The Last Great American Effort by Peter Kurt

The Last Great American Effort by Peter Kurt

Vast midwestern landscapes passed outside the window, bathed in the sun’s golden glow. Distant mountains hovered above expansive plains of wheat and corn. A large woman wrestled her two writhing children back into their seats. The man with a briefcase at his feet cleared his throat, dressed in a suit despite the long journey. He’d been reading the same newspaper since they departed all those hours ago. The ten-car train screeched against the tracks beneath.

Chloe finally found it. The great American nowhere. She was finally free.

& & &

When she jerked awake, not realising she’d fallen asleep curled up in the seat, the train car was flooded with cigarette smoke. She coughed herself awake, her vision clouded and hazy. Everyone else had either moved to the next train car or gotten off at the last stop, except for the stranger sitting across from her. He was watching her wake. She hadn’t seen this one before. He must’ve boarded while she was sleeping.

A dead cigarette butt sat next to him, crushed in the seat next to a pinhole burn. The clothes he wore were not dissimilar to her own. Far too oversized, ripped denim and torn flannels, haphazard patches sewn on. Most were falling off at the seams, especially on the beanie that covered his faded blue hair. Metal piercings jutted out of his face- his lip, his nose, his eyebrow. An old acoustic guitar lay next to him with homemade stickers and dusty strings, the only luggage he carried.

His eyebrows raised when he realised he’d been caught. “Oh, good morning.”

“Have you been creeping on me this whole time?” Chloe asked.

He grew red in the face. “No, sorry. You just look like someone I knew once. Was trying to figure out if you were her,” he said while avoiding her stare.

“Oh yeah? Who?” Chloe asked. There weren’t many people that looked like her. Pink dreadlocks, shitty stick and pokes on dark skin, smudged eyeliner permanently shadowing her eyes.

“Ah, just an old friend,” he said sheepishly, shifting in his seat.

Chloe gestured towards the guitar. One of the badly-drawn stickers spelled out a name- Noah. “You play, Noah?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. A little. I’m headed to a gig, actually.”

Chloe scoffed in amusement. “What kind of gig do you have to take a cross country train for?” she asked.

Something in his expression grew solemn. “The biggest one of my life,” he said. As if Chloe had imagined it, his sheepish smile returned without a beat. “Might not go super well, though. I’m not Jeff Buckley or anything.”

“Well, no one is,” Chloe replied. She cocked her head. The train was awfully quiet now. No screeching tracks, no screaming horn, no unruly children trying to escape their mothers grasp. “Why don’t you play something?”

His face reddened as he scratched the back of his neck. “Really? I’ll probably make a fool of myself.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Enough with the humble artist act. C’mon.”

After staring at her wide eyed and blank for a minute, he cleared his throat and nodded. He pulled the guitar onto his lap. The sticker right under the bridge was the same one Kurt Cobain had on his telecaster, only badly drawn.

The first shaky chord rang out, one that left her feeling more desolate and alone than being in Nowhere, America already did. What followed was a simple progression intricately played, his thumb strumming the bass note with every chord change while his other fingers crafted a complimentary bluegrass melody.

“Sometimes I don’t know where this dirty road is taking me

Sometimes can’t even see the reason why

I guess I’ll keep a-gambling

Lots of booze and rambling

Seems easier than just waiting around to die”

His voice came out higher than Chloe had expected. Some of the notes were a bit shaky- but he followed the melody as if he’d done it a thousand times. Chloe’s foot tapped along to the rhythm. She knew this song from somewhere, didn’t she? She couldn’t quite place it.

“One time, friends, I had a ma

I even had a pa

He beat her with a belt once ‘til she cried

Told him to take care of me

And headed down to Tennessee

Seemed easier than just waiting around to die”

His voice grew strong and confident, echoing through their empty train car. That last line he kept repeating was always delivered in a lower octave. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him.

“Came of age and found a girl in Tuscaloosa bar

She cleaned me out and hit it on the sly

Tried to kill the pain, bought some wine and hopped a train

Seemed easier than just waiting around to die”

It took a while for her to realise, with her vision solely focused on his tattooed hands, but he was glancing up at her through that entire verse. The two of them chuckled at each other. Was that why he had picked this song?

“Friend said he knew where some easy money was

We robbed a man and brother, did we fly

Posse then caught up with me

And drug me back to Muskogee

Two long years been waiting around to die”

Chloe’s chest began to tighten. She stared out the window as the verse played, trying to slow her own breathing. No, this song was from somewhere- in some deep recess of her brain, tucked away in some impossible to find place. She knew it intimately. Why couldn’t she place it?

“Now I’m out of prison, I got me a friend at last

He don’t drink or cheat or steal or lie

His names codeine, he’s the nicest thing I’ve seen

Together, we’re gon’ wait around to die

Together, we’re gon’ wait around… to die”

They were both out of breath. Chloe was hiding it a lot better than he was. She didn’t want to have to answer any questions that she couldn’t. After a few seconds of silence when the strings finally muted, small applause came from her hands.

“Not too bad,” she said coolly. It was just a song. So what if she couldn’t remember where she’d heard it before? That didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t. The thread begging to be unravelled as the back of her mind remained untugged.

He smiled to himself, his chest still hammering as he set the guitar down. “I think I’ve figured out who you are now.”

“Oh, yeah?” Chloe prodded, leaning forward curiously. Now that he mentioned it again, he also looked vaguely familiar. But then again, she hung out with a lot of people that looked like Noah. She used to.

He nodded. “You look just like the first girl I fell in love with.”

Chloe narrowed her eyes. “Is that you attempting to hit on me?”

“What? No,” Noah said hurriedly. Redness grew across her face at his hurried rejection. He recovered quickly. “I mean, you’re cool and all. There was just… this girl a few years ago. I was, like, thirteen. She was a little older. Used to give me free cigarettes at the skate park. Man, I thought she was the shit.”

“Was she?” Chloe asked, leaning back into her seat.

“For a while,” he said, smiling and not looking at anything in particular like he was living in a memory. His smile dropped fast. “Her name was Noelle. She was my first kiss, my first tattoo, my first time using. A lot of my firsts.”

It sounded like he had more to say, but his jaw was clenched shut. “What happened then?” Chloe asked.

Noah shook his head. “She was into some bad shit with a lot of bad people. I got caught up in it. When the cops got us, she walked free and I spent a few years in juvie.”

Chloe’s heart was tightening again. She was beginning to think this might be some type of medical concern. Her  hand pressed down over her chest, trying to shove down the pain. “Sounds like a bitch.”

Noah nodded once. “Thought a lot about what I was gonna do to her when I got out, how I was gonna get her back. Took me a long time to realise how bad she’d fucked me over. Not just by throwing me under the bus, you know. Making me use that shit so young. Sleeping with me when I didn’t know how to say no yet. Just a whole lot of shit.”

“Well, what’d you do when you got out?”

He exhaled out of his nose like she’d said something humorous. “Well, funny thing is, she died a week after I got out. Overdosed in a gas station or some shit, I dunno. Served her right.”

Silence hung heavy in the train car. “Sounds like she got what she deserved.”

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded. When Chloe looked back from the window, his blue eyes were piercing into hers. Black eyeshadow clung to them like a cat peering out from the dark. He leaned in closer, his voice lowering. “Do you believe in karma, Chloe?” he asked, stern and serious, his previous light-hearted manner entirely vanished.

Her throat tightened. She had to clear it to get any words out. “I guess not. So many bad people get away better than most of us ever do,” she replied.

“I guess,” he shrugged. “The way I see it, people always get what’s coming to them.”

She shifted uneasily in her seat. The light outside seemed to be getting brighter, despite the fact it should’ve been getting later. Maybe she’d slept for longer than she’d thought.

As if urged by something, Noah glanced down at his wrist, looking at a watch that wasn’t there. “Well, I guess this is my stop.”

Chloe looked around in confusion. They must’ve been hundreds of miles away from any form of civilization. The only other life out here was the cows and the flies living off of their excrement. The train wouldn’t be slowing down for a while.

“Uh, are you sure? We’re pretty far from-“

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure,” Noah said. His smile returned, but it didn’t reach his eyes this time. “I’ve got a show to play, don’t I?”

He stood, dusting off his ripped flannel. He grabbed his guitar by the neck and held it at his side carelessly, bending the strings. He walked up to the train door leading outside. The grass was flying out beneath them at a hundred miles an hour, the scenes outside rapidly changing from one plain expanse to the next. When his hand closed around the door handle, she jumped out of her seat and rushed towards him.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she asked. Her hand closed around his sleeve.

He looked down at her touch, brushing her off. “Getting off while I still can. You should try it sometime.”

The train door slid open slightly ajar. The thin gust of wind it let in sent his beanie askew. “Wait, don’t!”

It was all she could think to say.

“Relax, Chloe. I’ll be just fine where I’m going!” Noah just smiled, the previous warmth in his eyes returning. The tracks were about to hit a bend. “It was nice talking to you. Hope you get away from whatever it is you’re running from.”

It happened too quick for her to stop him. She wasn’t sure she could have, either way. In one fluid motion, the train door slid fully open. Cold, harsh wind blinded her. When she opened her eyes, Noah’s oversized clothes were flying past the window. She screamed, reaching forward and slamming the train door shut, afraid it would take her with it.

She rushed to the window, propping herself up on the ledge and craning her head. It was hard to make out the scene with the way the train was turning.

It looked like a bundle of rocks at first. Her nails clawed against the glass as if that would save him. His head and shoulders had been decapitated by the train wheels, leaving just his torso and legs laying in the grass. There wasn’t as much blood as she thought there would be. It was too early for his body to realise what had happened to it. From this angle, she could only just make out the sharp white shard protruding from his torso, sticking straight up into the air like it was willing his body to stand. Ripped tendons and filleted muscle wrapped around the bone.

Next to where his head had been lost beneath the train, a crushed guitar lay snapped in two. The neck was being repetitively crushed by large steel wheels like some sadistic violin. The last song it would ever play. 

Chloe collapsed into the seat, wrapping her arms around her knees as she shook. She scanned the walls- there was no emergency button, no call button to alert the conductor. Her skin blanketed itself in sweat despite the chill it had just lived through. There was no way to wrap her head around it. How was he sitting before her- smiling, laughing, singing just moments ago? His heart had been pumping blood all through his veins. Was it still beating out there? Had the train swept it up into the undercarriage, crafting a rhythmic beat of its own?

She stood, her vision clouded, and stared at the door leading to the next train car. Had the conductor not felt his body give out beneath the wheels? Had nothing alerted him? The train showed  no signs of slowing. No, he was too small, too frail beneath the weight. The conductor didn’t know. She had to get to him, she had to tell him to stop. Someone had to come get Noah’s body. He couldn’t be lost out here to the great American nothing.

She started forward.

& & &

The next train car wasn’t empty. It housed three passengers, but the overhead was packed to the brim with stuffed suitcases. Clothes and children’s toys spilled out of the zips that wouldn’t close.

Chloe approached the woman, breathless and panting. The woman held two boys on either side of her as they struggled for freedom, both no older than five or six. The woman eyed her with concern. “You okay, darl?”

Her voice was several octaves deeper than her sweet appearance let on. Her throat was scratched and strained from years of smoking. Tobacco clung to her frumpy dress.

“Someone just jumped off the train,” Chloe breathed out, pointing back to the train car she’d just come from.

The woman blinked, her head shifting back and forth between the car door and Chloe. With what she’d just lived through, Chloe realised she couldn’t have looked fully sober.

“You sure you’re alright up there, darl? I didn’t feel nothin’. Sure it woulda caused some commotion had someone just flung themselves off the train.”

“No, no. It was just me and him. He opened the door and he was… he was gone.”

The woman cocked her head, her eyes almost disappearing behind her skin when she smiled. “Say, why don’t you sit down a while? Seems like you had an awful bad dream. Got something in here that’ll sort you right out,” she said, gesturing towards the open backpack slumped against her legs.

As much as Chloe wanted to cause a fuss, to pick up the woman and walk her back to where it had happened- it would be no use. She’d never get the woman to believe her if she didn’t calm down. Chloe took her place next to the lady. One of the boys under her arm reached forward, his small, chubby fingers wrestling with the fishnet sleeves over her sweater. The woman smacked his hand away.

“Sorry ‘bout little Cleve. He don’t know how to keep his hands outta nothin’. Here, take him for a minute, would you?” she asked. She gestured the child towards Chloe as if he weighed no more than a rag doll. Chloe obliged, awkwardly seating the child on her lap. Even at his age, his size threatened to snap her thigh bones in half. He giggled as he snatched up the fishnet material again, weaving his fingers in and out.

The other boy watched curiously from the woman’s other side like he wasn’t sure if Chloe posed a threat to them. His eyes were wide and curious, a blue pacifier in his mouth. Both of the boys had the same tuft of soft, blonde hair that hadn’t fully grown in yet.

Their mother’s had been box dyed reddish brown with the neck stains to prove it. It was kept in tight curls that looked like a home job. She leaned over herself, her stomach rolls spilling over her legs as she reached down into the backpack. Sunspots and deep freckles covered her shoulders and back. Her breathing was laboured as she struggled to reach her hand far enough. The boy on Chloe’s lap giggled at her strain.

“I’m Marjorie, if you’ere wondering. That boy there’s Cleve, like I said, and this little hellmaker’s Patty,” her head gestured towards the staring boy. Chloe struggled to keep Cleve still as he reached for everything in sight, aiming for her dreads next with spit bubbling out of his mouth. Chloe never had a maternal instinct. She’d only ever really been around one child for a prolonged period of time, and that was short-lived. He was the reason for everything.

Marjorie snapped her out of her train of thought by gesturing a bottle of pills towards her. “Here, this’ll sort you right out.”

Chloe shook her head. “I’m alright. Thank you, though.”

The large woman gave her a knowing look. “Relax, honey. These ain’t addictive. Won’t have you scrambling back to the dealer or nothin’. Believe me, I’d know,” she said lowly. Now that her face was closer, Chloe noticed her stained yellow, chipped teeth. The smell of her breath was nothing to write home about.

Chloe took the pill bottle and shook one out into her hand, unable to think of another way to deny her. She was starting to think that Marjorie had a point. The whole thing had been so surreal, so sudden. She’d always had terrifyingly lucid dreams growing up, and there were a lot of things that had been resurfacing lately. Maybe this was just one of them. Chloe choked the pill down.

“You’ll feel better soon,” Marjorie promised, her smile lines etched into her skin. She gestured towards Cleve and audibly strained as she took him into her strong arms, cradling him until he was facing up at her. She pulled a baby bottle out from the side of the seat, its contents off-white and thick. Cleve looked a few years too old to still be having bottles, but he began drinking from it eagerly when Marjorie held it up to his face. Marjorie nodded up at the over carriage while Cleve slurped. “Sorry ‘bout the mess in here. Was a struggle getting all them bags up.”

“All of these are yours?” Chloe asked. She should’ve assumed as much, with Marjorie being the only passenger on this car, but it was just too much to fathom one person owning it all. There must’ve been at least thirty bags stuffed into the shelves, all begging to rip themselves apart.

Marjorie nodded. “Wasn’t easy moving it all out the trailer. But me and my boys,” Marjorie said, patting Cleve on the head with a pudgy hand. “We’re onto bigger and better horizons.”

Chloe’s heart was finally starting to slow, as were her thoughts. Her heart wasn’t beating so hard that it hurt her chest anymore, either. Whatever that woman had given her was a miracle cure. “You leaving something behind?” she asked.

“You betcha. No good, mean old bastard. I told him once and for all, you lay a hand on me or my boys again, and when I wake up you’ll be gone. Well, Ron never was a good listener,” she said, more to herself than Chloe.

“It’s good you left, then. Smart,” Chloe noted. The boys were still young. The only scars they’d bear from a father like that would be subconscious ones. They were lucky. She rested her head on the back of the seat, too dreary to keep it upright.

Marjorie turned towards her. Cleve was still drinking away eagerly, sputtering and coughing when he got too much. “How ‘bout you? Hell, you look like a regular runaway. Don’t tell me I’m gon’ see you in the newspaper soon.”

Chloe smiled. “No one’s gonna be looking for me.’

“Well, whatever reasons you had for leavin’, I hope they were good ones,” Marjorie said. “Ain’t smart, throwing it all away for road life.”

“They were good reasons,” Chloe said. There had been a laundry list of reasons why she had jumped on an Amtrak train with no possessions. But right now, she couldn’t recall a single one.

“Good,” Marjorie nodded. She lifted Cleve until his chin was resting against her shoulder, patting him on the back until he began to belch and burp. The thick white substance was still dribbling down his chin. His eyes wouldn’t fully open, making him appear drunk. When Marjorie set him down next to Chloe, he curled up and closed his eyes, his curious demeanour now gone. Marjorie took Patty into her arms, the older of the two, and cradled him in the same way. He was a little more reluctant to take the bottle, but began sucking on it with enough pressure.

“They’re cute kids,” Chloe noted.

Marjorie’s face grew dark. “They look like their daddy,” she said lowly. When she lifted her head again, the expression melted away in the light. Her warm smile returned. “Doin’ my best to raise ‘em right. They’re a handful.”

“You’re doing a good job,” Chloe said softly.

The smile Marjorie gave was seeped in genuine appreciation. She chuckled to herself, shaking her head. “You remind me so much of Jezebel.”

“Who’s that?” Chloe asked. She’d said it in such a way that Chloe got the impression she was meant to know who Jezebel was.

“My daughter. Few years younger than you,” Marjorie noted. “Could never keep her on a tight enough leash, that one. She was right into all that goth shit, too.”

Chloe cocked her head. She wrapped her arms around her knees as her head grew so heavy it felt like she was underwater. Whatever Marjorie had given her was taking full effect. Whatever she was meant to be panicking about, she couldn’t recall it. “I’m sure she’ll grow out of it. Most people do.”

Marjorie gave a genuine laugh. “No, no. Little Jezzie’s always been a free spirit. Slipped through my fingers like smoke most times. I just… could never know her.”

“Is she waiting for you, when you get off?” Chloe asked.

Marjorie shook her head. Her smile was gone, the redness from her cheeks draining. “I had to leave her. You understand? There was just no doing right by her. She makes her own way.” She faced Chloe. Patty had almost drained the whole bottle in her arms, his complexion nearly green. “I didn’t do wrong by her, did I?”

Chloe’s eyebrows furrowed. “Is she somewhere safe?” she asked. Chloe had just passed her twentieth birthday. If Jezebel was a few years younger than her, there was a high chance she couldn’t take care of herself.

“I lost her. One day, she just left. I couldn’t look for her anymore. Had my boys to look after. You understand why I had to do it, don’t you? Right? You know why I had to leave,” Marjorie begged. Tears were streaking down her swollen face. Despite Chloe’s lack of response, Marjorie turned her head to face the window and continued. “All those drugs she was getting into, all those strangers she brought home. I couldn’t have them around my boys. I couldn’t… let them have the life I gave her growing up.”

“What do you mean?” Chloe asked softly, almost inaudible. All her muscles tensed at the woman’s erratic state. The kids didn’t seem to pay any mind. Cleve was fast asleep, curled up uncomfortably in the chair. Patty was beginning to drift off, unable to keep his eyes open against Marjorie’s chest. She held the bottle up as if she was still feeding him.

At the question, a large sob wracked Marjorie’s chest. “I didn’t know. You have to know I didn’t know what he was doing to her. It wasn’t my fault. I’m… I’m a bad mother.”

Chloe’s head perked up despite the effort it took to lift it. “You aren’t a bad mother,” she whispered. She had no clue what the woman was talking about. Chloe’s stomach began to shrink. Where was that smell coming from?

“No!” Marjorie protested. “That awful man… I shoulda never let him into my house. I didn’t know he was pure evil. Shoulda never left her alone with him. I just want her to forgive me. I want to tell her I didn’t know. That if I could take it all back, I…”

Chloe couldn’t face her anymore. She wasn’t sure how long she could withstand the motion of the train without throwing up. She wanted to comfort Marjorie, to tell her that there was no way she could’ve known…

But what kind of mother subjects their child to that? Could Chloe ever forgive it?

When Chloe opened her eyes again, the scene had shifted slightly. The train car was bathed in unnatural, fluorescent light filtering in through the window. It had grown so bright, it was nearly impossible to make out the shape of the distant hills. This couldn’t be right, could it?

“Marjorie, do you know the time?” Chloe asked, squinting against the light.

Marjorie sniffled and struggled to get her words out. When Chloe turned to face her, snot and tears were painted on her face. She let Patty fall slack in her lap, grabbing both of Chloe’s shoulders. Her eyes were large and pleading. “I need you to tell me I did a good job. I’m a good mother, ain’t I?”

Chloe’s stomach was growing smaller by the second. She fought the compulsion to push the woman away. To fight her off until she was clawing at her ankles and begging. Instead, she rested her hands gently upon Marjorie’s. She should tell her she’s a good mother, shouldn’t she? She should comfort this distressed woman who had clearly lost so much, who was bathed in so much self-loathing and regret.

But the words wouldn’t come. Chloe couldn’t forgive this.

“I can’t tell you that, Marjorie. I’m sorry.”

Marjorie hung her head dejectedly, dropping her arms to her sides. Chloe regained her posture as Marjorie’s chest steadied with deep breaths, occasionally jolting from the sobs she was desperately fighting off. “That’s alright,” Marjorie said through her southern drawl. “I wouldn’t forgive me, neither.”

She then did something that, even in Chloe’s hazed state, she found truly bewildering. Marjorie picked up the baby bottle from the seat, which still had some of the off-white, thick liquid inside, and began sucking on it herself just as her children had.

Chloe chose to look at the window. Plains were getting harder to make out in this light. Individual blades of grass were no longer visible, they were a colourless amalgamation. She wished Marjorie would just tell her the damn time.

Chloe realised how remarkably still it had grown next to her. Cleve was sleeping without a hint of movement, his eyes still half open. His tiny fingers were clenched in an unnatural way.

“Marjorie,” Chloe started. “Why isn’t Cleve moving?”

Now that Chloe was looking closer, there didn’t seem to be any rise and fall in his chest at all. Marjorie just looked dead ahead at the window, sucking every last drop out of the baby bottle, her eyes bloodshot and stained. Chloe rested a hand on Cleve’s chest, unable to feel his tiny heartbeat, unable to feel much of anything.

“Marjorie?” Chloe asked, a few octaves higher. She’d forgotten all about the other child. Patty was still laying in his mother’s lap, his blank eyes glazed over as they gazed up at her. His palms were facing the ceiling, atrophied in the last state they had been in. Just the same as his brother- there was no movement, no hint of life. She’d never be able to forget just how pale a child’s face could get in death.

Chloe’s breathing was quickening. Just as she was contemplating what anyone could say in a situation like this, the bottle popped as it slid out of Marjorie’s mouth. It clattered on the floor and rolled under the opposite seat. The liquid dribbled down her chin, her complexion growing more ghoulish and gangrenous by the second.

“I won’t let him hurt them,” Marjorie murmured. Her throat sounded clogged. “I shoulda protected her. She’s safe now. We’re going to a safe place now.”

Chloe was suddenly on her feet, scrambling away from the trio of death until her back was against the wall. The train rumbled all around her as Marjorie gurgled and belched, sending the liquid pouring out of her mouth onto Patty’s stomach. Silhouetted in the fluorescent light, Marjorie used one of her final movements to meet Chloe’s eye.

“Don’t be scared, baby girl,” Marjorie slurred out. “He won’t hurt us no more.”

On the last word, Marjorie’s head began to swivel and bob like she couldn’t hold its weight. With one last great effort, Marjorie’s head slammed into her own knees. The crack of her spine echoed through the train car as her body engulfed her child, leaving him swaddled in a mess of fabric and loose skin. Cleve lay next to his family, his arms shrinking closer to his chest as the minutes passed. She thanked god he wasn’t facing her.

Chloe wasn’t sure if her stomach was tightening from the smell, the sight or the pill Marjorie had given her. Oh, God. What had Marjorie given her? Something tapped against the train roof, like a tiny finger trying to break through the ceiling over and over again. Was it raining? No, that wasn’t possible. There wasn’t any rain outside, and it sounded like one solid object ramming its weight into the metal over and over. Chloe looked up, but she couldn’t see any intrusion.

None of this was right. She had to find the conductor. The conductor would know what to do.

& & &

When Chloe entered the next train car, there was no panic in her chest- no sense of urgency in her steps. She wasn’t desperately rushing towards the passenger. She carried with her the suspicion that she was beginning to understand, even if she couldn’t put all the pieces together.

Just as she had predicted, this train car wasn’t empty, either. This was a passenger she’d seen before. A man dressed in a well ironed suit and fedora sat with a newspaper concealing his face. His limbs were gangly and tall, and a briefcase sat between his polished leather shoes. Wherever Chloe moved, he moved the newspaper to cover his face.

Chloe moved as gracefully and as calmly as she could, like a deer not wanting to show that it was under duress, and headed towards the next door. The conductor couldn’t be too far off now. The train was only ten cars long, and she’d gotten on one of the middle ones.

Her hand closed around the steel door handle. However, upon pulling it towards herself, she realised it wouldn’t move. She pulled again, then again. The door refused to budge as she used all of her strength to pry it free.

“That won’t open,” the man spoke. His voice was muffled and almost distorted, like someone had tried to run it through an anonymiser and failed. There had been a strong sense of familiarity to the others she’d met on the train so far, like their scents were buried in some long forgotten place- but not this one. There was no smell to him, no sense of warmth or comfort.

Chloe didn’t respond. Instead, she took the seat directly across from the man and placed her hands on her knees. The man kept the newspaper obscuring his face, despite all the bumps and turns the train was hitting. There was no noise coming from the overwhelming light outside. Not even the screech of the tracks.

“There’s been some issues with some other people on the train. A woman just overdosed in the next car,” Chloe said calmly. The man gave no hint that he’d heard her. “I just thought I should let you know. Do you know how I might get through to the conductor?”

“The conductor won’t want to speak with you,” the man uttered at the very mention of his name. “You have to let him find you.”

“Well, does he know I want to be found?” Chloe replied sarcastically. The man wasn’t even pretending to make sense. He gave her nothing in response once again. Chloe sighed and leaned back into her chair. “And who are you meant to be?”

“No one you’d know,” he replied.

There was nothing in the overhead. He carried no luggage but his briefcase. “You heading to a meeting or something?” she asked.

“I’m travelling on business.”

“Must be important. What do you do for work?”

“I make big problems out of nothing,” he said with a sense of finality.

“Huh,” Chloe mused. He was no more eager to speak to him than she was to speak to her, but she gathered the sense that the door wouldn’t open unless he allowed it.

Quiet minutes passed. The train silently glided on the tracks. Her corneas were barely surviving as they adjusted to the blinding windows. The landscape was now buried beneath its rays, completely obscured. “Say, do you have the time?”

“We don’t have that here,” he said.

Chloe cocked her head. “And where are we, exactly?” she asked. She’d boarded this train so long ago- but how long had she been on it, exactly? A few hours? A few days? Time seemed as elusive as the tapping on the roof.

The man shuffled his newspaper. “There are people that are meant to end up here. Alone. My daughter was among them. I knew it the day she was born. That’s why I had to leave. It is embedded in their fate. Or perhaps it is created by nurture.”

Chloe’s heart rattled like a bead in a storm drain. Her fingers tensed around the edge of the seat. She leaned closer. The question was nothing but a whisper on her lips. “Who are you?”

The newspaper dropped to the man’s lap. What lay behind it was not what Chloe had been expecting. A stretch of pale skin sat where the man’s face should’ve been, pulled thin and taut over his bones. There was a hint of where his nose and eyes should be, small bumps and divots in the otherwise perfectly smooth surface.

“Have you seen my daughter?” he asked. His jaw moved along with the words, but they came from visibly nowhere. 

Chloe shook her head. The man’s strange appearance didn’t fill her with fear the way it would’ve a few days ago. She’d seen the worst of things already. “I don’t think I have.”

The faceless man leaned forward. “Her name is Kelly. I’ve been told she looks a lot like me.”

It felt like his words should’ve surfaced something, but she couldn’t quite reach it in the recesses of her mind. “You don’t know what she looks like?”

He cocked his head, either in curiosity or pensiveness. “Not since the day she was born.”

“You abandoned your child?”

The man faced the door she’d come through, but he wasn’t looking anywhere specifically. “It was for her own good. I couldn’t make myself a father. I could never be that for her.”

“There’s no excuse for leaving your child,” Chloe said, her voice raising. There wasn’t any reasonable explanation for the rising heat in her chest. “She was a baby. She needed you.”

His head tilted downwards, his fedora shadowing his faceless skin. “Maybe. Or maybe her life would’ve been just the same with me there.”

Chloe folded her arms over her chest, slamming back into her seat. She couldn’t face him. His appearance was suddenly disgusting. What kind of man does that to a defenceless child in need of a father? Abandons the mother he impregnated? There was no excuse for that.

“I still can’t forget the way she looked at me. The first day I held her in my arms. Those squinted little eyes, the first time she’d ever woken up. Her tiny hand reaching up to my face,” his voice croaked. “Those little fingers digging right into my skin. She took it… Ripped all of it clean off. I need to find her. I need to find my face.”

“That’s all you care about?” Chloe spat. “Not meeting your daughter? Or apologising?”

His head shook. “I have nothing to be sorry for. Some men aren’t meant to be fathers. You’ll understand that someday.”

“Then some men should be more fucking careful,” Chloe said through gritted teeth.

He was still, as if contemplating her words. Then his hand jerked towards his briefcase, pulling it into his lap and facing it towards him. He unlatched the metal hinges and pried it open. After he considered the contents for a moment, he put the briefcase back on the floor and faced it towards her. It slid across the train floor until it thumped against her feet. A slick, metal revolver gazed up at her.

Chloe gazed down at the gun, and it looked right back at her. She’d never shot a gun in her life. She thought about how it would weigh in her hand, how cold it would be against her skin, how the chamber would feel spinning beneath her thumb.

“Then end me,” he said. “If I don’t deserve to live.”

The gun was just as cold as she thought it’d be. Shakily, moving with every bump and turn of the train, the barrel aimed towards the man’s head. It wasn’t as cold as she expected, either. If the man was afraid at all, he showed no signs.

“Safety,” he said. “That’s the trigger at the back. You have to switch it off.” His tone was almost paternal, as if guiding her through a hard homework question.

Her thumb teased the safety. He deserved it, didn’t he? Memories were flooding back to her the more she looked him up and down. What he had done was repulsive. It was hardly forgivable. All those nights she had spent alone because of a father like him- the weeks she’d cared for herself on end. The men her mother would bring home, leaving them there with her, alone and vulnerable.

The safety clicked off. The man’s shoulders tensed. If she had a father, everything would’ve been different. She never would’ve been hurt. Desecrated. Ruined. Her mother wouldn’t have had to watch her baby fall apart for reasons she refused to tell her, to tell anyone. She wouldn’t have had to find needles in her child’s room. If she had a father, she would’ve had someone to turn to. Someone to protect her. Her hand squeezed the grip until it was white. If she had a father…

She let the gun clatter to the floor. It slid across the train until it was at the man’s feet. His shoulders relaxed. “You believe I can be forgiven?”

“No,” Chloe said. “I think living with what you’ve done will hurt you so, so much worse than death.”

The man’s head aimed downwards, pointing towards his gun. Something like a sigh escaped him. “Perhaps you’re right. None of us can be forgiven.”

Chloe was afraid to move. She knew what he was talking about, she just couldn’t place what it was. Her head was far too clouded, but she had done something unforgivable once- hadn’t she? Is that why she was here?

It happened so fast that she had no say in the matter. When the man’s hand lurched towards the gun, she was certain her life was going to end then and there. She closed her eyes as the gunshot bounced off of the walls, amplified by the shattering glass. It took her far too long to realise she was still breathing. Her heart was still pumping blood.

The internal functions of the faceless man’s head were painted against the fragments of glass that hadn’t shattered. Sinew and ligaments spilled all down his suit jacket. The revolver lay slack in his hand next to him, his neck bent awkwardly from the impact. His skin was still intact, but the outline revealed that the muscle inside had torn in two. There was something else in the mess of blood and matter dripping onto the floor. Small, white and shiny. There were so many of them.

Chloe couldn’t help herself. In her state of shock and dissociation, she crawled forward, reaching her fingers towards one of them with caution. She pulled it from the mess and wiped it against her sleeve. A pristine white tooth. Ten, twenty, thirty teeth lay in the puddled massacre. Something else bobbed to the surface. Circular and shining in the same way the teeth did, only much larger. When it turned itself around as it floated through the pool, a brown iris glared up at her.

The man had never lost his face after all. It was buried within him. Chloe dropped the tooth back into the puddle, suddenly disgusted with herself for touching it. She left the corpse behind, the gunshot still ringing in her ears, and headed for the next door.

Just as she’d expected, it swung wide open.

& & &

The train, she quickly learned, was never ending.

Most of the cars were empty. After a while, they all blended together. It didn’t take long to lose count. Whatever was thumping against the train roof wanted inside badly, but the vehicle continued to protect her against whatever it was. There wasn’t so much as a hint of what the landscape outside had been. Just endless fields of yellow light.

It must have been months of walking. Maybe her legs were in motion for years. But she never stopped, never faltered. Weight was melting off of her bones like wax left in heat. It didn’t matter. She had to reach the conductor. She had too much to ask him.

Some of the train cars held people, though never more than one at a time. It was always the same. None of them ever prevented the next door from opening. After a while, Chloe stopped trying to speak to them. She could never elicit a response. They sat in their seats, their empty, once-familiar eyes observing every movement of her limbs.

She knew them all. Every single one. Things started coming back to her after the first thousand train cars.

The mother she’d let down. Then again, hadn’t her mother let her down all the same? Succumbing to addiction, then neglecting to prevent her child slipping into that same addiction. Not hiding her needles well enough. Not keeping Chloe’s bedroom locked, saving her from the strangers she brought home. Her track marks burned until she reached the next car.

The boy she’d made fall in love with her came next. It had all been for her own gain, hadn’t it? No, she’d never felt a single thing towards him aside from indifference. It was all in the way he saw her, the way she moved in the reflection of his eyes. She was someone else with him. Someone to be admired. Until she took from him what had been taken from her long ago. She fed off his innocence like a vampire, like it had any hope of saving her.

The little brother she’d abandoned. That car hurt the most. She couldn’t save him, no matter what she did. She couldn’t get him off of the train- the exit door just wouldn’t budge. The brother she’d abandoned to the same life she’d barely survived. She couldn’t ever care for him, could she? He’d be no better off with her. She couldn’t carry him through this train. There was no saving anyone. But he was still young, maybe he’d figure out a way off. If there was any God left above this train, she prayed for that alone.

By the time holes were beginning to form in the bottom of her feet, her boots long worn through, it all began to weigh. The relief of not knowing now seemed like the preferable cross to bear. She’d do anything to return to that first train car, where she’d woken in a daze of smoke- where she still had the will to save someone.

It took countless cars and miles of walking to realise there was no forgiving what she’d done. There was no walking back through the train, piecing corpses back together. Blood stained her hands and she’d never be able to scrub it clean. It had seeped into her very being. She was filthy and stained.

It was only after this realization that the final door opened. She knew it was the last one the second her hands had touched the door handle. There would be nothing after this.

The curved windows of the front of the train faced an endless oblivion. There was no centre console, no controls. This train was driving itself. Instead, a tall wooden branch stood with a mockingjay perched upon it. The bird didn’t regard her with any sense of surprise. It had been expecting her.

Chloe dropped to her ruined knees as the door swung shut behind her. There was no going back. There was never any taking it back.

When the bird’s beak opened, a man’s voice spilled out. “You have walked a rotten path,” he spoke in a melodic tone.

Chloe just bowed her head. There was no defending herself.

“Do you deserve to be forgiven?” the bird asked, his tiny stick limbs carrying him from one side of the branch to the next.

“Is it up to me?” Chloe asked. Her voice was hoarse, wracked with the sin of years she’d let pass her by.

“It has always been in your hands.”

“What if I can’t answer that?” she asked. When she looked down at her hands, they were wrinkled and blood-stained. “What if I don’t know?”

“Then let me ask again,” the bird spoke. “Can you forgive yourself? Can you forgive yourself?”

The blood was coming from somewhere. A hole in her torso stretched from her ribcage to her hipbones. But there was nothing inside, except for a well of blood that refused to stop pooling. When she held her arms over the abscess, the blood found ways around it, slipping out through every crack and crevice it could find.

“I can’t,” Chloe responded weakly. Some things were not meant to be forgiven.

When she looked up to face the light, the bird and the perch were gone. Instead, there was a fluorescent ceiling light swinging. A tiny moth thumped against the glass, begging to be let in- begging to burn itself alive. It shone brighter than anything she’d ever seen.

There had never been a conductor. This was her train- her path of destruction she had carved with her hands alone. All the people that had hurt her, she was destined to walk their path. To inflict the same pain they had. There was no saving anyone. No one could save her and she couldn’t save herself. She’d never had it within her.

Had it always been this way, her destiny always set to become what it had? Her father must have found it in her eyes the day she was born, a constellation of fate aligned. That’s why he had left. He couldn’t bear to watch her become this.

Or had she been formed into this thing? By everyone around her who had never cared enough, by the people who had stood by and done nothing. Maybe there had been hope for her before her purity was taken. Had there ever been another way around this? Was there some other fate out there that she’d narrowly avoided, where she’d ended up in a better place than this? Somewhere less haunted with no ghosts to be driven.

It didn’t matter now. None of those were answerable questions. The moth’s wings were catching fire.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Peter Kurt 2025

Image Courtesy” SBN74 at Pixabay