard series, handle this scenario?”
I then heard from a familiar voice from the direction of the wretched daystar, “Well yippie-ki-yi-yea muthafucka! Get that leg, son!!!” I turned slowly towards the voice. The little white dots of radiant disillusion swam and swirled until a silhouetted figure that seemed to walk directly out of the center of the sun began to come to form. It was none other than Bruce-mother-fakn-Willis, late 80’s style with the chestnut archipelago of hair as opposed to the raincloud gray atoll of today. He stood over me like a mountain and then extended a hand to help me up. We stood almost eye to eye both looking totally worse for wear. I, a victim of CTA malfeasance and he had bloody arms, face, and chest. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He wore a ripped up wife-beater, khakis, and no shoes like he just stepped off the first Die Hard movie set. He took a long drag from his fag, exhaled and handed me the square that had an oddly burning cherry, purple in color. I took a drag and it tasted like butter pecan ice cream mixed with a warm Old Style beer, an obscure combination I admit but I couldn't resist it’s novelty so I took another drag and handed it back to Bruce.
“You know…you gotta go through certain death sometimes to get the woman,”
he said with a wink. I thought to myself John McClane more than any man understood that.
“You bet I do” he seemed to say with his eyes and not his lips.
“So what do you suggest?” I queried not quite ready to hear what Capn’ Badass here was gonna tell me to do. Then a nod and a single laugh was directed at a point thirty eight degrees to the left of my eyes.
“Thought you’d never ask” he then drew in a god-sized drag and then blew out what was the best smelling ganja smoke I have ever smelled. Sho’ ‘nough I look down at his smoking hand and the cig went through a Mary Jane Makeover, glowing now a shade of what I must describe as gamma ray green.
“I strongly suggest you take a hit, ‘cause I’m gonna lay down some serious shit.”
I looked cross-eyed at this gem of THC as he spoke and when I readjusted my eyes to Bruce I found that a far more startling transformation had occurred. His eyes were blue flames that his brain must’ve caught and kept as pets inside transparent marbles.
“What’s been the trouble getting business done today?” He said in a voice that was trying not to let smoke escape his lungs too soon, all while passing me the joint. Every syllable changes the flittering rate and size of infernos that were his eyes.
“Well I......” (pause to take a hit) “...can’t seem to catch a train for the life of me” (single cough with the exhale) “damn this is good.”
“The best you could ever dream of” he said with a wink “now what about this catching a train....have you noticed anything peculiar about events on the platform today, any straaaaaange activity?” he looks at his hand, let out a good laugh, takes a hit, “present company excluded” he concluded with a smirk. He passed the joint and I sat for a minute thinking, ha, no-no-no more so transfixed than thinking, but stoned definitely. I looked down the platform and saw a baby black bear in a burgundy vest and a bowler hat juggling fireballs while a door mouse in a tux coat spun plates on his nose. I looked a little further down the ledge and I spotted a bulltoad with a derby hat who over saw the whole spectacle. He croaked a jerky melody, while stomping and clapping a “boom-chick” rhythm. To his right a cat in rocketship pajamas diddled his fiddle and a baby wolf in a tan leisure suit segued finger acrobatics on a guitar neck and added howls to the frog’s laments.
They sounded a mess but eventually I could decifer what they played. It was a medley of Django Reinhardt’s “Dinah”, “Nuages”, and “Daphne”. Then I spotted that halfway between me and the animal parade was a woman and her child. The woman had the look of a mother stone, worn and cracked from acid rain and cold barley soup. Her dress so big, oversized, and calico, it laid on her like a burqa a cowgirl would proudly sport. The child made a bridge between her mother’s neck and hip cotton canyons with her right arm and left leg. Her left hand a saliva thumb drill firmly inserted in to the refinery of her lips that continued to run though she was fast in a little person’s deep sleep that we can only “dream” of attaining. A few minutes must have past where I avoided answering the surreal by observing it some more.
Full of it I gathered my remaining brain power to answer Bruce. “I’ve waited for trains that won’t come, trains that are built to taunt not transport, they taunt and taunt like big-fat kindergarten bullies. They tease so hard and each time they go by they get slower and slower and slower. It’s like I could just hop on to one of them they move so fucking slow now, god fucking dammit!!!!”
No sooner had the gripes left my lips that I realized Bruce had extracted the gold solution from my own lead tongue. He wiped my shouted saliva from his face and grinned bigger than before. I slant my delirious, stoned eyes and all but murmured, “So that’s it, eh? Just jump onto a moving fucking train. That’s the idea? Got it.” Bruce nodded and handed me the joint or what was left of it. I believe he did this for my nerves and so he’d have two hands from to light the next cigarette. I took a final drag and saw that the quartet had shifted into a tribal percussive drone/chant of sorts. Like the kind used to breathe even more life into a sort of initiation or rite of passage. I felt my arm, back, and leg hairs shoot up straight and petrified like the hands of a bank teller at the wrong end of Doc Hollywood’s smoking gun. The animal collective’s eyes were now a snake’s in shape and crimson red as blood. The dusk sky was the headless horseman’s jack-o-lantern, full and ablaze. The ensemble now switched between their native howls and calls to serpentine hisses and lunatic tongues. I turned to Bruce whose eyes also transformed to that of a snakes and his skin looked as though it completed a ninety-day trial period at the morgue. His once clotted and stagnate wounds now poured to life with an ooze with the viscosity of a high school science class volcano.
“Wait around too long on connecting with the woman my man and you’ll wish you were dead!” He pulls the cig from his lips and a smoke bellows from his flaking purple lips. “You don’t! Wanna! Get! Punk’d!!!” he screamed as he bent at the knee and let out a cackle fitting for Satan himself. He flicked his cigarette and reached his hand behind his back and shot me an eerie grin, “Hocus Pocus” he whispered and preceded to pull out a harmonica built of white gold and encrusted with diamonds. Upon closer look I saw that it read “Planet Hollywood” and the “y” of “Hollywood” had a devil tail. That’s when I realized what or should I say whom I was dealing with.
“Time for you to catch yer train lova’ boy!!!” he barked in a voice I wish I never heard. He sounded like a werewolf with his head under water with a tiny dash of giant Barry White’s low baritone talking voice. He raised the metal harp to his lips and started shredding a Steve Vai level blues solo in B-flat that ended with the sound of a steam engine whistle. He blew those two notes ‘til he was blue in his gangrene face. Low an’ behold the slowest moving choo choo of the day appeared down the tracks. It wasn’t a normal train but one of the original green CTA cars. Bruce turned around to see the iron horse that he doggie-called. Upon reaching visual satisfaction he let out a single “HA!” and whipped back around to me.
“All aboard to pussycat palace!”
“You gotta be fucking me?!”
“That’s the point...well I’m not doing the fucking of you but you get the general idea, ya know with Rosie.”
“Can I ask why you’re doing this? Isn’t your line torturing people in hell an’ such, not helping skeezy rockhounds like me get laid by any means necessary?!”
“You mortals are too black’n’white to see the gray paradise that me and the fatso upstairs have carved out for you on this lil’ blue pearl” he growled with a headshake.
“You go get laid and it’s points for me from your acts of drunken debauch & coitis. You fuck up and not pull out in time my boy and no problem, you’ve made another stupid soul that becomes a tennis ball for God and I to volley over the net of life. You can’t win...however you can’t lose...that is unless you don’t get to that hot polish ptitsa tonight!!!!”
I looked around for salvation and then I realized that there were absolutely no cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc on the 90/94 that sandwiched the CTA tracks at the Addison station. No cars on the viaduct above the station, no satellites in the air, and a full ceiling of stars lit the sky (a first in Chicago in almost a century). The constellations seemed to move in accordance to their natural reactions to their bright, gassy neighbors. A man, a musical zoo, a vagabond and child, a train and Beezlebub were all that existed from all I could stand a witness to.
“You can’t afford to let this one pass by boyyyyy!” He clapped his hands together and giant steel doors that didn’t exist before his rotting green mitts smacked against one another shut off all exits, escalators, doors, stairs that lead to the outside of the station. Boy Satan was really putting the screws to me. Truth be told I wasn’t scared, more just irritated as piss that I couldn't kick him in his big red balls without some hellish, diabolic repercussions.
“Go ahead hot shot kick me in the balls. No matter the condition of my balls be they kicked in, mashed, pureed; I’m still gonna teabag homegirl Rosie. Your puss’ ass ain’t doin’ shit but preparing to fry earlier than your once fated date sssssonny boyssssss!!!!”
He whipped his head back and exposed a nine-inch long slimy tongue and it slithered to and fro along to the now almost deafening rhythms the animals are pounding wildly in the background. Then the Devil snapped his fingers and in an instant six foot flames rose on both sides of the platform. His serpentine eyes flickered and filled themselves with red infernos to match Martha Steward here’s lil’ ole custom border. His voice changed to German terrorist Simon Gruber’s from the Die Hard with a Vengeance movie.
So you got twelve seconds to decide,
Do you live? Do you die?
Do you take my fire or the fire of her hair?
Tick Tock Tick Tock, six seconds to declare.
Do you fry now? Maybe you should take your time
Do you fry later? Either way your soul is mine
After his poetry verse his lower jaw started to protrude four times past normalcy, revealing six-inch long canines glowing yellow with saliva. The first car of the train was now riding up next to the platform and I started to edge towards the train tracks and the border of flames. I couldn’t tell what was hotter, the flames near my shoulders or Satan’s hungry ass hell-breath, but I sure as shit didn’t wanna stick around to find out. Beezlebub raised a newly clawed hand as big and leathery as a catcher’s mitt and that was my cue to Geronimo through the flames and catch on to the car connector chain. I leapt with all faith I had left through the flames and landed my good foot on the cheese grater ledge that bridges the train cars.
A little crispy I adjusted myself between the train cars to find only temporary relief because the slow train speed allowed the devil to catch up. He swung his big-ass lizard man talons at me; I ducked once, sparks flew from the claw to steel contact, I ducked again and I nearly go to see my own guts. Then I saw him brace for an uppercut and I knew I had to reach higher ground. I jumped for all my life’s worth and got atop the more forward moving train car but not before he got a delicious slice off on the lateral side of my calf. I screamed bloody murder but it was soon eclipsed by the otherworldly banshee shriek provided by this Die Hard Sonavabitch. I looked back and it seemed he ran ball sack-first into the platform sensor light. Bless you Train Tracker, your previous lack of warning about.....well, umm….. the devil, has be pardoned! “Looks like you’re gettin’ the mashed balls but no ptitsa, you shape shifting scumbag!!!” I cockily yelled.
He rose and pounded his fist through a CTA bench then lifted up what hadn’t been splintered and threw it onto the tracks behind the train. He spit and baby rattlesnakes materialized upon impact and then slithered away. He glared at me, the flames in his eyes rising higher until they burst out of his sockets and then engulfed his entire skull. “You’re very, very late buddy boy! Let me give you a hand...or maybe two!” He then clapped a mighty clap that foreshadowed the sonic boom that ensued. In it’s aftershock the nitrous tanks in the train engine must’ve ignited. I had enough time to squeeze out the “OH” in “OH SHIT!!!” before the car moved at warp speed down the rickety steel tracks. Clinging on to the roof bars for dear life I realized that aside from my natural desire to not buck this steel bronco I also had about ten seconds at this speed to figure out a way to avoid getting leveled by the tunnel before the Belmont blue line stop. My heart was pumping like a ‘69 Mustang piston. Using all my abdominal strength I worked my legs over like a gymnast into an arching back bend then pushed off the roof and allowed the jet train to help my legs themselves careen through the glass window of the rear door of the car. I connected with a KER-REE-TSHHH!!!! By a miracle I was on the train but would it take another to get off?
On the Train:
They say that the average heart rate during running approximately 130-132 beats per minute. Well mine was beating at least 185 beats per minute as I got my bearings on the floor of the train car. I also hadn’t taken a breath since that diabolical jerk took off a slice of my leg. I looked like a pitiful piñata lying on its guts of glassy hard candy. “Shit, my leg!” I thought. I looked down and assessed the damage, which was in the two to three out of ten range. I got lucky, I guess. I took off my blue bowling shirt and tied a quick tourniquet. I then drew my wife beater that I had in my bag and put that on as to have some “decency” aboard this speedy, jerky train ride. I looked up and saw a packed train with all heads facing eerily forward, unmoving. How could no one have heard my barbaric entrance and turned around to see if someone was hurt or if anyone was about to get hurt by the noisy fiend who just entered the rear of the car like the Kool-Aid Man? I forced myself to believe that they probably did at first and chalked it up to another crazy CTA story to tell their friends. After I was on my feet I had to take a minute to take in this retro CTA car. The interior of the train car not slathered with gaudy plastic advertisements and polished metal framing. No A/C units, no metal balance bar, no emergency brake ball, and sure as shit no little cubby hole couplet seats ripe for the pissing, shitting, and resting that’s to be executed by Chicago’s finest bums. Instead the car was filled with rickety, thin framed chairs with green and yellow upholstery that looks like grandma’s pin cushions.Then I noticed that the first seat to my right was open and nicely enough next to a blonde bombshell looking woman; double fucking lucky I guess! She had kind of a Veronica Lake, 40’s era glamour thing going on with her long beautiful mane covering the left side of her face, but her body was all curvaceous 60’s starlet Anita Ekberg, Yowza! With her tight fitting black satin gown shrink-wrapping her generous portions of mammary, she provided a great distraction to temporarily forget the events of the day and the current creepy cricket concert that was the soundtrack of our train.
I slithered into my seat and checked my appearance on the back of my silver iPod. Damn, I looked like hell or something close to it. Well shit, maybe that’s because I had come something close to it. So this girl was begging for me to make a verbal move, whether I looked like a bum or not. This wouldn’t be the first time a weathered, fucked up looking man hit on her on the train and sure as hell not the last.
Now I know what you’re thinking, “What about Rosie, the girl all this is for?”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well remember what Satan said? Trying to get laid whenevers, wherevers, and by whosevers is a gift to God and to the Devil and frankly talking to this starlet would just warm me up for the fire I planned on starting inside of Rosie. So I proceeded to pop a Tic-Tac, wipe the sweat from my brow, and plan my move. Oddly enough I hadn’t had a good look at her. When I sat down as I was already in a default creeper mode via my appearance and kept my eyes relatively forward. Now that I sat down the story wasn’t much better, from my peripheral her hair provides a strong fortress of anonymity. She had a ginormous ring with a clear crystal that enveloped a round luscious ruby; it rather resembled an eye with a red iris, as the crystal was in an oval shape. What I could see that big ring do was lift her makeup as she “put on her face” like so many women I see on the train.
(Sidenote: Ladies, how and why the hell do you some of you put on eyeliner on the train? The train is the most unstable place since the Bates Motel, ten times shakier than Frisco, and somehow that’s the place you choose to apply eye makeup. With pencil no less!)
Thirty seconds passed and with her whole drop dead gorgeous figure heaving in my peripheral vision and I couldn’t take it no more, I had to say something. “Listen baby, I’ve had a devil of a day and I just need some kindness and conversation. Whadda ya’ say, can we talk like those twentieth century folks use to do on the train?” She turned towards me slowly and I witnessed that the her face was ripe with decay. What laid past the big wave of blonde hair was skull and sea-foam green skin. Her flesh around her nose, eyelids, and lips looked as though birds had picked it clean. Her irises expanded and retracted at the prospectus of having the first dick in over half a century and she methodically slithered her half missing tongue over her top row of her big yellowish brown teeth, as though her former lips big, full, and red still existed in their once jaw dropping form.
I let out a squeak a mouse would’ve been jealous of. After my squeak a four inch long cockroach crawled from what the maggots left of her right ear, across her face, and into her mouth, where she promptly chomped down thus squirting green roach guts all across her mouth and onto the bridge of my nose. Cross-eyed and queasy I decided I could take no more. I stood up very slowly, and doubled backwards towards the aisle only to be halted by what had to be the sounds of the undead. I turned towards the rest of the train to find a hive full of very, very hungry ass zombies. There were rows of them of all shapes and sizes, each one more miserable, ugly, decrepit, and hungry looking than the previous. They inched closer to me like vultures around a stag fresh from a lion’s maiming. They were all hissing, glaring, and drooling.
I was saying under my breath the few words of the “Hail Mary” I could remember from St. Mary’s when my zombie girlfriend, “Anita” let’s call her, grasped my hand slowly and tried to squeeze out the best doe eyed lover girl glance in my petrified direction. I stared into her vacant eyes and mouthed pathetically “Help Me Please....Now?” Five seconds of what felt like an eternity passed and she after she was done staring at me, vacant as wood, she nodded.
She rose and covered me with her twelve outta ten undead body then clapped two times repeatedly in a gypsy, two-step type of rhythm. A sultry zombie belly dance commenced and the moans of hunger turned to moans of intrigue and desire. I ever so slowly edged towards the car’s rear door trying hard to not make to much noise stepping on the broken glass from my bombastic entrance. My undead angel then let out a scream that even the other zombies cringed and cowered from and she whipped around to rip her dress open from the top to the bottom thus exposing me to the biggest pair of rotten tits I had never hoped to see. She must have had water seepage in her casket because there was a U-shape of green moldy skin on her cleavage that set itself apart from the rest of her gray skin almost like a tan line of differential decay. Worse yet her areolas had little pus covered wriggling tentacles that upon a vomit-inducing closer look appeared to be maggots. These maggots also danced along to her two-step, boom-chick rhythm. The “stiff” crowd gasped in anticipation. She gave me a good sultry hip sway and sour cream jiggle-jiggle and then turned to her moaning, adoring audience of undead goons. A roar of blood curdling proportions cued my kangaroo hop through the rear door window of the train car. With my back leaned up against external door I had to make a plan. While she had saved me I was sure they couldn’t defile her for too long, I mean shit, half their dicks, tongues, fingers, and lips had rotted off! I had to get away from this CTA car and pronto. I looked right in front of me at the rusty old, vintage clamp that kept these last two cars together. Eureka! I hopped to the caboose and kicked the flimsy lil’ clamp and bon voyage. I laughed heartily as I watched that horny hive of horrid’n’hungry heathens fly down the tracks and outta my hair. I was safe again... for now.
Off the Train:
Sitting on the edge of the car sighed and searched my bag for my cigarettes. Upon finding them I looked up to take in my surroundings. To my left, a lone, halteded modern CTA train car sat on the eastbound side of the station as if to say “hey, welcome back to the un-zombified 21st century”. To my right a CTA UIC-Halsted blue line stop swung melancholy rhythm in the night air. Ah yes UIC, my Alma Mater, not a fucking thing you taught me helped out tonight but you’re a sight for sore eyes. In all your majestic boring gray stone and sleepy steel, a sight for sore eyes.Found my smokes; I had three left. I counted that as one for me now, one when I see Rosie (we’ll split that one), and one for me when I’m on the pleasure seat blowing off steam. Squares rationed, I lit one and exhaled a swirling smog head that looked like a little girl’s arms desperately reaching out for mother night to save her. At that point I noticed the sky, which was just as disturbing as the rest of the fright night. The moon, a blood orange cut in half with a ”Ninja Turtle Ooze” green haze of gas hovering the surface. It stood there menacingly in the red velvet sky. With the random assortment of craters it seemed to be grinning at me, gave me the willies.
I slapped my face as if to snap out of it but I looked up again and now I swear its haze had formed into horns. I couldn’t take it anymore; the train, the jungle quartet, the zombies, Bruce-fucking-Willis for Pete’s sake and now my blessed moon is being distorted. I scanned for more morphing mischief and noticed that the highway was still empty, this feeling of aloneness was really tweaking me out. “Oh, Rosie…” my brain sighed to itself. She’s been waiting all night and probably is worried sick and probably more than a little pissed, rightfully so. Shit, I never took a moments in all this madness to call her. I reached for my phone and frantically found her contact entry.
“!Network busy, call failed!” flashed from my phone screen.
“Horseshit!” I exclaimed. I looked at my service bars; full and mocking. I tried calling my buddy Adrian and yielded similar results. I called my bandmates, my Uncle “A”, Little Clown Pizzeria, etc. All unable to connect. Then I thought to try the only number I know by heart anymore in this age of electronic contact lists, my folks number. When I punched in the digits only the number six appeared and they grouped themselves in groups of three. After I dialed a screen full of 666-666-666’s a tremor hit my phone and displayed a call from a contact I’d never seen before but should’ve expected. “Mr.Lucero del Diablo” flashed on the mini monitor. Gooseflesh covered my body and my thumb slowly reached towards the “accept” button.
“Hello?” apparently the little mouse had returned to my throat as I squeaked those two syllables.
“Why hell-ooooooo my dear how was the ride? As you could tell I gave you the privilege of a slightly faster moving express train since I wasted so much of your time earlier. I’m also sorry for the train company, I know it was hard to cope with a bunch of stiffs.” He ended with a couplet of laughs.
The Devil’s voice was very similar to Tim Curry’s; not the Devil he played in Legend but the loony doctor he played in Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“Yea I guess you were a little bent over your smashed huevos, understandably so for a big, red jerk like yourself.” My annoyance provided me with bigger balls and smaller brains.
“Tsk, tsk. I have all night to collect your flimsy soul {said with rising intensity} and you’re still an unarmed mortal with his dick in his hand and a thumb up his ass!!!! {he calmed down} Speaking of taking it up the ass does Rosie want all of the Devil’s cock to provide her with all the sit-down ‘pleasure’ she can get or just the tip that’s a coke-can’s width?”
I exploded. “You shut your filthy, fucking mouth or I’ll…”
He interrupted with a tongue of C4. “Or you’ll what??!! Spit childish vulgarity I practically taught you shaved slackjawed apes???!!! Spare me, it’s like being a comedian hearing an annoying random acquaintance tell you your early jokes poorly over and over again. More over you just screw your own little ass over more screaming and crying with the Leviathan being a light sleeper and all…” I could see the creepy smirk his lips branished through the phone
“What are you talking about?” I said cool and sharp.
“Surely you must have peered curiously at least once into the “safety” caboose you hopped onto that separated you from foolish, horny zombieland?” Small strings of exponential chuckles escaped his lips, “Surley”.
I ranted in whispered hysterics “I can’t fuckin’ believe this! You gotta be fucking kidding me!” {in a mock game show host voice} “He’s jumped through fire onto a possessed, mid-century train, escape zombies, smoked weed with Bruce Willis who just so happens to be the Devil, but wait there’s more, what do we got for him Lucio?!”
“I’ve lived for centuries, millennia, eons, epochs, the paradoxical collapse of dimensions and have seen hellions swallow solar systems and galaxies whole, however I’m a real shit at describing things. It’s the other guy who’s good at storytime and fantastical happy horseshit. I’m just the Agent Smiths in the video game ‘Matrix’ of life who have a constant unfair, rapetastic edge from not caring how the worlds and systems are put together but more care on how to rip them apart. So I won’t describe what’s on the other side of that pancake thin door, I just ask that you not be rude and see what I cooked up. You’ll need to go back to school for this one you dumb schmuck.”
He hung up thus ending transmission. I could see him spitting his last sentence through grinning, four inch tall pearly white, jagged yet miraculously tessellating teeth. I slowly slid the phone into my pocket and with the vigor of a sloth rose to peer into the train car window. Sure enough a nine-foot tall Minotaur stood hunched at the other end of the train car snarling, hyperventilating, and foaming at the mouth. His fists sledgehammers, his arms steel I-beams, his horns two blood crusted pickaxes, and his nostrils exuded liquid nitrogen that frosts the safety handrails. Even with the doors between us I could smell the entrails and fear of the last poor bastard that awoke him on the his breath. He snorted and charged. I jumped off the car ledge and crawled under the train. Not the safest place but it was slight fortification and I knew his big bull-man-ass couldn’t squeeze in easily.
No sooner than when I squiggled past the wheels I heard what sounded like a train wreck. It was Leviathan smashing through the steel door like the Kool-Aid Man on PCP. Had I not immediately searched for a way out I would’ve juiced my shorts. As I scurried like a roach I heard the sounds of stressed iron and noticed the “shade” that the train provided from the highway lights was slowly fading away. This Leviathan was picking up the whole train car to get his tasty man morsel. I leapt to the platform as he curled the car high over his head looking like a champion leaf cutter ant. I jumped down to the eastbound tracks just in the nick of time as he hurled a the train car into the steel train car that stood inches from me in a former moment. Both trains now laid in the barren 290 highway. I can hear the reports now, “expect delays on the eastbound Eisenhower due to a 1940’s train car blocking all lanes. This is due to a hunger tantrum from one of Satan’s Anthropomorphic Bull henchmen and now here’s Bob with the weather.”
I must have looked like a crab in how I scrambled across the highway southbound, zigzaggin’ to avoid any other projectiles that that broken Levy had to flood with. The Minotaur had a roar at a score I’d only heard a dragon in a movie hit before. I hopped like a jackrabbit over the concrete highway barrier and proceeded with the graceful strides of an autumn doe up the hill behind the UIC pavilion. Each step I took was more precious and necessary than the previous. It seemed with each touch of the ball of my foot to the ground, flowers of freedom germinated and sprouted instaneously and then THWAKK!!! I closed lined myself on an unseen braided iron suspension cable, but as luck would have it my flashkick into a bellyflop ripped my shoe clear off with legendary Roy Halladay velocity and it made a line drive for the Leviathan’s monstrous balls. Another howl fit for a dragon tore the velvet sky and he fell off the concrete barrier and into the window of the modern train he knocked over with the old school one. I believe that his horns were stuck in an air conditioner because the only smell stronger than the scent of a pissed off man-ox was Freon that exuded from the hole where the beastly legs dangled.
Even as I lay there laughing and choking I couldn’t get Satan’s words outta my head “…You have to go back to school for this one.” I was out of trains, express or not, to hop on and rid myself of my homicidal problems. I was gonna have to outwit my physical superior who was steadily dismantling the train and it’s AC unit. Let’s start at the root of the problem, an already hungry and pissed off minotaur has just taken a shot to the nads and will not wanna just talk and sort this whole thing out. What else do you know about minotaurs aside from the half man and half ox composition and wretched disposition. Oh yea, they don’t really exist and are found in the adventures of Greek hero Theseus in his journey through the labyrinth. So all I need is a big ass maze for this teenage mootant ninja bullhole? That’s fucking clown shoes Satan. How is my going back to school gonna help me find an answer
…then...
...it hit me...
….like a ton’o’bricks....
The Behavioral Science Building at UIC!!!
In class we use to joke that the UIC BSB was a maze built in the middle of the 20th century to potentially trap the social science students from an uprising due to all the civil unrest happening around the nation. I, after spending the last two and a half years of my college career in that building, still found it hard to escape the building due to winding corridors, hallways that lead to nowhere and figure eights of labs and classroom. Three different social science departments circular hallways intertwine and make a concrete pretzel, a pretzel that the strongest mustard couldn’t soften. We use to joke that somewhere in the bowels of the building was the skeleton of Rand McNally and it would be Lawrence Keeley’s last mission to unearth him. Point is the BSB on the corner of Harrison and Morgan would be more of a “homecoming” affair for him than me. It would serve as twentieth century labyrinth for my ancient antagonist.
I dragged myself off the ground and brushed the dirt and leaves off my person and rushed to the corner of Morgan and Harrison. I arrived to find all the doors locked with deadbolts.
“I needed a battering ram to to get through that door” I thought to myself. I scoped out the grounds and found a bike rack near the front. Sure enough, some “poor” hipster’s $3000 bike frame sat damp and alone without wheels, gears, handle bars, reflectors, or anything else that makes a bike a bike aside from its skeleton. Well one man’s trash is another man’s battering ram.
With the intensity of Macho Man Randy Savage I hurled the titanium frame at the NE door and it bounced off the window and into my kneecap. I nearly bit my bloody tongue clean off holding in the scream that grew inside my throat. I didn’t need Captain Dickhorns to find me any faster than his oxen senses could sniff me out. I looked down to see how my knee’s forecast; bruised with signs of heavier bruising later but fortunately no signs of plasma rain. I limped over to the bike, picked it up and braced for round two.
The initial hit did at least weaken the window enough to spider web the outer layer of glass. I charged, “1,2,3 GAHHHHH!!!!!!!!” and with the strength of all the underdog heroes before me I entered the hole I once gladly left for dead with my metal shaft. Glass flew everywhere as I behemoth-ed through with such Die Hard, wildman virility that I miraculously received zero cuts, scrapes, or scratches. Once in, I B-lined it to the three stairwell hub in the center of the BSBeehive knowing that I’d have next to no time before that bullheaded bitch followed the sound of calamity and come snarling at my damn ankles again. I tossed my sweaty, bloody shirt down the Southeast corridor for a scent diversion, then I scaled the far stair and hid in the Anthro lounge where I use to doze off from time to time in long breaks between classes.
Oh, if only this was a dream and I could wake up on one of those rough and ugly beige UIC couches, with peanut butter cracker crumbs on my ‘stache and goatee, and a harem of beautiful Indian princesses studying around me that I make far too few figures to date, let alone flirt with. If only. Instead I’m crouched down behind a giant houseplant, praying that its perpetually miserable looking flowers can over power my stench of blood, sweat and pure fucking fear. Gish, Gash! Gish, Gash! Gish, Gash! The Leviathan’s big hooves galloped to the front way. Each slow, calculated hunter’s step after that echoed with about two seconds of delay throughout the hallways of this modern Labyrinth. The seconds of delay decreased until I could hear, smell and despite the near pitch-blackness of this place almost see my horned assailant. He stood in the doorway of the main hall too big to even really cast a shadow. The minotaur seemed to have ripped off one of the balance bars for standing passengers from the train and held it in his left hand like a spear. The other hand held a hunk of metal that crinkled and dripped as he walked. A moment later, I discovered it to be the air conditioner that he was stuck in. Separation anxiety I guess. He took the bait and wandered down the Southeast hallway. I tiptoed to the edge of the hive’s upper level banister, bike frame in hand. If I tossed the bike at just the right angle, I could have it make contact with the computer lab floor and thus have thirty more seconds of diversion time on my hands. Time in which to make my huge break for the front door and hopefully lose him inside for good. I positioned myself for the bomb drop, closed my eyes, and let go of the frame. With predicted accuracy the frame rattled at the entrance of the computer lab door and the Minotaur descended the stairs towards the belly of the BSB with me not too far behind. I scrambled down the hallway and I barrel rolled out the door escaping memories of college and ensnaring a big bullshit bastard...or so I thought. As I sat against the stone pillar outside the door catching my breath a third dragon roar echoed through the caverns of the Behavioral Science Building. A madder than piss half man, half bull stood 50 meters from me in the main hall. He snorted, shook his head, and then proceeded to overhand pitch the AC unit at yours truly. I froze not ready to believe my misfortune, I winced and had a final picture in my head of Rosie on a hot dog bun colored couch, covered in sauerkraut, with Satan frenching her with his mouth, defiling her with his hands and dare I say what what other of his big, red limbs.
Time and my heart stopped.
Stopped goddammit.
It halted the second before the cooling machine was halted by what appeared to be blue lightning. The force field decimated the AC unit like an over-sized bug zapper.
My heart jumped back into my chest after its coffee break, I almost immediately sprang to my feet to assess this strange twist of events. Leviathan too made his way to the shattered door slowly taken aback by what happened. He swung the steel balance bar in his left hand inquisitively at the gaping maw of the doorway only to zap half of it in the process. He shook his ugly oxen head with its foaming mouth and double zero gauge piercings in its nose and mouth in fashion that was more of a taunt than anything else. He then smashed the huge window next to the door with an overhead gorilla fist slam. Though there was a deafening explosion from the contact, the force field ate about just about all of the glass upon impact. This son of a heifer was stuck, well at least for now anyways and I didn’t care to stick around to find out exactly how long. I gave him the finger and jogged off, ready to just get to Rosie’s.
Devil of a Showdown:
I was halfway between UH (or University Hall for you laymen out there) and the church on Morgan St. when I heard a voice on a megaphone, a voice that I’d hoped to not hear for the rest of my breathing life, let alone the rest of tonight. “Awwww the bull’s in the pen, playtime’s over and Leviathan is a sad, lonely only child again. Oh well, solitary confinement ain't so bad when you live forever, right? Well, well my darling Ricky you’ve done so good but I’m afraid I have no time left to play, we’ve wandered into the killin’n’rapin’ part of my night thus I these last remaining hours to hurry up and do both! Bahahahah! Fast cars and fast women that’s what you American boys like, right? Well maybe you haven’t had the women on your mind enough, maybe you need eight cylinders firing into your face Fairy Boy!!!!” A ‘66 Mustang roared onto the grass in front of the UH and paused for me to gawk. It was lift’d & Hemi’d with a black matte finish with ruby red racing stripes on the side. On the center of the hood where most cars have a metal crest, emblem, statute, or other symbol of the car’s manufacturer, Satan had the severed head of the Minotaur; tongue out, white rolled-back eyeballs, the whole nine. The lump in my throat was so big my tongue had to join in with a sledgehammer to push it down.
“You can start running anytime now. The lion only chases the gazelle ‘cause it runs fast enough for it to be fun. Ha-ha!”
He revved the engine and jerked the car forwards a few feet then tapped his brakes. He repeated this a couple times and with each jerk I popped backwards a good yard or two. Then he sat and turned on his floodlights, the glare had me at a point of delirium. I always thought the blinding white lights hit you after you died. While mine seeming set on being the last thing I’ll see before life ended. He revved the engine preparing for the neutral drop of doom. The car shifted gears and fishtailed from the power exuded from underneath the hood. I whipped around to run only to trip like a stooge over the curb. Disoriented as hell and fought the sidewalk with my open mouth.
I lost.
And by lost I mean I lost the bottom halves of my top two front teeth. I whipped around expecting my eyes to catch the late night killer thriller special brought to you by the Michelin tire company, but this was not the case at all. Instead, two bright cans shot over my shoulders and a boiling hot steel grill center stage with the heat so near any closer would melt my face. The engine purred and snipped then the sound of the keys killing the combustion engine commenced. The door opened and the smell of that killer weed wrapped in a Blueberry Vega simmered out into the night sky. Slowly but surely a sore and annoyed looking Satan emerged from the black beauty.
He was donned in a white suit from head to toe with the exception of his tie, which had a red knot and a black tail. His cheekbones came to razor sharp points with such a perfectly sculpted conquistador goatee and mustache combo (I assumed he had Hernan Cortes as a barber, fitting as he was a great babar.) Three cans of Dapper Dan pomade later and you have the devil’s slicked back, jet black, full head of hair. Skin smooth as silk, red as the proudest well-cooked lobster. A three foot long tail whipped in an odd pattern behind his back. His giant mother of pearl chompers was pinching one of those magic rainbow cigarettes to death. He. Was. Pissed.
“You little shit. I fucking had you. How is it little scuzzes like you always find the consecrated ground before my twenty four-hour permit expires??!!”
I sat ghost faced trying to take this all in while slowly turning around to see what he was mad about. Yep the pavement I bit into was the church on Morgan St. I rose to my feet and faced Satan.
“So you can’t touch me while I’m here until the dawn rises and then you leave me the fuck alone because your sick little soul-bounty-hunter permit thingy is expired?”
“Bingo, Einstein”
“That goes for your fucked up creatures too?”
“Well take a look for yourself at the smoke show right thar’ son”
He pointed to the ground right below the head of the Leviathan hood ornament. The minotaur’s thick purplish-blue blood was dripping to the ground and turning into vapor upon contact.
“The only solace I have is the fact that the same place that saved your ass also was the place you busted your teeth. Never stepped foot into church for salvation let alone onto its walkway and you get farther than most devout Christians do in my bounty game by tripping into Church” (he was smiling by the word “Christians”) “That’s my kinda irony Boy-O! OW!!!” he cackled for a minute.
“You know I kinda like you, your decisions are on point with my Modus Operandi. I got nothing to do for like three hours, you can’t leave here, and you gotz a laundry list of sins. Wanna play five card stud and work some of those sins into the paper shredder?” He produced a deck of cards that had pictures of fat devil chicks doing of things I don’t wanna mention at this particular moment.
“Well that sounds mighty constructive, I’m down.”
We proceeded to sit down Indian style and hash it out. The games were close nail biters but I always seemed to come out on top by a point or two. We jibber-jabbered about life and such and told dirty jokes the whole time. Satan got a little misty when talking about his descent from heaven and losing the wings for the horns and tail. He’s pissed that his best friend forgives every fucking one under the “son”, but still not him. Can’t blame him, that’s a real bummer man. There was a point where he produced a joint with that killer weed and playfully taunted me to cross the line to come and get it. I laughed but knew all too well that if I crossed that line he’d drive the pry-bar back end of a hammer through my skull. I had won tonight and continued to win in poker. This wasn’t the sitcom “Satan & Me” just a check waiting to be mated with the rising sun.
The dawn finally approached and I had won all of the games we played thus clearing most of the big important sins that St. Peter couldn’t exactly just sweep under the rug. Our last game I offered to play just for the hell of it. I thought to make a deal with the devil, why not? How soon again would I really see him? My sins cleared I thought of others. I postulated, “Hey Lucio, suppose I win this game, would you make the next person’s death on you soul hunters list instant and painless should they not have their wits about them?”
“Let me take count of something real quick.” He closed his eyes harshly, pouted his lips, and put his fingers to his temples as if to think really, really hard.
“I say, I say, I just beat you for like hours now dear Say-tan. It’s a, it’s a little for probability.” I said in my best foghorn leghorn impersonation. He opened his eyes and smirked his signature smirk.
“Sure thing just one more lil’ ole game.”
Long story short, I got beat by a three of a kind, sixes to be exact. I gulped and let out a single laugh, “Well that poor sucker, can’t say that I didn’t try”
“Yea I figured a happy middle ground for you and I to both win. Your wish is granted; I mean if you blink for a even a second, you’d miss this death. You’ve been a worthy opponent and that was a selfless bet, which while I don’t believe in being selfless I can admire the fool built with that particular human flaw.”
“Yea, yea whatever. I gotta ask, what were you calculating before you agreed to the last game?”
“Well you can’t beat the Devil on the 13th game, besides your grandma speed shuffling allowed the bounty time to completely run out which means you're sitting on the church curb did jack shit against my powers of mischief, punk!”
“What does your sore ass mean ‘sitting on the church curb’…”
“Oh come the fuck on, get real, you think you can win thirteen gambling games in a row against the Devil??!! I don’t know if you’re guiltier of arrogance or stupidity. The big guy rigged as many of those games and he could. He’s a real sore loser really, especially if you're gonna play on his home turf. You were just a pawn deary.” He said with a sigh, “Cheer up, maybe someday you’ll grow up to be a Maverick at stud or maybe at least a studly Maverick.” He slicked back his hair with a silver comb, snapped his fingers, and poof. He was gone.
The Red Eye
Normal, non-affected color returned to the world with the dawn. It was brilliant and not as damp looking as the previous day and night. Very much akin to the lighting filters used in Vanilla Sky when David Ames “awakes” in a dream with Jeff Buckley’s slide guitar in “Last Goodbye” prying open his eyelids. This feeling of visual peace was topped by the joy of realizing that I was dangerously close to Al’s #1 Italian beef stand and fuck with the day and night I just had I deserved a juicy beef to go. I proceeded to eat that heaven sent sandwich with hot peppers right against the wall of Al’s; it didn’t stand a chance. I grabbed a Red Eye newspaper and used the cover pages to wipe the grease and juice off my hands
Well fed and pacified it was finally time to make it on over to Rosie’s. On my way there I walked and flipped through the pages of the Red Eye that were left. It was nothing but horseshit. Kids safety tips on walking home, crossing the street, don’t talk to strangers, etc., boring. Sports were bitching about unsportsman like tackles and late hits, more boring. The most entertaining part of the paper was the weather section. It was all wacky from it being so close to Halloween and it forecasted that it was to rain buckets of blood and guts. “Enough” I said to myself with a laugh and threw the paper into the trash.
I then was hit with the strangest breeze as I stood right across from Rosie’s. Gooseflesh made a wave from my right wrist to my left wrist, which I watched with my eyes. Looking up from my hands I saw Rosie leaving her front door, I slowly lifted my arms to signal her attention. Upon seeing me she stood frozen with a look of worry that transformed into relief. At first she walked towards me then she picked up the pace as she hit the bottom of the stairs. With each galloped step she looked more and more beautiful and full of health and healing. She moved in slow motion with grace and the glow from the sun in her head of gold and flame was intoxicating. But had she even cared to pause an instant before prancing into the street she may not have spent the next instant being splattered to smithereens by the Northbound CTA bus. When that 30,000lb bus connected with Rosie’s poor body an explosion of blood, guts, and parts made a rain-like jubilee. “I mean if you blink for a even a second, you’d miss this death.” People cried, screamed, vomited, and broke into hysterics. I just followed the bus’s erratic movements with my jaw wide open. It turned a stuntman’s hard left at the next street before I could clearly read the four-digit bus number; but if I had a dollar I’d swear it was 0666.
The last thing I saw for sure before it disappeared around the corner was a decaying, discolored hand waving slowly, creepily one finger at a time out the driver’s side window. A hand that had a ring on the middle finger that looked like a Red Eye.
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