Train Tracks
NZWC 2015 Short Story Finalist
NOTE: This story contains themes of suicide and self-harm. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for support. You can seek out local mental health resources or support networks for guidance and aid. You don't have to go through it alone.
Snot-nosed Tommy; he stood up on a park bench outside our school and said he’d met God. When kids laughed, Tommy just smiled. He lit up a cigarette and perched on the park bench. He leant back against a tree and waited for disciples to come.
Nowadays, that bench is gone, ripped out, like the old city train tracks. As kids, we’d lob rocks at hulking red carts as they clunked along the rails and into the horizon. Kids don’t do that anymore. The locomotive which delivered timber to the city each morning has been shut down for half a decade. The year I left school, the council put up barriers after some folks got killed. The train, a rusted red machine, chugging off into history.
Now you see it; now you don’t.
That’s what my grandfather used to say when he’d pull a dollar coin from behind my ear. Mom and Dad would be fighting in the other room. We’d use that dollar to buy an ice cream at the corner dairy, leave those haters behind. Just me and Grandpa and his cigarettes.
At eight, my Mom handed me a paper plate with a thick blue wedge of racing car birthday cake and said:
“Your Dad and I are getting a divorce.”
She was barely seventeen - the other woman. But Dad said she was legal. She shaved her pussy every other morning. Apparently that was all it took. My Dad – her teacher, he’d been turning her over in the school gym most evenings. She’d bite down on the Yoga mat and beg for extra credit.
It was their little secret.
But get seen leaving an abortion clinic during school hours and some concerned pro-lifer will consider it their duty to make a call. A call to the Principal then means a call to her folks. Next thing you know, you’re practically vomiting truth.
Quick and troubled confessions gushing out of that hole in her head.
Dad’s bastard baby gushing from that hole between her legs.
Sometimes, I still wonder. Would having a sibling make life any different? Would a little brother really have made that Gospel Tommy preached any harder to imbibe?
Well, little bro’s gone.Long before I had a chance to find out. Baby jam, riding the drainpipes, his spirit headed straight to that kingdom in the sky.
Now you see it; now you don’t.
Tommy told us:
“If a man don’t make his own decisions in life, then he’s no man at all.”
Tommy with his satisfied smirk, his ass parked up against that tree, he’d take a drag of that cigarette as we’d gather around and he’d say:
“Bad shit happens, boys!” another inhale, sucking down nicotine, smoke licking our faces, “Appropriate action.” He’d state, like we knew what that meant.
“Violence as enlightenment.”
Turned out, Tommy didn’t buy into all that wishy washy, happy clappy christian crap. Turned out, neither did we. Appropriate Action became our Gospel. Violence as Enlightenment, our creed. Joking around initially, we called ourselves The First Church of the Self Destructors.
It started off small. Little acts of defiance against parents and teachers. For detention, they’d have us write lines in a notebook. We’d carve them with razor blades into our skin instead. The Principal, he’d send us to guidance counselors. But we were smarter than them. A couple of quick slits to your wrists, and you’re sunbathing on easy street. A bit of blood and they’re afraid of you. Nobody wanted the responsibility of dead kids. So they’d play nice. You’d be missing class and they’d be trying to get you to talk.
Eventually, the Principal, he’d threaten expulsion. We’d threaten back schoolyard suicide. The old man would look flabbergasted and back down. Every time he thought he had us, we’d change the rules. Just like that, their solution would collapse.
Now you see it; now you don’t.
A good congregation holds church. We’d meet every Friday lunch and offer appropriate action to one another’s problems. We called it The Circle of Trust. How you worshiped was this: You told the group your fear. An issue you were dealing with. Passed it along for your neighbor to solve.
Daniel’s father had been distant for years. Every day, after school, the man would be black-out drunk on the couch in the living room. After the issue got handed to Tommy, Dad went sober. Watching your only son get his stomach pumped after drinking all your booze can do that to a man. Regular suicide notes threatening repeat incidents kept the change in place.
Appropriate Action. Violence as Enlightenment.
This is how you stayed free from your problems. This is how you trusted fellow believers with your life.
The year rolled around and our congregation grew. More and more boys joining the cause as the horror of exams loomed. Our efforts increased, and the scope of our activity grew. Soon, we ruled the neighborhood. People would see our gang walking the streets and cross the road. Shops shut up early; some even before school was out, hoping we wouldn’t pay them a visit.
During those times, my Dad, now happily married to wife number two, both of them smokin’ big cigars in a big ol’ house with a big ol’ job, he’d call almost every night. He’d tell me I needed top marks if I wanted to get into college. He’d tell me to make no mistake: That’s where you’re going.
My Mom, she’d cry over dinner, salting her food with her tears. She didn’t understand what it meant to pay tribute at a self-destructor shrine and I didn’t want her to. My god demanded sacrifice. Pour a little blood on his altar, and he’d lick it right up. Every salty, coppery, warm red drizzle.
Now you see it; now you don’t.
The night before the big exam, Tommy rang each of us on our home phones.
“Judgement day is here.” He hissed, crackly through the receiver, “It’s time to take a stand against these exams.”
Tommy told us:
“Everyone’s a genius, but if you judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree, you’ll get only morons.”
That night was cold. I jumped on my bike and headed downtown. I parked up by an empty shipping container; half swallowed by tall grass and met the others at the edge of the tracks. Only eight of us had shown. Tommy ran his hand through his hair, lit a cigarette and preached to the wind.
“These exams,” he began, “these tests.”
“Every goddamn year, it’s the same oppression. We are not our own!”
“This world made us into puppets.” Tommy paced ahead, “but tonight we cut the strings.”
“We may not change history,” Tommy said, “but we can change ourselves, and after all, isn’t that really the same thing?”
Tommy stopped and listened for the low rumble, which arose from somewhere out in the dark. He looked at his watch and said:
“It’s time.”
Lining up, we faced the tracks. Kneeling down, we placed our arms out flat. We rested them on the rails.
The rumbling became a roar. A horn blaring somewhere. I wondered for a moment if we’d all drunk the Kool-Aid, but I couldn’t afford a thought like that for very long. This was enlightenment after all and I was in rapture.
Light fell across the tracks and I glimpsed one of my arms, bunched up in navy blue jacket, shaking with anticipation. Something suddenly rose in my throat. Fear. Like a lump I couldn’t swallow. The muscles in my arms began to twitch, wanting to move. To get away. But the train was upon us. And the grinding of metal against the softness of flesh...
Now you see it; now you don’t.
Most days now, I sit in an old sofa chair. It’s crusty and rotting. Sitting out on the front porch of Moms new house. I can’t do much else other than think about that night.
When the winter wind blows, I still see their ghosts. The phantom limbs. Teenage flesh, shredded by metal and motion.
“…lucky to be alive,” the doctors had told my Mom, “Massive blood loss. Hypovolemic shock.”
That was the year I left school for good.
I visited Tommy and the others just once after the events of that night. Their graves all split up, just like their arms. A conscious decision made by their parents to hide the memories. Their graves were all hidden in ruddy tufts of weeds and grass by the time I could see them.
I don’t visit the graves anymore. Like our parents, I no longer have a desire to relive the past.
Mom, she pulls up in her little beaten-to-shit Toyota. She steps up onto the front porch and greets me. We trade smiles. She puts a cigarette in my mouth; lights it for me. Mom and I, we’re on the same page now. A better relationship than ever before. Both of us nobodies. We smoke our cigarettes one day at a time.
The tobacco sizzles down to the yellow filter and I let the butt drop from my lips. Pretty soon, we’ll burn out as well. Become static noise in a violent world, where the violent take it by force.
Now you see us. Now you don’t.