New short story
This is a short story I wrote, about a neurotic, claustrophobic man experiencing hallucinations on a crowded train. It's about eleven pages long.
"Johnny Vs. The Train"
By Matt Kieley
He stood there, patiently, waiting for the train to San Diego. A very short man with thinning grey hair stood in front of him in line, speaking clearly, in a serious, academic tone, into his expensive cellular phone, kicking his bag, which sat on the floor, closer to the front of the line, as everyone slowly and steadily moved up, further and further. He stood no taller than five feet and four inches tall, and no shorter than five feet and three inches tall. The young man standing behind him was certain that that was roughly his height. He knew for a fact that he, himself, was roughly five feet and eight inches tall (he knew because that's what his height happened to be when the nurse at the doctor's office measured him the last time he was there, which was several months prior--though he wasn't sure anymore, as he feared he was getting smaller) and the man was easily four inches shorter. The man with the phone had skinny legs (which appeared to be smaller than the upper-half of his body) with pale skin and a fair amount of hair (about a six) than shone below the very short green shorts he wore, along with a slightly less colorful Hawaiian shirt with a green color motif. The man spoke into his thin black phone with a degree of concern and intensity, about doors and door frames. The man had already been standing in line, so the conversation continued out of context.
Finally, it came time to board the train, and everyone in the line made a mad dash to the track, a thunderous rumble echoing down the hallway as a result of the rolling suitcases (the kind with the wheels) being dragged by frantic would-be passengers.
As the passengers headed up the stairs to the top level of the train, Johnny (the young man standing behind the small man with the phone, who will subsequently be the main character of this story) found himself caught in an awkwardly congested aisle, as people were springing to snatch their seats, placing their bags on the rack above their seats. He (Johnny) eventually found a seat near the steps leading to the cafe car, setting his backpack on his desired seat. He then decided, once he was confident in his seating decision, that he would place his suitcase on the rack located at the back of the car (the shelf above his head was not meant for heavy suitcases) but found it to be a difficult and tedious task, as people continued to climb up the steps and seat themselves. Every time he took a step, seven people, it seemed, would materialize, and walk in every direction, confused and disoriented, trying to figure out where to go and what to do.
It seemed the number of people boarding was endless and infinite. Finally, a space cleared and he made his way to the suitcase rack. After the seating fiasco had ended, he made his way back to his seat, only to find someone sitting at the seat beside his. This annoyed him slightly, as he had hoped he would be sitting alone, with a little bit of breathing room, as he is claustrophobic. Luckily, the nameless passenger respectfully sat in the other seat, and had not moved Johnny's backpack, annexing the window seat for himself. The selfless and considerate bastard. Unfortunately, the person sitting in front of Johnny was not as selfless and respectful as the man beside him, and decided to lean his chair very far back, almost in his face, it felt.
He had to get out of there, just for a brief moment. He then realized he felt the urge to urinate. The man sitting beside him had implanted small earphones into his ear and zoned out, and the person sitting in front of him had already fallen asleep. He sat there, thinking of a strategy to get himself out of his seat and into the bathroom. Once he worked up the nerve to make his move, he stood slightly, hovering a few inches over his seat, his body still in the shape of the sitting position, he awkwardly shimmied between the man and the nearly-horizontal seat in his face, the man sit-standing to allow more room, while continuing to maintain his heterosexual image by avoiding contact with Johnny's body, as the seat in front of him lifted slightly, the passenger moving, but not without giving a dirty look, he made his way out, stumbling into the aisle.
The car was rocking furiously as Johnny attempted to compose his balance and stand up. He made his way down the painfully narrow aisle, reaching the bathroom, the sliding door hanging half-open, sliding back and forth like a guillotine hanging sideways, chopping and resetting itself, as the train car shook wildly.
He managed to grab the door and step into the bathroom, which was no smaller than a closet, each wall no more than two feet wide, with small droplets of water and urine sprinkled all over the floor. It felt like a cardboard refrigerator box with a small metal toilet in the middle. Even with the car rocking violently, Johnny managed to get all of his urine in the toilet, refusing to touch the hand rail on the side, which had most likely been grasped by many people making bowel movements in the past. How many disgusting, sweaty, germ-laden hands have touched that, and grabbed it for dear life as their owners evacuated their filthy bowels, he wondered. The "room" was a fecal farm, he thought.
After he finished urinating, he washed his hands thoroughly, with a lot of soap and hot water. He dried his hands with the air dryer, feeling anxious that he had been in there for far too long (he spent about ten minutes washing his hands, and ten minutes prior trying to urinate without touching the hand rail and spraying piss everywhere) paranoid that people were waiting outside, even though they weren't. His hands where at the stage where they were no longer dripping wet, and not quite dry, but sticky enough to be annoying. He was in hand-drying purgatory. He hates the feeling. He will not finish until his hands are completely dry and smooth.
After escaping the "bathroom" Johnny sat down, but not without awkward struggle, essentially doing what he did to get out of his seat in the first place, but with additional difficulty as a result of having to do it in reverse. He tripped over his nameless companion's feet, his face landing firmly on the scratched plexiglass window, one hand wedged between his seat and the wall. He removed his face, the skin stretching, and snapping back like a rubber band, leaving a residue resemblance of his face permanently imprinted on the glass.
He finally found his way onto his seat, one leg sliding over the lap of the man next to him. He sat for a brief second, eyes closed, until he heard a disturbing clunking sound, proceeded by a springy squeak. He opened his eyes and followed the sound until he saw the man sitting next to him, fumbling around with the foot rest, pulling it down, and back up again, like a hyperactive child. The person sitting in front of the man sitting next to Johnny looked over his seat and gave Johnny a dirty look. Johnny looked out the window to avoid the uncomfortable glance, as he sunk low into his seat. He closed his eyes, and at some point, fell asleep, soothed by the sounds of a man with a voice box, instructing someone over the phone how to feed his cats.
He awoke to complete silence, unsure of what woke him up. He couldn't hear anything, aside from the ambient drone of the train gliding on its rails, with the occasional knocking sound. Something wasn't quite right. Every time he heard the train knock, he could see the rocking, but not feel it. He wanted to see what the man beside him--or anyone, for that matter--was doing, but found turning his head--a simple task he does constantly, every day--to be extremely challenging and difficult, if not impossible all together. Instead, he decided to use his peripheral vision, looking back, to the side, like a fish, his pupils moving nearly inside of his skull, but he could only vaguely see the man, who was covered by blur.
Johnny looked back far, desperately trying to see a sign of life, a tear welling up and streaming down his face. He tried to wipe the unintentional tear from his eye, his brain commanding his arm to move, but without the follow-up motion. He struggled to move his arm, even his entire torso, but to no avail. Another tear began to well, his eye stinging with a sharp stabbing pain, until he gave up, looking forward, assuming the man was still alive, and merely sleeping.
He wasn't at all shocked at what was happening to his body--it was sleep paralysis, something he experienced regularly for years. His doctor had told him there wasn't such a thing, and that every experience was a dream, but this felt too real. He had not experienced a hallucination or lucid dream in months. He was certain it was real. Never the less, he decided to try and fall asleep again, as he figured the paralysis was due to his exhaustion, and sleeping longer would better refresh him, and return to him the ability to move again.
It did not help. No matter how long he tried to keep his eyes closed, he couldn't fall asleep. He tried to call out to have someone shake him into motion, but nothing came out. He could move his lips a little, but even his vocal chords were paralyzed. He tried to scream, making any kind of loud noise, but yet again, nothing. He could hear the screams in his head, but nothing was coming out. He looked over to the window at his vague reflection, feeling as if his eyes were bugging as he tried screaming, but only seeing a half-dead version of himself, his lips moving around slowly, limply.
Johnny was stuck in his seat, the seat in front of him still shoved in his face, everyone on board, sleeping, or perhaps dead, unable to hear his cries. His brain continued to send signals to his limbs, attempting to get them to flair (or at least twitch a little) but it was useless. He felt like a failure; unable to do simple movements he does every day; unable to even make a sound to get some help; and unable to even fall asleep--something that requires no real effort at all, at least not for a normal person.
Johnny had had trouble sleeping his entire life. He either slept too little, or too long. He wakes up several times each night, and sometimes doesn't dream. Other times, he has lucid dreams, but can never manage to experience anything fun, no matter what his conscious-unconscious mind commands, and he always hits the ground in his falling dreams. When he dreams of flying, he can only do it for a few feet, and whenever he has a sexual dream, the girls still decide they don't like him, and suggest just being friends (and without benefits).
He looked forward to see a well-dressed man in a suit, sitting on his lap, face-to-face with him, smiling.
"You're going to die, you know." He said casually.
He looked out the window to avoid the creepy man and his creepy nonchalance, and noticed the scenery outside rising up, like a curtain, with new scenery falling down into the screen-like frame of the window. His hair stood up, but that's not what made him realize the train was now upside down, but rather, the fall to the roof, which was now the ground. He landed face first, just barely missing an overhead light by a few inches. His hand twitched. He began to rock his body about, like a life boat in the ocean, until he rolled onto his back. His arms flopped around limply. His feet began to wiggle. The paralysis had begun to fade, and just at that moment, Johnny experienced a mass Charlie horse throughout his entire body, like electricity painfully shocking him back to life. He looked up to see the other passengers, still seated, still sleeping.
He stood up, and immediately fell back down. He stood again, and began to run across the car, although he was actually running in place, like on a treadmill, the train doing all of the movement. He crashed into the automatic door at the back of the car. He banged on it, affecting nothing. He jumped up a foot or two and hit the button on the door. He landed first on his feet, then fell again. He stood back up, the door beginning to close already, and jammed his arm in the doorway like a knife. He ran into the next car, which was also incidentally the front car. He banged on the conductor's door.
"Open the door, I need to come in!" he shouted for some reason. Before he knew what to do afterward, he was already somehow in the conductor's booth. Not surprisingly, it was empty. Of course. What kind of competent conductor would let this happen, he thought. The windows were covered completely with blood. He assumed that the conductor has exploded into bloody liquid. He tried to wipe away the blood, before he realized that the blood was on the outside. He reached up and hit a cluster of buttons. Windshield wipers cleared the blood away, revealing something that nearly gave him a heart attack.
He could see an overhead view of the ocean rushing toward the front of the train. He soon realized that the train was now moving downward. His body began to fly upward, falling up through each door, from car to car, until he landed right-side-up into a seat in the very back row of the very last car. There was a hard thud, and water began to rush into the car. Soon he was engulfed in the cold salt water. He closed his eyes, knowing that the creepy man in the creepy suit was right--he was about to die.
He opened his eyes. The train was no longer filled with water. He spit water onto his shirt and realized that the train was now moving in a linear direction. He was completely dry. He looked down at his dry shirt, which he thought he had just spat water onto. He felt his dry hands and his dry hair. He looked at the man next to him, who was standing up. Everyone was standing up. The train was slowing down. The conductor spoke over the loudspeaker, instructing people to collect their bags and to enjoy their trips, thanking them for riding on this train. Soon the train stopped.
After getting over his initial shock, he had felt a little cheated. The dream had felt so lucid, so real, and terrifying, that it should have actually happened, and the fact that it didn't, was depressing. Johnny felt that, being so terrifying, he would rather have it be real and die, than have to live with the traumatic hallucinations, which he was afraid would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He stepped off of the train with the cluster of other passengers with train lag, dragging his suitcase on its wheels, adjusting the strap on his backpack. He crossed a second set of tracks and entered the small, yet vast train station. His long-distance girlfriend waited for him inside. She greeted him and offered to take his backpack. He declined the offer. She kissed him on his cheek first, then his lips.
"What's wrong?" she asked him.
"You know those movies that are really interesting and engaging, that turn out to be a dream in the end?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"I hate those kind of endings." ~
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"I don't know." he said, feeling a little stupid. They walked to her car, which was parked in front of the station. He put his bags in the trunk, and got in the car. They drove away. He opened the window and looked outside, the hot air blowing in his face. He looked at his girlfriend, and felt more relieved to be alive, although slightly disappointed that she didn't comment on his new haircut.
THE END
"Johnny Vs. The Train"
By Matt Kieley
He stood there, patiently, waiting for the train to San Diego. A very short man with thinning grey hair stood in front of him in line, speaking clearly, in a serious, academic tone, into his expensive cellular phone, kicking his bag, which sat on the floor, closer to the front of the line, as everyone slowly and steadily moved up, further and further. He stood no taller than five feet and four inches tall, and no shorter than five feet and three inches tall. The young man standing behind him was certain that that was roughly his height. He knew for a fact that he, himself, was roughly five feet and eight inches tall (he knew because that's what his height happened to be when the nurse at the doctor's office measured him the last time he was there, which was several months prior--though he wasn't sure anymore, as he feared he was getting smaller) and the man was easily four inches shorter. The man with the phone had skinny legs (which appeared to be smaller than the upper-half of his body) with pale skin and a fair amount of hair (about a six) than shone below the very short green shorts he wore, along with a slightly less colorful Hawaiian shirt with a green color motif. The man spoke into his thin black phone with a degree of concern and intensity, about doors and door frames. The man had already been standing in line, so the conversation continued out of context.
Finally, it came time to board the train, and everyone in the line made a mad dash to the track, a thunderous rumble echoing down the hallway as a result of the rolling suitcases (the kind with the wheels) being dragged by frantic would-be passengers.
As the passengers headed up the stairs to the top level of the train, Johnny (the young man standing behind the small man with the phone, who will subsequently be the main character of this story) found himself caught in an awkwardly congested aisle, as people were springing to snatch their seats, placing their bags on the rack above their seats. He (Johnny) eventually found a seat near the steps leading to the cafe car, setting his backpack on his desired seat. He then decided, once he was confident in his seating decision, that he would place his suitcase on the rack located at the back of the car (the shelf above his head was not meant for heavy suitcases) but found it to be a difficult and tedious task, as people continued to climb up the steps and seat themselves. Every time he took a step, seven people, it seemed, would materialize, and walk in every direction, confused and disoriented, trying to figure out where to go and what to do.
It seemed the number of people boarding was endless and infinite. Finally, a space cleared and he made his way to the suitcase rack. After the seating fiasco had ended, he made his way back to his seat, only to find someone sitting at the seat beside his. This annoyed him slightly, as he had hoped he would be sitting alone, with a little bit of breathing room, as he is claustrophobic. Luckily, the nameless passenger respectfully sat in the other seat, and had not moved Johnny's backpack, annexing the window seat for himself. The selfless and considerate bastard. Unfortunately, the person sitting in front of Johnny was not as selfless and respectful as the man beside him, and decided to lean his chair very far back, almost in his face, it felt.
He had to get out of there, just for a brief moment. He then realized he felt the urge to urinate. The man sitting beside him had implanted small earphones into his ear and zoned out, and the person sitting in front of him had already fallen asleep. He sat there, thinking of a strategy to get himself out of his seat and into the bathroom. Once he worked up the nerve to make his move, he stood slightly, hovering a few inches over his seat, his body still in the shape of the sitting position, he awkwardly shimmied between the man and the nearly-horizontal seat in his face, the man sit-standing to allow more room, while continuing to maintain his heterosexual image by avoiding contact with Johnny's body, as the seat in front of him lifted slightly, the passenger moving, but not without giving a dirty look, he made his way out, stumbling into the aisle.
The car was rocking furiously as Johnny attempted to compose his balance and stand up. He made his way down the painfully narrow aisle, reaching the bathroom, the sliding door hanging half-open, sliding back and forth like a guillotine hanging sideways, chopping and resetting itself, as the train car shook wildly.
He managed to grab the door and step into the bathroom, which was no smaller than a closet, each wall no more than two feet wide, with small droplets of water and urine sprinkled all over the floor. It felt like a cardboard refrigerator box with a small metal toilet in the middle. Even with the car rocking violently, Johnny managed to get all of his urine in the toilet, refusing to touch the hand rail on the side, which had most likely been grasped by many people making bowel movements in the past. How many disgusting, sweaty, germ-laden hands have touched that, and grabbed it for dear life as their owners evacuated their filthy bowels, he wondered. The "room" was a fecal farm, he thought.
After he finished urinating, he washed his hands thoroughly, with a lot of soap and hot water. He dried his hands with the air dryer, feeling anxious that he had been in there for far too long (he spent about ten minutes washing his hands, and ten minutes prior trying to urinate without touching the hand rail and spraying piss everywhere) paranoid that people were waiting outside, even though they weren't. His hands where at the stage where they were no longer dripping wet, and not quite dry, but sticky enough to be annoying. He was in hand-drying purgatory. He hates the feeling. He will not finish until his hands are completely dry and smooth.
After escaping the "bathroom" Johnny sat down, but not without awkward struggle, essentially doing what he did to get out of his seat in the first place, but with additional difficulty as a result of having to do it in reverse. He tripped over his nameless companion's feet, his face landing firmly on the scratched plexiglass window, one hand wedged between his seat and the wall. He removed his face, the skin stretching, and snapping back like a rubber band, leaving a residue resemblance of his face permanently imprinted on the glass.
He finally found his way onto his seat, one leg sliding over the lap of the man next to him. He sat for a brief second, eyes closed, until he heard a disturbing clunking sound, proceeded by a springy squeak. He opened his eyes and followed the sound until he saw the man sitting next to him, fumbling around with the foot rest, pulling it down, and back up again, like a hyperactive child. The person sitting in front of the man sitting next to Johnny looked over his seat and gave Johnny a dirty look. Johnny looked out the window to avoid the uncomfortable glance, as he sunk low into his seat. He closed his eyes, and at some point, fell asleep, soothed by the sounds of a man with a voice box, instructing someone over the phone how to feed his cats.
He awoke to complete silence, unsure of what woke him up. He couldn't hear anything, aside from the ambient drone of the train gliding on its rails, with the occasional knocking sound. Something wasn't quite right. Every time he heard the train knock, he could see the rocking, but not feel it. He wanted to see what the man beside him--or anyone, for that matter--was doing, but found turning his head--a simple task he does constantly, every day--to be extremely challenging and difficult, if not impossible all together. Instead, he decided to use his peripheral vision, looking back, to the side, like a fish, his pupils moving nearly inside of his skull, but he could only vaguely see the man, who was covered by blur.
Johnny looked back far, desperately trying to see a sign of life, a tear welling up and streaming down his face. He tried to wipe the unintentional tear from his eye, his brain commanding his arm to move, but without the follow-up motion. He struggled to move his arm, even his entire torso, but to no avail. Another tear began to well, his eye stinging with a sharp stabbing pain, until he gave up, looking forward, assuming the man was still alive, and merely sleeping.
He wasn't at all shocked at what was happening to his body--it was sleep paralysis, something he experienced regularly for years. His doctor had told him there wasn't such a thing, and that every experience was a dream, but this felt too real. He had not experienced a hallucination or lucid dream in months. He was certain it was real. Never the less, he decided to try and fall asleep again, as he figured the paralysis was due to his exhaustion, and sleeping longer would better refresh him, and return to him the ability to move again.
It did not help. No matter how long he tried to keep his eyes closed, he couldn't fall asleep. He tried to call out to have someone shake him into motion, but nothing came out. He could move his lips a little, but even his vocal chords were paralyzed. He tried to scream, making any kind of loud noise, but yet again, nothing. He could hear the screams in his head, but nothing was coming out. He looked over to the window at his vague reflection, feeling as if his eyes were bugging as he tried screaming, but only seeing a half-dead version of himself, his lips moving around slowly, limply.
Johnny was stuck in his seat, the seat in front of him still shoved in his face, everyone on board, sleeping, or perhaps dead, unable to hear his cries. His brain continued to send signals to his limbs, attempting to get them to flair (or at least twitch a little) but it was useless. He felt like a failure; unable to do simple movements he does every day; unable to even make a sound to get some help; and unable to even fall asleep--something that requires no real effort at all, at least not for a normal person.
Johnny had had trouble sleeping his entire life. He either slept too little, or too long. He wakes up several times each night, and sometimes doesn't dream. Other times, he has lucid dreams, but can never manage to experience anything fun, no matter what his conscious-unconscious mind commands, and he always hits the ground in his falling dreams. When he dreams of flying, he can only do it for a few feet, and whenever he has a sexual dream, the girls still decide they don't like him, and suggest just being friends (and without benefits).
He looked forward to see a well-dressed man in a suit, sitting on his lap, face-to-face with him, smiling.
"You're going to die, you know." He said casually.
He looked out the window to avoid the creepy man and his creepy nonchalance, and noticed the scenery outside rising up, like a curtain, with new scenery falling down into the screen-like frame of the window. His hair stood up, but that's not what made him realize the train was now upside down, but rather, the fall to the roof, which was now the ground. He landed face first, just barely missing an overhead light by a few inches. His hand twitched. He began to rock his body about, like a life boat in the ocean, until he rolled onto his back. His arms flopped around limply. His feet began to wiggle. The paralysis had begun to fade, and just at that moment, Johnny experienced a mass Charlie horse throughout his entire body, like electricity painfully shocking him back to life. He looked up to see the other passengers, still seated, still sleeping.
He stood up, and immediately fell back down. He stood again, and began to run across the car, although he was actually running in place, like on a treadmill, the train doing all of the movement. He crashed into the automatic door at the back of the car. He banged on it, affecting nothing. He jumped up a foot or two and hit the button on the door. He landed first on his feet, then fell again. He stood back up, the door beginning to close already, and jammed his arm in the doorway like a knife. He ran into the next car, which was also incidentally the front car. He banged on the conductor's door.
"Open the door, I need to come in!" he shouted for some reason. Before he knew what to do afterward, he was already somehow in the conductor's booth. Not surprisingly, it was empty. Of course. What kind of competent conductor would let this happen, he thought. The windows were covered completely with blood. He assumed that the conductor has exploded into bloody liquid. He tried to wipe away the blood, before he realized that the blood was on the outside. He reached up and hit a cluster of buttons. Windshield wipers cleared the blood away, revealing something that nearly gave him a heart attack.
He could see an overhead view of the ocean rushing toward the front of the train. He soon realized that the train was now moving downward. His body began to fly upward, falling up through each door, from car to car, until he landed right-side-up into a seat in the very back row of the very last car. There was a hard thud, and water began to rush into the car. Soon he was engulfed in the cold salt water. He closed his eyes, knowing that the creepy man in the creepy suit was right--he was about to die.
He opened his eyes. The train was no longer filled with water. He spit water onto his shirt and realized that the train was now moving in a linear direction. He was completely dry. He looked down at his dry shirt, which he thought he had just spat water onto. He felt his dry hands and his dry hair. He looked at the man next to him, who was standing up. Everyone was standing up. The train was slowing down. The conductor spoke over the loudspeaker, instructing people to collect their bags and to enjoy their trips, thanking them for riding on this train. Soon the train stopped.
After getting over his initial shock, he had felt a little cheated. The dream had felt so lucid, so real, and terrifying, that it should have actually happened, and the fact that it didn't, was depressing. Johnny felt that, being so terrifying, he would rather have it be real and die, than have to live with the traumatic hallucinations, which he was afraid would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He stepped off of the train with the cluster of other passengers with train lag, dragging his suitcase on its wheels, adjusting the strap on his backpack. He crossed a second set of tracks and entered the small, yet vast train station. His long-distance girlfriend waited for him inside. She greeted him and offered to take his backpack. He declined the offer. She kissed him on his cheek first, then his lips.
"What's wrong?" she asked him.
"You know those movies that are really interesting and engaging, that turn out to be a dream in the end?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"I hate those kind of endings." ~
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"I don't know." he said, feeling a little stupid. They walked to her car, which was parked in front of the station. He put his bags in the trunk, and got in the car. They drove away. He opened the window and looked outside, the hot air blowing in his face. He looked at his girlfriend, and felt more relieved to be alive, although slightly disappointed that she didn't comment on his new haircut.
THE END