The Man on the Tracks

Two guys meet on a train platform and thus begins a story about how even the simplest of encounters and exchanges can be life-changing.

One day I will find the right words and they will be simple. And where do I go to find them? Where can I go? Did Jack Kerouac spend the whole of his life searching for them? Was that the purpose of all his road trips? Tramping, trudging, hitchhiking or whatever else he did up and down and through America, in or out of a car, bouncing like the knees of a joyrider from one extreme of exciting adventure to unfortunate mishap, was that what he had been looking for? The right words to describe an experience, a simple emotion, to sum up life in all its multifarious, bizarre, freakish, screwed up messiness in a few succinct, sibilant syllables. I don't know why they should be sibilant. I guess I've just always thought that if life could be embodied and encompassed in a sound, then it should have a sort of hissing ring and echo to it, something that sprays on the air like water from a hose, that curls and slithers through grass to twine round your ankles, tripping you up or biting into you with venom. Maybe even both. Don't touch me, I'm full of snakes. More hand-me-down Kerouac for the adventure starved.  

The angry roar of a train whips my hair back in a burst of wind and speed as it thunders past, wheels clattering and sparking off the rails like a couple in a fight, the grit and dirt and rags of newspaper flying up into the air substitutes for the objects that are usually thrown around as the debris of domestic rage. My own face blurs past, a warped reflection in the dust and grime smeared windows. A travelling moon, it sweeps away into the darkness, white and cratered with freckles that are so dense and closely clustered that they might as well be called blotches, a slight propensity towards roundness lends it a genial air, helped by the wide, clear, lake blue eyes, and tight, short, ginger curls that spring out in the same corkscrews that they did when I was three. A Weasley stray, I look like the ideal sidekick, the box in the corner that no one's thought to look into. Cast in some nineteenth century story of the Jane Austen or Charles Dickens variety, I'd be the bumbling nice guy, awkward and foundering, a sympathetic and likeable enough character, but ultimately one of the supporting cast, a safe and sturdy option for the pretty heroine, but only second best because she's really got her eye on the handsome brooding guy of the Heathcliff type who mopes and sulks and wins hearts with the intermittent amorous stares and passionate speeches.    

Too soon, the train has disappeared and faded into the darkness of the tunnel and silence rains downs on me like hail. The close confines of the tunnel and train platform crowd in on me like a persistent child desperate for attention, sidling up to me and getting in my face with pleading demands to be seen and felt. The slate grey drabness of the ceiling and curving, chipped walls presses cold into my back and butt as I sit crouched on the ground, knees drawn up to my chest, arms draped loosely over them, and head leaning back against the wall as I stare listlessly into the finger-trap murk and tightness of the place. 

 

On the tracks below, some distance to my left, a man now shuffles about along the rails. Clearly, he'd only just jumped down there and not a minute earlier otherwise he wouldn't now have the use of his motor functions. He scuffs his feet in the dust gathered there in balls and clumps and roves his eyes all over as if he's searching for hidden treasures and his eyes are metal detectors. That makes two of us then. We're both looking for something that having exhausted everywhere else in our quest, we've now come here. Here, to this gloomy and tight jack-in-a-box of a place that acts as a conduit between places, whisking people here and there, from starts and ends of journeys, journeys of business and of pleasure, of short, brisk trips and long voyages. It doesn't matter that what the two of us are searching for are vastly different from one another. He's here and so am I. That's enough. Company is company and at least for a little while we can each relish in the illusion that we are not being left alone to suffer the torment and confusion that is simply just living. 

What are the right words, I can't help but wonder. Did Jack Kerouac ever find them, hidden at the back of a car under a seat? Gathering mold in the refrigerator back home? And what ever made him think that they would be simple? Had he already found them, discovered the secret to their rightness and found it to be simplicity? Did he already know and then just hold them to himself, sphinx like, ready to dole out a tantalizing taste of them in the form of a riddle? If I could unlock those words, would my search really be over then? Would I be complete? And happy? The right words, for what, for whom? If I had them for myself, would I also then have them for the man down there on the tracks? Could I then coax him back onto the platform, talk hope into him, give him wings so that he can walk out of this station with a bounce in his step rather than the beaten down, haggard shamble he always drags along in his gait like iron chains as he returns to the tracks night after night? Could I- 

"S**t, what is he doing?"  

My head jerks up at the voice that is too new and too loud in the silence that I hadn't even realized was oppressive until now. Before there was only me and the man on the tracks to break it and neither of us had dared, preferring to cocoon ourselves each in the individual isolation and loneliness it offered. Now, however, a new shape emerges from the shadows beyond the entrance way into this dark and bleak tunnel for the hopeless and it's clear that he won't be swallowed up by its gloom and anonymity. He's too vivacious, too bright, too full of gleaming angles and sharp lights to become lost and snagged in the curving, chipped drabness of this place.  

He is tall and lean, broad shouldered and leonine, licorice lace snapping taut in long, slender limbs and tight hard muscles that snake up bare arms encased in toffee colored skin, a tattoo of a deck of cards snakes sinuously around one bicep, cascading up and down like an ascending staircase, handsome features are carved into an appealing, chiseled face, a long, slightly aquiline nose, full, sensuous lips, cheekbones that look like they could draw blood if touched too carelessly, piercings stud one ear and one stud pierces an eyebrow, his eyes are slanted and are a swirling, uncertain smoky brown, a light topaz hue clouded with fogs and specks of ash grey, and his hair is a tousled mess of raven dark locks that could be curly or wavy if he swept a comb through it, daggers of red and feathers of chick wing yellow finger and slice their way up through the nest, it's as if he couldn't quite make up his mind which color he wanted and had started with one only to change his mind halfway through and switch to the other. He looks like a rock god, complete with black boots, jeans and a grey Metallica t-shirt.  

He arches an eyebrow, the pierced one, and too late I realize that the question was directed at me and that I have been caught staring. I clear my throat uncomfortably and finally answer in a voice that comes out hoarse from lack of use, "He's trying to get ready to jump."  

Now, the other eyebrow lifts too. "Jump?" He echoes. "Jump where?"

 

"In front of the next train." 

If he had a third eyebrow, he would raise that one too, I'm sure. "He's already on the tracks. Why does he need to jump? So that he can wave his hands and make sure to say hi to everyone?" 

"I meant jump metaphorically," I try to explain, "jump as in-" I swallow around the obstruction the words make in my throat, clotting and tangling up into a knot, they suddenly seem impossible to get out, too harsh and cold and without feeling to use in reference to the sad and pitiful man shuffling and shambling about in the detritus gathered along the tracks like dying, withered weeds, toxins that I don't want this stranger with the warm, wood-smoke eyes to know are in my system for fear that he will realize that the disease that afflicts the man on the tracks has begun to seep into me too.  

"Jump as in a euphemism for offing himself?" He asks. "Yeah, I know what you meant." 

I throw up at him a quick, startled glance, surprised that a rock god like him would use such a bookish, academic sounding word as 'euphemism'. He catches my look and the corners of his lips tilt up in a sly, knowing smirk as if he could see my thoughts as clearly as if they were flashing in neon above my head. I have to fight down a flush of embarrassment for having made assumptions and falling back on stereotypes in order to fill in the details of my roughshod sketch of this man.  

He stands next to me and leans back, sharing the wall with me. His denim clad knees are at the level of my eyes and if I tilt my head ever so slightly to the right, it would knock up against his leg. "Offing himself." I say after a few moments of silence has passed, mulling over the words. "Isn't that technically just another euphemism for k-k-" Again, I can't seem to get the words out. I had meant the comment to come out sounding offhand and glib but instead I had ended up looking like a stuttering simpleton standing up for his first presentation to the class.  

"Killing himself?" There's a small furrow of puzzlement between his brows as he stares down at me with an expression that indicates that I am as much of an enigma to him as the man below us. "Yeah, I guess it is at that." 

There's another stretch of quiet before awkward and hesitant, I proffer my hand to him and say, "I'm Cameron, by the way." 

He gazes down at me, his eyes flickering between my face and outstretched hand with a look that's half bafflement and half wry amusement. "Are you always this friendly to every random stranger you meet?" 

"You spoke to me first." I feel compelled to point out.  

"Yeah and the first thing I said was 's**t', not an introduction."  

"Same here. Uh, about the introduction I mean. That's not what I did first either." I clumsily object.  

"No but what you did do was answer a question you didn't have to, helpful for no reason. That's something only someone who's out to make friends with the whole world does." His lips curl up into a smug and arch smile that makes me feel like a child who thought he had the best kept secret safely concealed in a secure hiding place only to find that all along someone older and worldlier and vastly more superior knew about it and thought it was 'cute'.   

"It sounds like you've answered your own question." I reply, lowering my hand and sounding petulant and sullen even to my own ears.  

He laughs good-humoredly, completely unaffected by my abrupt change in attitude. Deep and musical in timbre, it reverberates through the dimness, bouncing off the walls like an echo that has finally lost its mournful and forlorn hollowness and is now too happy to stay still, preferring to leap and soar about without restraint. It feels out of place in this dark and cheerless tunnel, disturbing the still and quiet that had so long held court here at this hour and I see the man on the tracks who until now had scarcely seemed aware of our existence pause his pacing and glance up at us with a look of reproach as if he had caught us whispering together at church.  

"Don't look so serious." My partner in guilt, if not in actual crime says to me. "Here, I might not be the whole world but I'll be your friend." He bends down and taking my limp hand, the same one I had offered to him earlier, lifts it up into a firm and friendly handshake. "Pleased to make your acquaintance and now friendship too. I'm Linden." 

It could be a first name or surname. He doesn't specify and I don't ask. Linden. I roll it around in my head, my mouth, silently, tasting and testing it. It suits him somehow.  Smooth and slippery, it licks off the tongue, then darts back in and rests solidly against the teeth and roof of the mouth, the curious hard and millpond sound of it like a boiled sweet.  

"So, Cameron, now that we're friends, I think I'm allowed to ask," he takes out a pack of cigarettes from a back jeans pocket and shaking one out, he places it between his lips, the words now coming out slightly garbled around the edges as he talks around the cigarette, "what's a kid like you doing here of all places with no one but a suicidal geezer for company on a Friday night?" 

"It's Saturday." I correct him.

  

"Huh?" 

"Midnight was almost two hours ago."  

He stops in the middle of raising a lighter that he's pulled from some other obscure pocket up towards the cigarette already dangling from his mouth. "It is? Well, I guess I'll just have to take your word for it since I've lost my phone." 

Who loses their phone? I can't help but wonder and just barely manage to refrain from asking. The restraint, however, stops short when I can't resist objecting, "And I'm not a kid." 

"Yeah?" 

"I'm seventeen." 

"And I'm almost twenty. That makes you a kid in my eyes." The flame that sprouts from his lighter sparks off the teasing glint in his eyes that somehow feels more dangerous than the little flower of fire that he holds cupped between his palms and I suddenly feel like the cigarette, caught between his teeth and burning at one end.  

"That's not that much of an age gap!" I protest hotly.  

"Maybe not in actual years but in terms of world experience, I've got oodles more of it than you." 

"Yeah, I can tell from that very mature 'oodles'." I quip sarcastically. "A born philosopher, you are. Tell me, did you also reach enlightenment with the Buddhist monks?" 

Linden laughs long and hard, almost choking on the smoke from his cigarette. "He bites! He'll correct your timekeeping, tell you about a suicidal man even though it's too hard for him to get the words out but call him a kid and suddenly it's beware!"

 

I scowl bad-temperedly. "You're not supposed to smoke down here, you know." 

"Bit late for that." He takes the cigarette from his mouth and shows me the now half-burned stub before placing it back in his mouth presumably to let it burn down to its very end. "What would you do about it, anyway? Call the cops?" He slants me an irreverent grin, conveying clearly his total disregard and lack of respect for the heavy hand of the law, rebellious miscreant that he undoubtedly is.  

"It's bad for your lungs." I tell him feebly for lack of anything better to say and feeling silly even as I say it. 

 

His grin is now a Cheshire's smile, almost too wide for his face as he leans down and ruffles my hair with a familiarity and fondness born of all of five minutes. "Worried for my health, are you? If I dropped dead right now, would you break your heart for me?" His fingers are still in my hair, long and slim like the tines of a comb, warm and reassuring somehow. I have to resist the urge to close my eyes and lean into the touch. "I guess you would, though." He murmurs softly, retracting his hand. "Same as you are for the poor old guy down there."  

I lick my lips, tasting just how dry they are. "What makes you think I'm breaking my heart for him?" 

He stares appraisingly down at me, a mingled look of inquisitive kindness and softness in his smoky eyes. "Well, you're definitely hurting but whether it’s your own heart or just your social life, I don't really know but I get the feeling it's got something to do with why you're here on a train platform on a Friday ni- sorry- I mean Saturday." 

I avert my eyes and stare down into the darkness of the tunnel. By now, the man below us has returned to his cursory shambling among the tracks. A mouse appears and scuttles out, darting past the man, its flesh tinged worm like tail brushing across the shine of the man's shoe. He startles terribly, his whole body recoiling and jerking like a spooked horse. A noise- the first I've heard from him all night and rather undignified in nature- escapes him. High pitched and small, almost a squeak. Actually, it might've just been the mouse.

   

Linden chuckles softly. "You'd think a man determined to die wouldn't scare so easily of a itty-bitty little mouse. But I guess that's the problem right there. The man's not really that determined after all."

Something in the way he speaks makes me want to trust him, to open up my chest and show him the beating and bleeding heart that pumps and forces rotting life through my body. I think it might be the total lack of censure and judgment in his voice. Whereas most people would laugh at the man's unreasonable fear, finding disdain and mirth appropriate to the situation, Linden's tone is indulgent, almost understanding. His attitude is of one who finds the anxiety of another perfectly logical and natural but being unaffected by it himself finds it funny that someone else should suffer from it and is also sorry that they should do so.  

I get the feeling that if I start talking to him right now, he would listen, really listen with all his attention strained towards me, offering me nothing but just that, his attention. And it is this, more than anything else, that opens my mouth and coaxes out the words. "I come here nearly every night and just sit, watching train after train go by." 

I can feel his eyes on me, heavy and intense on my head but I continue to stare into the gloom of the tunnel, letting my words fall quietly onto the dimness like autumn leaves on pond water. "I sit here and wish I had the courage to get on one and just keep on going, far, far away. I mean, I know every train has a destination but I still dream of just getting on one and never getting off, just travelling on and on to the end of the Earth and then off into the universe and then even beyond that." 

There's a long silence. It stretches on for what seems like an interminable time and just when it's beginning to become painful and I'm starting to think that I've said too much and oh no he thinks I'm crazy and he's going to turn around and walk away as fast as those long legs can carry him and disappear through the exit and I'll never see him again, he bends down and places a warm, heavy hand on my head, just resting it there atop my hair, that same soothing touch as before filling and numbing my senses like a narcotic. 

"That sounds a lot like oblivion, kid." He says gently. "What are you running from?" 

I look down at the scuffed toes of my trainers. "It's not so much that I'm running from anything." I reply slowly, thinking it over. "More like I wish I had somewhere to run to."  

His fingers linger in my hair a moment and then come away like dried flakes of glue, with a clinging slowness, almost stroking their way out of the tangle, a snake charmer beguiling his serpents from out of their basket. "So, in other words, you and our friend there," he nods towards where our erstwhile companion of the night paces along the tracks, "are both afraid to live." 

I instinctively bristle at what I feel is an oversimplification and misinterpretation of everything I'd just said. "I wouldn't-"  

"Oh, you wouldn't, would you?" Linden interrupts, raising an eyebrow in a facsimile of the expression he'd worn when we'd first started talking just a short while ago. 

This time, though, I retaliate by raising both my eyebrows back at him. It being the only thing I can think to do since because he'd cut me off before I could say exactly what it was I wouldn't say or do, I have no idea precisely what statement he's negating. His lips curve up into a smirk like an opponent in a chess game acknowledging a move well-played. 

He continues smoothly, that smile still hovering about his mouth, "Well, that guy can't get up the guts to jump in front of a train and you can't jump onto a train. No matter what way you look at it, it's the same kind of situation." 

"I guess that's true but-" I try again only to fail once more in the face of Linden's unyielding and leapfrogging conversational force.  

"When was the last train?" He asks abruptly.  

"About ten minutes ago, I think." I answer, taken aback by this sudden topic change and slightly annoyed at the way he was monopolizing the conversation. "Look-" 

"Know when the next one's supposed to come?" He asks, cutting me off yet again. 

 

"Uh, they usually come about every five minutes but there was an announcement before about how the next one's delayed or something." I answer. Why is he asking this now? Is there somewhere he's supposed to be? Hadn't it occurred to him before to wonder about his train? Can it be, I begin to wonder with a sickening lurch deep in my belly, that he's bored of me now? Was I too whiny, too insecure and vulnerable sounding? Did my moaning and moping seem pathetic to him? 

"Perfect." I look up in time to see a brilliant grin flash across his face before, bounding across in two long strides, he jumps over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks.  

I scramble up after him, nearly tripping over my own feet in my haste. "What are you doing?" I demand as I peer down at him, alarm evident in my voice and no doubt on my face too.  

"Hello Cameron." He greets me casually as if we were meeting at a Starbucks for a prearranged catch-up session. No longer a Cheshire cat but a Mad Hatter, his grin is so wide and exuberant with barely suppressed glee that I actually begin to fear for the contours of his face. Surely no one should be able to smile like that without breaking skin.  

"What are you doing?"  

We both swivel our heads to stare, stunned, at the man who until now had not breathed a word to either of us. He gapes at Linden as if he were an apparition conjured by the devil himself, his eyes so wide they seem in danger of bulging right out of his head. His voice is hoarse and raspy as if it has been rubbed raw by sandpaper and the slumping,  hunched set of his shoulders only makes his already diminutive size look even smaller.  

"Just having a party." Linden answers affably, laying a hand on the man's shoulder who flinches as if he's been bitten and I can't help but wonder, how does he do that, touch people so easily? Dispensing words and that calming touch of his with the practiced ease of an apothecary handing out salves to the afflicted and broken like me and the man squirming under his hand now. "This is the fast track to oblivion, you know," he goes on nonchalantly, "and we," this with a smile pointed like a finger at me, "well, right now we're only a party of two but you're welcome to join us." 

"What the hell are you on about, you mad b*****d?" I exclaim, my agitation growing the more he continues to stand there on the tracks, carefree and immovable as if he were planning to grow roots there.  

Much to my fury, he only laughs and says to the man, "Don't let that face fool you. He's all bite." Turning to me, he calls in a playful voice that doesn't even bother to conceal his mirth, "Hey kid, come on in. The water's fine." 

"No, seriously, what are you doing? Get back up here." I respond, starting to feel frantic now. Surely, the next train was already on its way here, speeding down the rail with unswerving purpose straight towards where this lunatic was prancing round on the tracks like it was a barbecue in a friend's backyard and not a completely dangerous and foolish place to be. Plus, if I'm calling someone else crazy, then something is seriously wrong. 

"Hey, um..." until now, the man had been a silent spectator of our conversation, twisting his head round from one to the other of us with a puzzled, ogling expression like one who has switched on the TV during a particularly heated and exciting moment of a tennis match and is now playing catch-up even as he tries to keep up with what is already going on. "Maybe you should listen to your friend and you know, get back up?" He suggests nervously, the words coming out more like a question as if he's afraid that someone will bark at him and chastise him for saying something so reasonable.  

Linden ignores him and trains his gaze on me like he's sighting down a gun and I feel his eyes, twin beams, sear into me and hit me straight in the gut as hard and damaging as bullets. They open me up, tearing into skin and tissue and spilling blood, heart, and soul everywhere so that I'm totally exposed, all my vulnerabilities lying bare and shivering on the floor for him to see and read like a picture book. 

"This is what oblivion looks like, Cameron." He says quietly, grave and serious for the first time in the short while that I've known him.  

It shocks me into silence and I can only stare in wide-eyed bewilderment as he suddenly stands still, straight and with his feet planted wide apart, graceful and poised as a lynx, topaz and ash eyes staring directly ahead into the darkness of the tunnel with deadly and sword-point sharpness and precision as if he would pierce that dusk with the force of his gaze alone.  

Far away in the distance, from out of the depths of that deep gloaming comes the blare of a horn, the shouted greeting from an approaching train. I exchange a brief, horrified look with the man and simultaneously we both begin to shout at Linden, wild and desperate entreaties and commands to move his crazy a*s and get off those damn tracks.  

However, he only balls up the hands at his sides into tight fists and without moving his eyes an inch from the receding darkness ahead, says to me, "This is what it looks like, Cameron, to live and choose oblivion. To choose and wait for it to come and swallow you."  

Yellow light spills and creeps forward, washing up on the walls at the far end of the tunnel. His hair starts to lift in the blast of wind that comes roaring down the tracks like a beast in the night, the lemon quills in that nest of shadow black locks both fairer and brighter than the glare from the headlights of the oncoming train, the slashes of red an omen for the blood I feel sure I am about to see fall.  

I am yelling, the words incomprehensible even to my own ears which are full of a deafening ringing. My voice is already hoarse and sore, my throat tickling and scraping with pain but I can't stop. Desperation and panic has possessed me and I am caught in its claws, a struggling field mouse wild and near hysterical with terror. The light is full on Linden's face now and his jaw is clenched as well as his hands, his eyes are still staring ahead but there is the slightest tremor wobbling along his arms which are as taut as bow strings.   

Suddenly, from over his shoulder I see a weight bearing down on him, rendered in stark black shadow by the growing light. It tackles him in what looks like a bone crushingly tight grip, both arms grasping him round the chest, and forcibly pushes and moves and propels him towards the platform. Linden almost immediately cooperates and trips and scrambles his way back up to the platform. I am ready and waiting, my hands already outstretched and grabbing and pulling at any skin and clothes I can fumblingly find and together the three of us claw and pull until all of us are collapsed, panting and tangled together in one messy heap on the platform. 

 

The train rushes by us and then disappears into the tunnel. I am on my back, my chest wheezing and heaving up and down with the shortness of my breath and the adrenaline and terror of the last minute, or at least it would be if it weren't for the heavy weight on my chest. I lift my throbbing head (I must've banged it against the platform floor at some point) and look up to see the back of Linden's t-shirt who somehow had landed on top of me. One of us is shaking but I can't tell who. The ends of his hair are tickling my nose and I place a hand atop that crow black mess and luxuriate in its soft texture, needing to feel the fine threads of it in order to reassure myself- yes, he's really alive, we're okay, he's really not dead- and now I know that I am definitely trembling, the last lingering traces of fear finally giving way to enormous relief. I close my eyes and have to force myself not to throw my arms round him in a squeezing hug, restraining myself instead to the feel of his hair on my fingers.  

He laughs shakily, the first false one I've heard from him. "Wow, that was close. Everyone in one piece?" 

"I lost my shoe." The man, Linden's savior, I suppose, says in a comically stunned and morose voice. Delayed shock, I think.  

"Well, I'm sure you'll find it again somewhere on those tracks. The mice are probably already on the job." Linden replies, some of his customary good humor already returning. "What about you, Cameron? Still alive?" 

"Um, your butt's kind of in my face." I answer truthfully, his body having shifted during the course of this exchange.  

He laughs, this time genuinely and hauls himself onto his feet. Offering me a hand up, he grins a smirking, roguish smile. "Get a good look, did you? Maybe even a feel too?" 

I blush right to the roots of my hair. "I-I did not!" I protest indignantly.  

This only incites from him a jubilant paroxysm of laughter where he chuckles and guffaws without constraint or control as if he's been doused with an inordinate amount of laughing gas.  

  

"You're nuts." I complain in a bad temper. "Certifiable. Seriously, what were you thinking?" 

He finally sobers and looking me in the eyes, gives me a disarming and lopsided smile. "Seriously, huh? Well, I was thinking that someone would come and save me. Though you guys did cut it pretty close." He directs a vaguely reproachful look at the man who is peering over the edge of the platform, searching for his lost shoe, I assume.  

Perhaps sensing our eyes on him, he looks up with a defiant and defensive expression. "Well, I wasn't expecting some crazy idiot to come leaping down there, now was I? Why did anyone have to save you anyway? You got legs, you could've moved anytime!" 

"He's right, you know." I agree. "Are you sure you're not just crazy?" 

Linden grins almost maniacally. "Maybe I am. But you were crazy enough to lose your head over me and try to pull me back. You're an interesting kid, Cameron and I guess I just kind of wanted to test you a bit. Maybe I've got a big head but I had a feeling that you would try to help me and I guess I wanted to prove that, to me and to you." 

I look down, discomfited, unsure whether or not I'm being complimented. "But anyone else would've done the same thing and it's not like I did it on my own." I glance at the man but he is no longer paying attention to us, instead casting his eyes up and down the tracks. "I don't think that really makes me interesting."  

"It does." Linden asserts. "Do you really think I would've gone to all that trouble if I didn't think so?" 

"I don't know." I reply somewhat tetchily, rolling my shoulder in an effort to assuage the ache there. "But I hope it was worth me cracking a rib for you to prove yourself right." 

He smiles in a way that sets his eyes twinkling, makes his face appear more boyish, and somehow softens my annoyance so that I'm left staring at him and thinking, ah, so this must be his cookie-jar smile, the charm he must bring out whenever he's run up against someone else's ire and is trying to smooth away all their discontent so that instead of being angry at him, they'll laugh and put their hand in the jar alongside his and share the crumbs.  

 

"Hey, Cameron, do you know why they call it the rib cage?" He asks, his voice and eyes and smile all a teasing, tantalizing promise. An oath that, yes, he is going to share the crumbs and it is going to be delicious.  

I shake my head no and he steps closer. He is taller than me and so he has to lean his head down slightly in order to reach my ear. This he does and speaks into my ear in a low, affecting murmur as if he is sharing a secret. "It's because it keeps the heart caged and trapped from the day you are born until you die. Everything you are and feel, no one will ever see or be able to set free. Even when your heart is broken into pieces, that cage will keep them trapped and protect them until you are ready to have them fixed. But you know what, kid? I can see through your bars and your heart's not broken, it's only cracked. And it can be fixed." 

He draws back his head but not his body and I stare up at him, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, my cracked heart pounding and singing inside my chest. There is a ringing in my head and I can feel his heat burning and pulsing from close by, hot on my senses like the fumes from an open oven. I am flushed and uncomfortable and so try to move away but in my discomfiture end up stumbling over my own feet. Linden reaches out a hand, whip fast, and before I can overbalance and tumble to my butt or worse over the platform and onto the tracks, steadies me with a firm and sure grip.  

"You alright?" He asks quietly. From somewhere deep in the abyss of the tunnel, we hear the next train already announcing its imminent arrival.  

"Yeah." I answer and taking a deep breath, steel myself and plunge on with my next words before I have time to change my mind and make a coward of myself. "Where are you headed?" 

He grins. "Well, I did have somewhere in mind. But I'm open to suggestion." His hand is still on my arm and he makes no move to remove it.  

"When that train comes, I-I think I'll be getting on it." I say, looking down at my shoes, not quite able to meet his eyes.  

He gives my arm a brief squeeze before he lets go and then ruffles my hair so thoroughly that I half feel as though he is trying to take a handful of it out into his palm. "Save me the seat beside you, kid." 

I look up at him, surprised and struggling to tamp down on a swelling bubble of happiness that is in danger of floating into an idiotic smile on my face. "But you hardly know me." I point out.  

The train thunders into the station and pulls to a stop in front of us. The doors slide open and suddenly a rectangle of light has boxed us in in its glow. Linden's smirk is smug and challenging in the oblong brightness. "Don't you remember? I said I'll be your friend." 

Without waiting for an answer, he turns and steps inside the train. Nearly all the seats are free but he stops beside one of the poles and stands beside it. He turns back to look at me and arches an eyebrow, daring and questioning me. I cast my eyes down along the platform and see the man, Linden's savior, my former fellow of the night, still sitting in the same place as before, a small frown of annoyance etched onto his face as he glares up at the train as if it were an unwelcome intruder in his home. He seems to sense my gaze and turns his head to meet it. Our eyes lock and we stare at one another in silence for a few moments. I never learnt his name. Had never even spoken to him until this night. Did that make any difference to him? Would he be here tomorrow again, pacing up and down the tracks? Next time, will he choose oblivion and let it swallow him? 

He lifts up his hand in a motionless wave and with a short, jerky nod at him, as the doors start to make those noises that indicate they're about to close, I step forward and onto the train. The doors soon whoosh shut behind me, sending my shirt flapping and billowing forward around me like a cape. Linden smiles at me as I come towards him and then take the nearest vacant seat. He sits down beside me and we don't say a word as the train begins to move.  

One day I will find...I don't even know what I'm looking for, acceptance? Happiness? A way to be whole and complete? Or maybe just a way to choose oblivion without being swallowed by it and to somehow still be meaningful within its peaceful void...the right words...I still don't know what those might be and how I would even recognize them, is there even such a thing as the wrong words? Aren't all words by default right for the simple fact of being uttered, whether spiteful or kind, aren't they right for just being an attempt to communicate feelings, to touch and be heard by other people?...and they will be simple...simple like the guy sitting beside me right now? Simple only because he promises not to be, but rather guarantees that he will be anything but because already in the short time that I've known him, he's proven to be complicated, wild, and unpredictable, even his smiles as varied and colorful as his piercings and the lines of his tattoo.  

Touch me. I'm full of snakes. Pull them out. 

Author's Note

Ok, so I wrote this almost a year ago and edited it today. Taking the opposite line from Glass Lullaby, this is a story about the power of words and how much just the simple act of listening can mean to a person. It's probably not my best work but reviews and criticism are welcome as always!

Reviews

[Krizito]

Probably not your best work? Nice touch of 'modesty'. I couldn't stop reading this. it was quite long, but I couldn't mind. I finished reading this story, hoping...one day; I'll get to be like Linden. Able to listen, able to convince someone...'living is possible'..
Great job Herezade:)

[Scheherazade]

Haha, thanks. And I'm always 'modest' ;P. Also, I'm flattered you feel that way about Linden although not too much, I hope. He can be a little insane.

[Krizito]

What's wrong with a 'little insane'...never heard the saying, "greatness is 90% genius and 10% madness?

[Scheherazade]

True, but I'm not sure Linden could be called a genius...

[Krizito]

Maybe, but I am-a GENIUS.

[Scheherazade]

That's most definitely the one thing you and Linden have in common. Neither of you are.

[Tsubaki Kuro]

Wow. Beautiful story. Great details and dialogue. I wish I could write as good as your. 100/100

[Scheherazade]

Thank you so much. Your words have made me incredibly happy.

[richieb]

Scheherazade, excellent story. Your creative and imaginative skills are present to think of a story like this much more be able to write it. It is deep and interesting, dramatic and real. Your imagery works as I am rooting for the characters to leap back on the platform. Your goal of portraying the merit in listening to ma troubled person is justified through your story. A few times your description went a little overboard but you will tame that overtime. I always enjoy your work and look forward to reading more. Blessings, Richie B.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you so much. As always, I appreciate it. Also, be careful what you wish for because you might have another story from me soon after I've gotten round to editing it. ;)

[nothere]

My goodness Scheherazade! I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I really like the way you tied in the "snakes" from the beginning to the ending. You accomplished your goal, "...a story about the power of words and how much just the simple act of listening can mean to a person." You have a gift for word-imagery, I love stories that bring a rich description that extends just beyond the action or scene. My only constructive criticism in the way of useful feedback has to do with overkill on the word-imagery. You are honestly so good at it that it becomes distracting from the main story. Here is an example:

"...Cast in some nineteenth century story of the Jane Austen or Charles Dickens variety, I'd be the bumbling nice guy, awkward and foundering, a sympathetic and likeable enough character, but ultimately one of the supporting cast, a safe and sturdy option for the pretty heroine, but only second best because she's really got her eye on the handsome brooding guy of the Heathcliff type who mopes and sulks and wins hearts with the intermittent amorous stares and passionate speeches."

Although I understand what you are doing, I would caution the use of long-descriptive metaphor that goes to that extent. I almost lost the point of your story as I tried to remember Charles Dickens type characters (Because I don't know who Jane Austen is). Your writing ability is absolutely incredible and I hope to read more of your work, especially after you admitted, "It's probably not my best work..."

[Scheherazade]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate both your praise and criticisms and will do my best to act on them in future.