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Liv was tired. Goddam bone-tired.
Another day on the lines and her eyes were aching like sagging balloons, ready to burst from the strain required to just stay employed at that dump. She laced her fingers together and pushed her arms above her head as she came to the end of her daily slog to the bus stop. The movement rewarded her with a series of satisfying pops along her cramped joints.
The bench at the bus stop was hard and damp, mildew curled around the edges. But, her aching legs demanded rest.
She pictured a plump, squashy recliner as she lowered herself onto the cold planks. It was a comforting thought, an escape? one of many for Liv.
Like everything else in her world, the bus didn't run on her schedule. She settled in to wait, and closed her eyes, searching for respite in the quiet corners of her mind.
***
The air shimmered as she trailed her fingers through motes of starlight. It fell from the sky, softly banking across the tree branches and swept like dust into glittering piles across the grove.
It was a place Liv visited often, a peaceful place of solitude where dreams were born and the stress of the day burned away in the glimmering light.
A trilling laugh came from behind her and she turned. Her mouth popped open on a soft o. She hadn't been thinking of anyone. This was no figment. Had she fallen asleep?
An odd woman with cool, pale skin was watching her raptly with eyes like wet cobalt? no pupils, just a deep, dark blue.
She was standing in an oily pool formed by drops that fell languidly from the tendrils of her hair, her thin fingertips, hips, and breasts. The starlight died in her wake as she approached
?Hello, Olivia?
Her voice rang, as if echoing through a great space. Liv thought of the resounding tones of melancholy hymns in church, a memory of the time her grandmother had dragged her there. Those great bells whose clanging billowed against cold stone and stained glass.
The woman smiled. Full lips parted to reveal a row of dark teeth.
?Who are you??
The woman's grin split wide. Her gums seeped a warm red.
?Oh, nothing but a dream, delicious girl.?
She was close now. The sweet jasmine air turned foul? copper and rot.
?Such a beautiful mind you have, Olivia? said the woman, reaching up to sweep the stardust from a branch. Ash fell to the ground.
?Do you know who I am?? she said.
Images rose in Liv's mind, unbidden.
Razor-thin cracks exploding across the surface of the moon. Gentle hands guiding her off the cliff. Screeching shadows chasing her in the dark. Madness. Nightmare.
Liv gasped. She pinched her arms. Slapped her face. She had to wake up. Now.
?Tch- now, don't spoil yourself. I want you tender, sweet?
A slick, thin hand grabbed her arm like frozen steel, biting and unyielding. A dripping talon caressed her forearm like a scalpel? a butcher's cut.
Liv swayed and the nightmare hissed, spraying black between clenched teeth. She closed her eyes against the onslaught and fell.
***
Liv hit the pavement hard, bracing herself with her arms.
?Oh! Oh my, I'm sorry, so sorry!?
Small, wrinkled hands fluttered about her as she opened her eyes. She was splayed against the sidewalk beside the bus stop, breathing hard and ragged. Her lungs burned, but the exhaust and filth of the city had never smelled so fresh.
?The bus is here, you see. I only meant to wiggle you a little, just to wake you?
Large eyes magnified through thick glass swayed in front of her, thin lips pinched in concern. Liv had the distinct impression of a mole, blind and snuffling.
She thanked the man and accepted a frail hand up.
?Oh, dear. You've hurt yourself.? the man fussed about her arm with knotted fingers.
A thin line ran from wrist to elbow, weeping bright red.
***
Liv finally cracked open her apartment door, nearly four hours after the end of her shift. She had stopped at the clinic, the nurse had bandaged her up and sent her on her way with a handful of ?helpful literature' and a concerned frown, obviously not believing her story of falling off the bench. No pavement cut with such surgical precision.
The single room apartment was dark; with fumbling, frantic fingers, she turned on every light in the place, sweeping brightness into every dingy corner. She lamented the fact that she didn't have a great, big dog to guard her door. Not that she could afford to feed one. She could barely afford to feed herself.
With the darkness banished to the streets outside her windows, Liv went about the task of staying awake. The kettle whistled? she flinched.
Finally, with a cup of coffee strong enough to chew in hand, she settled onto the lumpy futon to wait out the night.
The minutes stretched by and Liv felt as if she was being stretched as well, like nylons pulled to a translucent film? she was going to break.
Minutes stacked on minutes until she was ticking off hours instead.
Nothing happened.
Liv let a thin hope into her mind, cradled it gently. Perhaps, it was just a dream.
She closed her eyes and loosed a deep breath. Tension leaked away, her face unpinched, hands unclenched.
?Olivia? the voice was small, an echo.
Liv's eyes snapped open. The room was empty.
Just my imagination, she thought, she prayed.
The first thing she noticed was the darkness. The shadows she had swept out of the room were there again, in the corners. She looked behind her, every corner and edge the same. When she looked back, they had grown and she could see the line of demarcation, the shadow front, moving towards her.
She needed to move, to run, but she found she couldn't. She struggled and bucked as her body filled with the molasses of nightmares and kept her firmly in place. She didn't move an inch.
No, she was moving. Moving so slowly she barely perceived it. It wasn't enough.
She closed her eyes.
?There's no one to wake you now, sweet girl. Succulent girl.?
The voice was close now. She felt it against her cheek.
Copper and rot flooded her nose.
?Don't fight. I want you, slowly.?
Liv sucked in a foul breath as something cool and thin slid across her throat. The world seemed unsteady, fading. Sounds, and senses dimmed. Pressure built against her skull as if someone was tamping her very consciousness, removing all the space where her thoughts found their breath.
She was almost gone. No thought. No name. No dreams.
***
The mug shattered. Spilling black coffee across the carpet, soaking and creeping.
Liv choked, her body wracked and gasping for air like she had been pulled from the ocean moments before drowning. Her chest burned.
The cat sniffed at the mess and walked away with an irritated twitch of his tail, unimpressed. He jumped into her lap and she scooped him up gratefully.
?Oh, you beautiful creature. You don't know how close that was.? she laughed in relief and held him close, stroking him soothingly from head to tail. He pushed into her hand, his purring cracking the tension she had been holding. She melted back against the futon? and froze.
?Whose cat are you??
The cat nudged her hand and turned to face her, cobalt eyes flashing in the low light.
I had worked for a small underwriting firm for many years but one day me and my co-workers were pressed into service to help staff an upscale restaurant across the street. It was up the long-ignored steps that ran between the Blight Falls Five-Cent Savings Bank and the Commissary Exchange Trust. At the top of the steps was old outdoor business arcade I had never seen; it backed up to the rear wall of the hulking Bureau of Missing Information. I spotted the Blackburn Grill and unhappily stepped inside.
My boss, who had just gone from CEO of his own firm to assistant maître de, assured me it was OK. He pointed to a back room where I could put on my waiter's uniform. As I changed, I reflected on how thirty years ago I swore to myself that I would never work in food service again. But now it seemed I had no choice. Back in the diner-less dining room, I stood around waiting for something to do. There were two young women at the hostess station who were giggling because they thought I was some sort of ?Good-Time Charlie? who knew where there was a party after work. I bantered with them as best I could.
The head waiter appeared. He was a tall, stern man ?from Senegal? who told the wait staff that a large party of free-spending ?Roman? tourists due to arrive at 7 PM. They had specifically requested that nothing be sprayed in the dining area while they were there. He said this could mean anything from a spray bottle of water to wipe down a surface, to a travel-size hand sanitizer or even the sudden application of ?Brut deodorant.? I stifled my own giggle, but the head waiter wasn't smiling. He told me to go into the kitchen and tell my former office colleagues of this directive. When I did they looked at me as if I had five eyes and each one was a different color.
I went back to the dining room and waited for something to do. The hostess who had introduced herself as Valentina looked across to me with an uncertain smile and upraised palms. I seized on the notion that I needed to fill a metal carafe with water for our fancy visitors from the Eternal City. I headed out of the building with the peculiar idea that the purest water could be found elsewhere. Skipping down the granite steps between the two banks, I headed towards the riverside, finding myself on a spacious empty avenue I never noticed before. It crossed the broad, fast-running town river where the ?water under the bridge? passed for all time. A railroad trestle bisected just beneath the road bridge. Moments later, a freight train with open, brightly-painted box cars passed through. It held quite a few passengers.
I looked down at the still empty carafe and made my way back downtown in the fading light. I remembered the brass water bubblers in the back lobby of Municipal Hall, under the Regency murals and behind the statue of Grover Cleveland. The night watchman, unconcerned that I had just passed thru the locked doors, nodded to me as I filled my container.
Back at the restaurant, the evening was already winding down. The dining party that was to be so fussed over had already left. My old boss told me the Romans had been well satisfied with their meal and had ?made it rain? when it came to the gratuity. Valentina bounced out from behind the hostess station and grabbed my arm, telling me that my share of the tip was on the table next to the time clock out back. I couldn't believe it: sitting there was a thick and bewildering pile of cash of many different currencies. I pocketed the free money and never returned to the Blackburn Grill.
The next day, I skulked over to the Blight Falls bank, furtively looking up the granite steps in hopes I didn't see anyone from the restaurant. I apologized to the teller in advance for any exchange rate issues. She said it was no problem and a minute later handed me back a deposit slip that my eyes light up. I sat around in my apartment for a few days, wondering if I would ever need another job. Then one morning I found a flyer had been slid under my door. It had information about the strange freight train I had seen that evening. The top of the flyer bore the slogan ?Nothing of Light is There for the Losing? and the bottom had a one-week-only coupon that allowed one to ride between stations for a dollar each stop.
That night I drifted over to the old one-room depot over by the riverbank, as instructed by the flyer. It had been in disuse since the city built the modern station nearby in the Eighties. But there was an attendant there and one other potential passenger with a hefty backpack. Five minutes later the crazy train pulled up. The attendant rolled up a portable staircase and I went up into the boxcar where semi-comfortable chairs had been bolted down. A motley but agreeable cross-section of humanity sat around, one man welcomed me and the other newcomer to the ?Hobo Express.? It was true. One could ride across the land at the coupon price of one dollar per stop, stepping down whenever you wanted to see what remained of once-proud cities.
On the seventh day, I walked quite a distance into the town after disembarking for the evening stop. We had three hours ?shore leave.? I usually tried to lose my fellow passengers before making my daily ATM withdrawal. Following the usual pattern, I hit the local diner then roamed around, gazing up at public buildings, seeing if there was a bookshop or library that was open and wondering if I would ever see Valentina again. That particular night, I stood on Main Street and gazed up at a banner that had been strung up across it. One end was tied to the flagpole of the shuttered Chamber of Industry and the other to a light pole in front of the Reclamation Brew Pub, which was very much open. The banner read ?Make, Believe? and had two dates listed but I could not make them out in the gathering dusk.
Up ahead on the sidewalk, I heard a familiar strumming guitar and keening tenor voice. There was a folksinger on the train that I had befriended, and I stopped to listen. ?Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind/Down the foggy ruins of time.? After the song, I dropped him a fiver and pointed out the pub across the street He nodded. I sat down at the bar and ordered a pint of black lager, stared out the window at the banner. ?Make, Believe.? I now knew that there was still some mission for me to perform. But it was the seventh night and I rested.
(The preceding excerpt came from a travel diary picked up off the side of the tracks by a railroad employee along the famous Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, Pennsylvania. We at the Bureau of Missing Information are much indebted to him for his donation of the notebook. We know from him that the shadowy ?Hobo Express? passed through there once or twice a week for about three years. We at the Bureau would like to find out more about the author, who we now know as R. Swain, for its ongoing urban folklore project, ?In a Dream of Strange Cities.? We have recently inquired at the mentioned Blackburn Grill. The maître de, Valentina Kay, told us what little she knew and asked us if we found out more to let HER know. The restaurant's manager, a certain Mr. Diallo, confirmed that the mystery man was employed at his establishment for one day He also made the point that he would hardly refer to Swain's contribution as ?work.?)
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