Weekend Getaway

It's on time.
It's always on time.
I wish, for once, I'd be able to utter the classic words of disappointment which are associated with public transportation, but I could tell from the hollow, organ-like, "whoot" of the train whistle, and a quick glance at my leather strapped wrist watch, that the black iron behemoth never fails to meet it's schedule exactly.
Standing on the very edge of the splintering wood platform, I craned my neck and squinted through the blinding sunlight towards a towering column of black smoke and dirt which grew in size as it came roaring forward towards one of it's few rest stops for the next several miles. It grew and grew in size an detail as it skimmed the barren and flat wilderness which stretched endlessly into unknown space. The low tone of that metal on metal of the wheels and those age old tracks seemed almost like the groan of an disgruntled old man, but eventually gave way to an earsplitting screech as the black towering monstrosity.
For the first timer, and even for veterans, the etiquette when boarding the train was quite simple to learn. First off, when the station manager personally seizes you by the shoulders and hurls you to the feet of other passengers with such sudden force that it wrenches your book bag from your grip, it means you may or may not have been standing too far off the platform. Second, the train will always stop twice. The first time the machine stops, the engine stands perfectly still in front of the first line of passengers. Anyone who knows one dime about trains will know that there is going to be some child… or in some cases, some very unfortunate adult, who will try to board the train at this time. They were always met by the station manager's friendly arm. He had a way with customers. Now after the initial stop, the engine would always struggle to bring the first actual passenger bearing car to the last line of passengers waiting to board.
Each and every car, excluding the engine and the cars that were just out of view, looked exactly alike. They were predominantly a metallic black with the exception of the rows of windows and the decorative red paneling running above and below those same windows. There was a small amount of gold accenting. It outlined the red panels and a thin strip separated the rows of rectangular glass panes which made for the windows. Though it would quite obviously would considerably open the space inside, I couldn't help but wonder what was keeping the roof from collapsing on each of these immense rooms on wheels.
The few people waiting in lines, a dozen at most, immediately started to walk into the car in front of them. There was no need to wait for folks to exit, because… well simply because there was no one who wanted  to exit here.  I liked this aspect of this quaint little town from which I was departing. It was a place that was just obscure  enough for me to elude all chance of laying my eyes upon a familiar face, yet is not an evening's train ride from my usual abode.
There is one more reason though.
One other reason why I travel oh so many tens of miles every weekend. You see as a writer, more specifically a journalist, I find the monotony of the bustling city, a bit off putting. There have been many writers who would remove themselves to the tranquility of nature to find some inner piece. I, however, grow tired of having to write about  burglaries and murders, and there happens to be  no such thing as news in a town where the latest advance in machinery is the cotton gin.
"B-ore… board!" A white gloved finger from the station manager pointed to the nearest fold open door on the train.
I suppose I'm merely delaying the inevitable, not to mention some very anxious commuters, by letting my mind wander off. I let my eyes search for any series of letters, which they found in a bronze plate commemorating the commissioning of this station. I regained focus. Reading is very soothing to me, you see.
Asking for some patience from the station manager and the passengers, I committed my attention, finally, to my lost book bag.  It took not a few minutes to find it standing uniform to the bottom of the platform. I was surprised to see that the brown leather case had not a single mar on it's shiny surface. Apparently it had hit the surface of the train and bounced harmlessly, but not at all gently, off of the shiny black surface one of the cabs.  After I retrieved the bag I examined the train once more in all of it's entirety. I noticed that every inch of it was rounded and smooth. It almost seemed like the man who designed it, did so with the intention of complete child safety. That is if you ignore the fact that it would probably crush that child long before he had any chance to enjoy it. It was strange  that every corner, every bolt seems to have been rounded and shined. Even the plow was no longer, what you'd call a plow. Rather it was a glorified Christmas ornament.
Eventually I was very much pushed through the "off " rectangular doors. I was left looking back at a very irritated looking station manager as the doors slid closed between us.  He stood there for a bit in his uniformly grey uniform. I really never noticed before, but his cap completely covered his eyes at all times. Had it always been like that, or was he just trying out some new trend. I never really paid enough attention to him to notice. It really didn't matter though, for the moment passed  as he decided to walk towards the back cars. It was probably to inspect them, but, again, it doesn't matter, he was out of sight and thus out of mind.
I hurried to the nearest seat, which was any one of the leather benches protruding from either side of the cab, before the train lurched forward to begin it's grand journey across this barren red prairie, to a place where the sky isn't quite as blue, or the wind quite as sweet.
"Whoot!" the whistle screamed and I sighed wondering what I was to read till next morning.
I had decided on a few choice articles which I'd clipped out of  the paper not two mornings ago before I'd left the city. They were amusing little tidbits of strange news or facts which were not in any way exciting. One was an educational segment about ant colonies. It explained in depth on how they worked in a sort of hive-mind. Rather than every individual ant being its own independent identity, they were more like extra limbs that the queen ant used to gather its food and tend to its needs until that ant died.
I enjoyed reading  these gems thoroughly,  at least I was enjoying them before I was rudely interrupted by the chubby hand of a man sitting  behind me. I looked back following the thick brown sleeve of whatever fat miserable chum who had nothing better to do than ask me some stup-
"Well Mr. Macomber! What a surprise!" I cheered, hugging the thirty-something year old over my seat.  
Mister Macomber, was a food critic of sorts. He fancies himself the title "gourmand." At least I assume it's a title. He writes a column which would run along side mine in various instances.
"Wilson! What are yeh doin' ere yer ol bastard!" Every time he talked it sounded like he was wheezing.
"Well… there was a… er a mistake in the train schedule a couple of days back, yes. I had to stay at a hotel till I could catch another, and here I am." I wondered if he caught onto the stutter. I had no intention of letting Macomber have any intimate knowledge of my personal affairs. I'd like to believe that it was because of my over all fondness of solitude  on my weekends that I did not tell him of my weekend retreats, however, with Macomber in particular, I'd have to say that's not the case. It's not unusual for someone to be "picked on" in an office, and in our editorial office, Macomber was that man.  We'd throw around jokes about how he devours recently fired employees, and how his double chin was used as a change purse. It's really nothing to be proud of, but I refuse to be ashamed of it. Even if he were to find out. However I couldn't help but wonder if it was that guilt, that made me want to push him away more than anyone else.
"Well that's a darn shame. Ah' guess yeh've got some catchin' up to do! Don'cha worry, I've gotcher back!" He announced very jovially. I could almost swear that he could not wait to get back to work.
"S-so what are you doing here?" I asked. Thank goodness I'm a genius at changing subject.
"Well, me an' the wife, Margot ova' here heard that some o' these night runnin' trains got somma the best dishes yeh've ever wrapped yer lips around." My jaw fell once I laid eyes on his gorgeous wife.
She was a slim black haired woman who's red dress left little to the imagination. That was his wife? There was obviously some very sickening story behind that relationship, but it wasn't one I was willing to delve into. There are some things in this world. Horrible things. Things that should not ever be revealed to a fellow co-worker.
"Charmed."  she nearly whispered offering her hand.
I'd noticed that she was wearing a wrist watch similar to mine. In fact, when I took her hand, she noticed that it was exactly the same. What a woman would need a wristwatch for, I couldn't imagine, but still she seemed delighted.
"What an excellent choice in time piece, madam."
She giggled in response. It was such a cute tiny noise. It was a shame, it was nearly drowned out by the  "tack-tack tack-tack" of the rails.
After exchanging more formalities and becoming more familiar to the sight of his wife, I was able to return to my clippings. I could not read for long though. It might have been the rhythmic yet random vibrations of the cab floor, or maybe it was the constant "tack-tack" of the train, but I was soon lulled to sleep. My consciousness slowly disappeared into that soothing "Tack-tack. Tack-tack. Tack-tack. Tack-tack. Tack. Tack… Tack."
When I awoke I immediately took notice of the scenery outside. Or the lack there of. The pitch black darkness of the night was nearly tangible. I would not have noticed if someone had drawn black drapes over the car. Every time, the thought of  the train having already stopped in the dead of night crossed my mind. However, this time, the idea seemed so much more plausible than it ever had before. I had no idea why. In an attempt to shake off my groggy imaginings, I decided to take a walk around the train. I made my way down the car to the door to the next train. I was walking away from the front of the train, towards the back where the dining cart was. I opened the door and  was met with a brief gust of  wind.
This was to be expected.
What I did not expect, was the putrid smell which seemed to force its way up my nostrils. The stink came from nowhere, or was it everywhere. Thankfully, another gust of wind managed to blow it away just long enough for me to regain my senses and run through to the other door. I followed this same exact pattern for as many cars as it took to reach the dining cart. I didn't very much keep count, but I found it unusual that the occupants of each cab never exceeded four. It was even stranger that  every single passenger was sleeping. Indeed it was late at night, but usually there was some restless child or an anxious man wondering about or playing in the open space in between the cars… Well I can guess that it was not the wisest idea to go outside at the moment.
The dining car was plenty luxurious, the gentle daylight which would have been there, had I come earlier, was replaced with the golden lights of the two crystal chandeliers spaced evenly at the center of either side of the room. Flat round tables set with centerpieces, endless rows of forks, wine glasses,  and red table cloths to match the velvety carpeting were set symmetrically around two tall booths, both of which contained a similar table and faced towards the center of the room, away from the doors. One of which produced a very messy sound of lips smacking, bones crunching, and  various other hideous noises which could not possibly come from a civilized human being.
"I see you've found the dining cab, then Mr. Macomber."
There was no response to this, instead the chomping and the slurping grew louder. The chewing and the spitting followed in turn. I walked around to see if it really was Mr. Macomber.
Of course it was.
He was eating so vigorously that I could swear someone was holding a gun up to his head. His face had gon e pink, maybe from spice, or anger, or asphyxiation, or… Well I really couldn't think of anything else  so I carried on to the next question.
"Where's Margot?"
To this, Macomber lifted his sweaty red head revealing his formally white shirt. Now it was stained by excessive sweat and gravy stains. Mysterious "foods" were tumbling down from his neck crevasse. The three lard-filled balloons which made up his torso trembled  as he tried to utter "C…conduc-t-urrr." through the mountain of food that bridged his mouth and the table.
"Ah, as you were then." Seemed like the only appropriate response.
I'd eventually made it to the space in between the engine and the first car. Mind you this was no easy task. The air outside still wreaked something ghastly, the only relief were the seemingly regular intervals of wind, and even then the only noise to keep me company, was the "Thock-thock thock-thock" of the train. It was no longer a gentle sound. Sometimes it was loud, sometimes soft, but the irregularity of it drove me mad as I waited in front of the engine room door.
No one was answering. Hadn't I knocked thrice already? Still no one would come. I could not wait in this disgusting rank blackness. I looked to the side. Because of the light coming from the cart behind me, I could make out the redish blur from the mountain rock in between the city and my beloved homely town. Yes, this must be a tunnel inside of the mountain. The smell might be sulfur. I'd read sulfur smelt like rotten eggs, however this was far beyond anything I could have imagined. Maybe I should write an article correcting that, changing "rotten eggs" to "rotting corpses."
I was about to give up on  knocking and head back into my car to pick up my clippings once again, when I heard a loud "Bang" on the door. Not a knock, but one loud profound show of force against the metal slab. The door had one thick circular window through which  I saw nothing. Well nothing until two white eyes appeared dead center of that window.
I had lurched back at the sudden appearance of these glaring orbs. That and they didn't quite look like eyes. They were too large, too white, the irises where too pale to be blue, and the pupils too small to let a normal person see.
After I pealed myself from the door behind me I shouted  at him to let me in. I asked where we were. I asked where Margot was. I asked him if he could hear me. All questions were bet with an intense unblinking stare. Eventually I gave up and kicked the door before heading back into the car behind me.
I made way to my car when I realized I wasn't sure where my car was. I seemed to have lost count of how many cars were between mine and the engine. I looked around for someone to inquire, but not only did I find no one familiar, I saw no one at all, not one person. It was highly unusual for the train to have an empty car, but one sniff of the air gave me all the reason in the world to believe that they had gone to another car. Unfortunately, there was no one in the next car, or the car after that. I was running through car after car before I found myself catching my breath in the dining cab.
The dining cab was the same as before. It was almost entirely empty except for the noisy Macomber in the nearest booth. I walked around just to see someone, anyone familiar… I did not know what to make of the scene. The table that was once a mountain of food, was now a devastating mess of crumbs, spills, plates, bones and some messes which could not even be identified. Macomber himself, was still eating a leg of obviously undercooked ham. Apparently the cooks have been unable to keep up with him. The disturbing thing about the man, was his over all appearance. His clothes were far beyond stained. The color was indescribable, food was practically caked on him. However, the worst part were his eyes, they were red and puffy, but the area around them. His eyelids, is profound  bags, were scabbed and bleeding.
"Er… Mr. Macomber?"
He grunted before he took his attention from his meal. "Oh Wilson! Ah'm er'fraid they've simply run outta food." He announced as jovially as was his norm. "Poor service, that."
"Mr… Macomber. What are you?"
"Yeh've stopped fawning over mah wife I see." He laughed "Jus' kiddin there, Wilson! I see yeh're wonderin' bout mah eatin' habits. "
I couldn't find a response as he stepped out of his booth. He… he had grown fatter, nearly twice his normal size. He had thrown all hygiene hedonistically to the wind. Naked from the waist down, his pants were obviously restraining him. I could see he'd soiled himself quite a bit as well.
He walked slowly towards me.
"Lemme be frank with ya." He sighed. "I… Margot ain't gonna be commin' back."
I noticed he slightly gestured to the table. Wasting no time, I obediently scanned every inch, before losing my footing in a numbing panic. Towards an edge of the table, right by the place Macomber once sat, there was a saucer with a broken teacup. Secure to the handle of the teacup, was a pale delicate hand severed at the wristwatch. A wristwatch almost perfectly similar to mine.
"W-why?" was the only word I could utter.
"Well, mah good ol' Wilson, I had to. Yer see, she's gonna eat us. S'what she does. He uses yeh as her hands an' feet, tah get what she wants, an' after that, she'll eat ya."
"She? Margot?"
"Ah hell nah, yeh idiot! Her!" he pointed out of the window. "But she can't git to yeh if yeh over-power her. Yeh see, she can't git in-ta yer head if yeh keep on eatin'. That's the key."
He was now only a table's width away from me. I was on the floor, pinned against the opposing booth. His eyes were full of fear and desperation. I was surely going to meet the fate of Margot.
"She only lets one person offa the train at a time, and I'll be darned tootin' if it's me!"
He dashed to pounce on me, in that instant I dove under him and made way for the door from which I came. Once I opened the door, Macomber seemed to be taken aback. I really didn't think much of it, I just ran and ran through car after car. Each car seemed more vacant than the next. All the while, I was to put up with the constant "Thock-thock thock-thock." of the rails. The smell was also too much for me to handle. And a nagging feeling like I was forgetting something had become the most obnoxious feeling of them all. I had reached the engine once more and hammered on the door over and over, slowly letting all these little annoyances chip away at my consciousness. I was about to pass out when I felt the door slightly give way. I gripped the handle and slit the door open, screaming.
"A passenger! He's eating everyone!" I realized how pathetically insane I sounded.
A sense of relief  came over me, when I found that there was no one in the room to hear my ridiculous announcement. There was no conductor. No one shoveling coal into the engine… No one. There was no one operating the engine.
"Thock-thock-thock-thock-thock." Several "thocks" all at once seemed to have sounded off behind me. I looked back to see a tiny, complicated cylinder with several silver rods lined up around it's perimeter. "Thock" I tapped the leathery top of the beautiful object.
It was a snare-drum.
The room was dead silent. This was when that nagging feeling hit me as something very obvious. It was the vibrations of the floor. The floor. No. The train was perfectly still and perfectly silent. I was not going anywhere. However, if the train wasn't moving, nothing stopped me from doing so myself. I opened the door leading back to the passenger car. My plan, wasn't much of a plan. Just jumping off and running along the tracks was no real plan, but I heard no other suggestions.
Well that was until I saw a very exhausted, very irritated Mr. Macomber standing evenly in between  the engine door, and a wide open passenger door.
"I ain't gonna go like this! She ain't gonna eat me. Yeh understand, don't yeh?" Macomber panted.
"Just jump off! We can run away from this horrible place! You don't have to do this, the train is perfectly still."
"No… no if I get off this here train I'll get eaten jus' like everyone else!"
"No! You ate them, can't you see that?"
"No. No! I…"
"Yes you did!"
"I-" He stepped back, but he obviously was the less coordinated of the human species, for he instantly lost his footing. He slipped and fell quickly.
I stood where he stood to gain a perspective on where to follow. What I saw was a rather fat man, slowly sinking into black nothingness. His arms flailing about asking for help, for someone to pull him out.
I was paralyzed in complete fear. A man was being completely devoured alive in front of me. I couldn't see what, because it had no shape. It was as if we were…
I was inside her the entire time. The stench was her stench, the wind was her breath. This train, is her train.
In a panic I did the only thin that I could do, I scanned both walls on either side of me for something to  read, to my relief, the train's name was posted in wrought iron right above the engine door.
"Sr-crn-lfphth… heh. heh. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha HAHAHAH!"
It was the best thing in the world. Some of these letters weren't even English. There was a backwards "l" and none, absolutely no vowels. Either she had a ridiculous sense of humor, or there is a creature, who can enslave and eat any man, woman, or child that she wants in the world, yet not capable of spelling a single word. I love her, she's simply too much to stand! I just want to… I want to.
I let go of the joining section onto which I clung, and simply let my self fall into the eternal, rancid, blackness.
The next morning I arrived, with a bit of a headache, and a thoroughly disorganized book-bag, at the city station which I had learned to dread seeing. Even more horrible, was the fact that one of my fellow co-workers, a scrawny man with barely any meat to him, who's name I could just not recall.
"Morning, Mr. Wilson!" He cheerfully greeted.
"Good Morning."
"I thought you'd be here, the boss wants you back in the office as soon as possible. Apparently someone had jammed a stick into the presses. Probably some kid what got bored with stick-ball eh?"
"Mmmm." I moaned. "Actually I'm on the tail of a sensational story right now. I should get back on the train soon." I walked two steps away from him and turned around. "Say, would you like to come with me?"
"Really?"
"Yeah sure. She'll love it if I get more people in on the… er story."
"That's swell!" The kid jumped a tiny bit too enthusiastically. "But you might wanna wash up a bit, you look pretty awful."
"Well what's wrong with the way I look?" I asked, almost insulted.
"Can't put my finger on it."
I turned around to look at my reflection on the train's beautifully polished windows. I saw a man in his twenties, in fairly good shape. He wore a sharp brown sports coat, and matching slacks that fit like a dream. His hair was a bit of a mess, and his face was a bit dirty, it made it easier to notice two… horribly white eyes that were a bit too large, who's irises were too pale to be blue, and the pupils to small to let any normal person see right.
I fixed my hair and had the kid follow me to the train.
"Sure is crowded at the station today, did anyone even leave the train?" He asked.
"It's a good day to… board." I replied.