Amanda wakes, again, feeling far better than she did the last time she opened her eyes, but that feeling is quickly replaced with dread as she sees sunlight pouring in through her shades. She slept through her alarm, both of them. Her mouth is a desert named dehydration. She quickly dresses while doing a fantastic dance of brushing her teeth and hair while buttering a bagel and ordering a Lyft to come pick her up.
She finishes packing and jumps in her ride at 9:25 giving her exactly 17 minutes to make it to the train station. She tells the driver there's another $10 for his rate if he drives like a maniac. He obliges and breaks no less than a dozen traffic laws to make a 40-minute trip only take 30 to arrive at Union Station in downtown.
She, of course, was late, but thankfully the American rail system was not the most reliable method of transportation and she arrives just shortly after they finish boarding. Nevertheless, the boarding platform was still a menagerie of folks and luggage arriving and departing from numerous locations. Amanda imagined the rustic adventures one could take on such a romantic method of travel, but she, a slave to a piece of shit car that she couldn't trust to go 50 miles, had to ride a historic hallmark of American nostalgia up to Seattle as a means of simple transportation.
She finds her train car and climbs aboard with a backpack hanging off one shoulder. As she does, the crowds outside starts to clear on the platform save for one figure on a bench in a tall black hat, sunken face, and feet hovering just off the ground. He sits still for several seconds before a slight smile appears on his thin lips. For the briefest second, a shimmer falls on the outside of the train giving it the look of an other-worldly look of black obsidian stone, then just as quickly, it reverts back to normal.
*************
The figure slowly raises from the bench it sits upon and floats with hands clasped behind it's back toward the train engine where no engineer sits, where no human sits, and places it's hands on another figure, a much shorter, yet wider figure, and slowly whispers "the stage is set, time to chug, Jug."
A thick lip grin appears on Jug's face as he puts in motion unnatural levers, gears, and machinations to lurch the train forward as his pupils of his eyes glow with flames. Flames of a never-ending tinderbox of an old steam engine. The tall figure poised behind him lifts his head to reveal the same glow in his own eyes as Jug replies "and so we depart Jude."
*************
Just outside the engine stands a post with a thermometer who's mercury starts to drop as the train pulls away. With each card that passes, the temperature drops a few degrees until the car Amanda has boarding passes. At the last second, the last passenger jumps onto the car behind hers wearing a pair of baggy jeans. This goes unseen by Amanda who is now settling into her seat with a pair of earbuds and a 4-hour long playlist.
Slowly, the train makes its way through the Industrial part of town before crossing the Burlington Northern bridge and up through North Portland. Amanda stares out the car window as the residential neighborhoods of St. Johns and Portsmouth cease to exist and are replaced instead by steep tree-covered hillsides on either side of the train-track that runs. It was a lot like the L.A. river except there is foliage and rail-way instead of concrete and a narrow stream.
She used to ride her bike down there as a teen and hang out with friends, smoking cigarettes and drinking out of plastic pint bottles of liquor. Bullshitting about immature topics. Free of worries, bills, and responsibilities. Before med-school and her brother's assignment to the church, before her dad's last facade of a responsible parent fell. Before the pain and guilt at the loss of an old friend. A friend she remembered thinking about last night.She doesn't even make it five songs in before her eyes grow heavy with the gentle rocking of the train rolling down the track as she stares out the window across Hayden Island separating Oregon and Washington. The adrenaline from her late wake-up had slowed in her bloodstream now and she once again was overtaken by sleep as her eyes finally shut all the way.
*************
This last action was overseen behind by the baggy jeaned figure who earlier jumped on the train last minute and had just walked into her train car. It was Don, disappointed to find her drifting off as his surprise entrance was ruined by her exhaustion. He decided to catch up with her later knowing she had much on her mind from their conversation the day before.
But it was all good, he had a game plan. He had the entire trip to turn last night's failed attempt into a romantic comedy. Don headed back to his seat in the other car and pulled out a sketch pad pen from his bag and started shading around a letter "M". He would check on Nurse Mandy in a bit with his artistic gift.
Suggested listening: Lazy Boy by Jimmie's Chicken
Shack
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