Tied Down

 Hullo and Happy Halloween ~ :3

I've been waiting for this day all year, but now that it's here, I'm have a particularly low day. So, I don't think I'll be up for celebrating.

I have, however, prepared a short story for the occasion. 

Have a lovely holiday~

Before his phone had lost connection, Sonny noted that he was west of Pecos, Texas. Now, two hours later, his train sits still and silent in the empty desert with nothing but sage bushes for company as cacti encrusted rock formations stare him down. 

He warily eyeballs his half emptied jug of water, before settling onto his bedroll over the warm steel of the grain car he's holed up on. 

The day steadily grows hotter as his water runs low, and ten in the morning quickly turns into four in the afternoon.

The sun, lower in the sky and now glaring in his eyes, only worsens the pounding in Sonny's head. The lump in his throat doesn't subside as he packs away his sleeping bag and bedroll.

With his pack strapped to his back and empty water jug in hand, Sonny climbs down from the dusty white hopper he'd rode in on.

Not knowing where or how far the nearest store is, Sonny meanders to the front of the train in the hopes of a crew who'll offer him water. But to his horror, Sonny finds that the locomotive is nowhere in sight. 

"Fucking idiot," he breathes to himself, regretting that moment of impatience which had led him to getting on a junk train in the desert. "Who knows how long it'll be tied down here."

"Hey," the sudden sound of a gruff voice startles Sonny out of his self-pity. "What ya doin' out here?" 

Sonny turns around to see a heavy set man in overalls and a buzzed haircut staring at him.

"Were you riding this train too?" Sonny is uncertain as the question leaves his lips.

"I work for the railroad." The man replies.

Sonny's mouth remains shaped in a silent "oh" as he waits for the worker to either tell him to leave railroad property, or voluntarily offer information about the powerless train they stand beside. 

But the man only continues to linger in the same spot, gazing unblinkingly at the rider.

Disregarding his brief confusion of the worker's lack of a reflector vest, Sonny asks, "Do you have water?" The man only shakes his head "Is there anywhere nearby that I can get water?" 

The man's face remains neutral as he points down the tracks in the direction from where Sonny and the train had come from.

"There's a town about two miles that way. But I'd recommend you get back on this train."

Sonny offers a lopsided grin, "I really need water, but I appreciate your help."

Trudging along the even tracks and shifting ballast rock, Sonny eventually reaches a railroad crossing, and to his relief, just down the road, he spots a sign with the familiar Texaco white star on a red background.

He walks the road before him, noting that it's practically disintegrating; a common sight in the desert. 

The traveller audibly groans upon coming across another common sight in the desert: an abandoned gas station.

Finding a working spigot on the side of the boarded up Texaco momentarily relieves Sonny's despair. That is until several minutes of running the water does nothing to clear up the muddy brown coloration.

Jerking the spigot's knob shut, Sonny turns his back on the husk of a building and wanders further down the pothole covered road, hoping to find a church or even a glimpse of the yellow light of a Dollar General sign in the quickly approaching night. 

As he walks further into the darkening and silent town, Sonny begins to suspect that he's actually found himself in a ghost town.

"I probably would've gotten back on the train if you'd mentioned that nobody lives here." He laments aloud to the long gone rail worker.

The rider's spirits soon lift upon catching sight of lit candles flickering in the windows of a two story shack just at the end of the road.

He doesn't hesitate to climb the rickety wooden steps to the front door, and then rapping a few times against the rough surface, flaky with peeling white paint. 

After getting no answer, Sonny tests the doorknob with a trembling hand. Finding the door unlocked, he cautiously eases it open.

"Hello?"

"I'll be there in a moment." Cursing, he jumps back at the immediate and unexpected reply. It sounds like a woman's voice coming from the top of the staircase in front of him.

"Sorry for intruding," Sonny fumbles to explain why he's essentially breaking and entering into someone's house. "I just need-" he's cutoff by the voice repeating:

"I'll be there in a moment."

A bit put off, but desperately thirsty, Sonny slowly moves towards the back of the house where he comes across the kitchen. The small four-walled room is dimly lit up by a single candlestick on the windowsill and another one stuck atop a round dining table off to the side. The table is completely obscured by newspaper clippings strewn about and piled over on top of each other.

Sonny's eye is quickly caught by the sight of a sink underneath the window. He strides over to it and grabs the rust speckled knob. More brown water spews from the faucet. 

"I'll be down in a moment." The voice assures him.

Sonny twists the knob off in defeat and leans against the counter as he waits for the woman, and hopefully water that's not brown.

As another minute drags by with no appearance from the home owner, Sonny grows restless. He attempts to clear his dry throat, only to trigger a coughing fit.

Once he manages to swallow enough spit to subside his coughing, the traveller shifts his attention to the newspaper clippings on the dining table. 

Shuffling through them, he notices that every clipping is an obituary. 

'Well, collecting obituaries isn't the weirdest hobby I've seen.' He muses to himself.

He finds that the oldest one dates as far back as the 19th century, with the most recent only being in the 1980's.

As his fingers brush across an obituary dated from 1956, his entire body freezes, and his eyes widen. 

Sonny just hardly processes the name "Thomas P. Lane" as he attempts to make sense of the somewhat fuzzy black and white photo. Standing beside what appears to be part of a train locomotive, is a heavy set man wearing an all too familiar pair of overalls and a buzzed haircut.

"I'll be down in a moment."

Sonny's heart jump-starts at the voice's sudden reappearance, yanking him back to the present. He finally takes notice of just how monotonous and unchanging the tone of the woman's voice has been the entire time.

Without a second thought, Sonny bolts to the front door. The moment his hand grabs ahold of the bulbous brass knob, he hears the voice again.

"I'm coming."

A creak resounds through the deathly quiet house. It's soon followed by thumping footsteps steadily approaching the top of the stairs. This spurs Sonny to yank the door open and throw himself back out onto the unlit road. 

He completely forgets about his pack as he dashes blindly in the direction of the tracks, hurtling between dilapidated houses and cutting through desolate yards.

Finally bursting through a patch of sharp mesquite trees, Sonny scrambles onto the railroad's mainline and almost cries in relief when he spots the blinking red light of the Fred attached to the end of the train cutting through the moonless night.

Disregarding his trembling limbs and fighting to breathe through his dry throat, he runs.

Just as the red light grows brighter, and its humming becomes audible, the night is suddenly enveloped in complete darkness and silence.

Thinking the locomotives were merely disconnected again, Sonny slows his painful dash. Through wheezing and sobbing, he continues down the tracks. But no matter how far he walks, there's still no train. 

His next step suddenly drops farther than expected before finding ground, sending him crashing down.

He doesn't even notice the burning in his hands and knees after they break his fall against the rough wooden rail ties. Breathing heavy panicked breaths, his shaking hands grasp at the headlamp dangling from around his neck and then switches it on. The bluish white light reveals the depression in the ground that Sonny is now kneeling in. He can see the rails on either side of him at waist level. They're caked with rust, and more importantly, partially detached from the rail ties that had likely long ago sunk down with the shifting sand. 

The silence that engulfs him is deafening as he sits in his dumbfoundment. 

Even though he can't reasonably understand how, realization finally dawns on Sonny. There was no way a train had been running on these tracks within the past decade, let alone the past twenty-four hours.

Just as the reality of his situation sinks in, a whisper hits his ears.

"I'm here."