Gettin' Off the Train (02)

"How did you get on this train?" The conductor demanded, reasserting his presence. "You should not be here."

For a moment I worried that they knew who I was; what I'd potentially been. But if that were so I figured one of them would have taken me down the moment I stepped on board, and I also took the conductor's last statement as reassurance. They just assumed I was some particularly unlucky human.

I decided to go with the best defense.

"Listen mate," I took a step closer to the conductor; ands at my sides. "I dunno how you're expecting me to have the right ticket when I got the only kind available, then boarded the only train going my way." The demons behind me listened silently gods, just like a normal tube ride.

"So calls to reckon you need to take care of me for this mess." Our eyes held as he processed what I said.

"Sit here and don't move. I will return right away. Miss." I guessed it could still go either was, not that I knew what either way meant. At least he was still polite.

I sat down as he checked on the other passengers, then passed back by me and stuck his head in through the pilot's doorway. A quiet but heated conversation ensued. Finally the conductor returned.

"Your ticket again." He held out his hand and I, politely, handed my ticket back to him.

"Okay miss, we're near the next stop," Out the windows the darkness was fading into faint light, "You get off here. Wait for the third train after this one leaves. Third train total. Understood?"

I nodded me accent.

"Good," He continued, "That train, third train, will know you. You get on, show this to the conductor." A little smoke rose from where his thumb pressed on my ticket. He then handed the marked ticket back. "He will know to take you back."

I nodded my head again while continuing to stare at that mark which looked nothing like a thumbprint.

The conductor was still talking, "This is a big thing we do for you. Disjointed many schedules you understand? You own us, okay." He waited a moment then repeated, "Okay?"

Absentmindedly I replied, "Yeah, sure. Whatever you say."

Soon enough the darkness outside had fully faded revealing an open air station situated between a mountain and a sun baked parking lot. I stepped out over the gap and when I turned around the train no longer remained.

I looked around for a shady spot to wait for my return train. There were none. Gods again, you'd expect a place that gets weather like this would have ample shelter. At least for the old ladies who rode the train. I sheltered in the shadow of an upthrust slab that on one side showed the rail lines and on the other laid out the surrounding city.

Time dragged in that useless heat and I thought, not for the first time, about my work for the Council. It's not that I care about what they have me doing; more that I worry about my failure to care. My training told me that I should be content to serve; that what the Council does is just. Maybe I just hit my rebellious streak in my late teens, but in the previous year the desire to find my own way about the world had grown. Didn't think the Council would've missed me either. Maybe someone would notice one less old girl for the old boys to delegate menial tasks to. I doubted it. And there I was, gods knew how far from Council headquarters. All I had to do was face away from the tracks and start walking.

Gettin' Off the Train (01)

My name is Sita, and I am a Vampire Slayer.

Well not really. The Council trained me but I was never called. Lacking any other real training they put me to work. I couriered messages around the city, acted as a basic research and lab assistant, and on some few occasions pulled bodyguard duty for some ranking Council member. They were determined to work their recompense out of me for their... Investment.

It was on one of those courier runs that they lost me.

All day I had, quite literally, run all over the city delivering parcels, messages and I don't even care what. After my last delivery I decided to take the tube back to Council headquarters. Exhaustion probably contributed to my failing to comprehend how early the train arrived, then failing to notice how different the interior looked. Honestly I think my eyes were half-closed when I boarded. At best. Maybe a couple of minutes post departure someone came around asking after tickets.

This was when I noticed all the somethings wrong.

The man checking tickets was dressed in a far to retro style train conductor's uniform. I'd swear I've seen pictures of that style; and I reckon those pictures were from the last century.

That first perception and my exhaustion must have eased the flood that followed.

The coach we rode in complimented the conductor in its style, gilded and posh. But not too posh. I quickly glanced to the window and for a moment felt relief at the darkness beyond. Then my eyes registered a multitude of back lit pinpricks in that silky darkness speeding by. They resembled nothing so much as stars.


"Ticket miss." Up close the conductor's round face was half bushy mustache.

I began rummaging through my pockets, "I think I may have gotten on the wrong train."

Behind me body's shifted; heard but unseen.

"Lets see your ticket miss, then we can sort this all out" His mustache undulated as he spoke.

After a little more rummaging I found the ticket in one of my vest pockets and handed it over. He turned the paper stub over a few times, squinting at the printed text. Eventually he handed it back.

"This isn't one of ours miss."

"Yeah, I'd kinda figured that." I slipped the ticket back into my pocket. "Mind in that station there's only one place to get tickets and only one set of tracks. So I'm still a bit boggled at how I ended up here."

For the first time I looked around the compartment. Really, I've never been too sure what I expected to see but even so... The seats were half full give or take. What they were half full of set me instantly to tense. Demons of all stripes. Most were at least humanoid; horns, fangs, claws, possibly a tail, but still two arms, two legs, one torso and one head. One in particular was a weedy little thing; blue skin and lank black hair hidden mostly by its bright yellow hoody. A couple of rows behind me was something that looked like a dog sized spider with bird legs; and in the back, across the isle from yellow hoody, was something that must have just been a singular mass of tentacles.

Conversation With the Past

Morning light crept over the city as Pella satchel drove into the day. She had spent all night watching the ocean with apprehension; lotus dust mixing with her blood and chemistry. Now Santa Monica boulevard passed under the car's wheels. The street droned with backstage life.

"Why do you always go up there?" Asked the young woman in the passenger seat, her edges indistinct.

Pella's long grip worked the wheel and gear shift with deft reflex.

"Drowning in dust I swear I see so far. From that mountain road perch the water's past spills out below me. I watch slime become fish become man interspersed with meaningless eons. The things that crawl up in the in between are still waiting for their time."

The hard, shorn-haired driver looked at her passenger for a moment with over dilated eyes, then smiled.

"Is that not the craziest shit you've ever heard Nova?"

Nova frowned, "I tell you every time not to call me that."

"I know, but anything else just feels wrong."

Drifting north the car merged at Hollywood. They passed through the walk-of-fame while old men swept and blew debris from the previous night into the gutter. Cool air breathed through the city; its ground so far unbaked by the mid-day. Beyond Hollywood Pella pulled into a park on a hill, build around a famous old house.

The women sat on the grass, looking out over the city. A mid morning haze clung to the ground; houses obscured and only the palm trees and some few skyscrapers peeked through. So many more palm trees than seen from the street.

The two women talked. Pella spoke about the two women in her life. Of reuniting with her brother. Of her fears for their collective future. Nova listened with an intent ear; each sentence equal and more important than that which preceded it.

"I'll be gone soon." The indistinct young woman looked much older now.

Pella was unsure how to feel yet again. He mother always appeared at the end of these lotus trips, as history caught up with the present. When her parents lived she was not particularly close with them. Now she only wished for more time.

"Really, you already are."

The tall, hard woman with hair so closely shorn, Pella, rose alone on the grass and walked back to her car.

Run Through the Jungle (01)

Riki felt the water beneath his raft as is flowed down the river. The air reeked of boiling vegetation and he lay still on his back, trying to will a breeze into being. As his mind wandered across that steaming savage jungle, from the village where he set out on the Painted Desert's edge to the tribe of sharp toothed pygmies which devoured the rest of his expedition, his body once again moved seemingly of its own accord to the water. Only the sharp sound of the cool water boiling at his outstretched hand recalled his mind. That cool water, so filled with voracious hunger.

Shaking the confusion from his mind, Riki kneeled on the raft's sodden wood slats. The canopy of tree limbs bowed low over the water here but every branch he grasped too easily bent under his weight. Those trees would not hold him. Turning away from the trees Riki looked down river and to his amazement saw something blocking, though not damming the river's flow.

The structure must have been built of stone, though those were now shades of green, blanketed in moss and mold. Two tall turrets flanked either side of the river and the water flowed into the front gate's gaping maw; toothed with a crookedly raised portcullis. As he neared those towering walls Riki noticed that the river, while still flowing, did not seem to flow around the structure but only into it. Behind and around the structure was a grassy meadow who's ground was some feet underwater.

Riki ducked as the raft slipped under those portcullis teeth.

Mission statement.

What I want this blog to be is my place and space to just write. I want to do five hundred odd words, or a one page comic, every couple of days. There will be no real attempt at rhyme or reason with my content other than I do want it to be fiction, as that's what I like to write.