Big Pulp - the magazine of fantasy | mystery | adventure | horror | science fiction | romance



 
Christopher Shearer's work has appeared in Tarnhelm, From the Fallout Shelter, The Wildwood Journal, and Cemetery Dance, among others. In 2007, he received demonminds.com's Best Short Story award, and from 2007-2009, he received three Penn State University Best Short Story awards. He works as a freelance editor with Cemetery Dance Publications, PS Publishing, and Crossroad Press, and is currently an MFA candidate in Seton Hill University's prestigious Writing Popular Fiction program.

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Saturday Station
(continued)

“Russell?” Cheryl stared at me. Her eyes glowed in the dark, reflecting what little light seeped through our window from the street. “Were you dreaming?”

“What?” I said, blinking and trying to place myself. The bedroom at 3515 Brownstone Lane was at the same time familiar and completely alien. I felt misplaced, lost, but I also felt a sense of being home, something I’d never known.

“Were you dreaming?” She laughed as she said it. “You were talking.”

“What did I say?”

“Counting.”

“Really?” I said. “How high did I get?”

“You were going backwards.” She reached over her shoulder and touched the clock there. Red numbers jumped to life, 3:15. I’d be up at 6:00 for work. “I was trying to guess your dream.”

“And…”

“And I think you were playing handball.”

“Handball?”

“Yeah! When we first met you were on the team.”—the high school team—“You were so good. My friends and I would go to the games. We’d watch you out there, all sweaty on the court. You were so sexy back then.”

“Why do you think I was playing ball?”

“Because you’d always count down like that when you’d practice. Always. Like you were training to hit the last-second shot.”

“Never hit any of those.” I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but the part of Russell that still lived inside of me broke in. “And I’m not sexy now?”

“No,” she said.

I eyed her in the dark. She looked at me and then looked away. She pulled the cover over herself, but left her foot to linger on top of mine. “Boys are sexy,” she said. “You’re a man.” She leaned in and kissed me. “My man,” she breathed. The silk of her nightgown brushed my arm and then she pressed herself against me. I felt myself stiffen and pulled away. She followed me. “Feel like messing around a little before work?”

I was both sickened and aroused, half of me wanted to ravage her and the other half wanted to vomit. Hetero sex was unnatural, an abomination. It created and spread disease, dulled the mind. The civilized societies, the floaters, had outlawed it long ago. But I wanted her in a way I’d never wanted anyone before. I ran my hand along her thigh. She kissed me again. “The baby,” I muttered.

“We won’t hurt her.”

“Her?”

“Wishful thinking.” She rolled on top of me. “Now stop talking.”

I almost fell as the train bucked forward, but caught the edge of Larry’s chair and steadied myself. I stood over a crude-looking set of controls. Most of the buttons were so worn the lettering had rubbed off, and labels written on old pieces of yellow tape clung to the rusted metal above them. It was the only way to tell what did what. Larry adjusted a gear and pressed one of them. He watched the tracks, as the train passed from the shadow of Saturday Station into the early-morning sun. It rose ahead of us, a large, red ball. Strands of cloud stretched across its swell, trailing long, thin fingers above the Hills in the distance. The mansions lingered in the shadow there, waiting for the morning light to break. The rest of Shale Lake woke to a thin fog.

Larry took a swig of coffee, as we came to our first stop. The night crew from Montgomery’s Mine stood, stiff and tired, on the edges of the platform, waiting for their ride home. They’d spent the last ten hours below ground, searching for what little remained of the natural gas reserve that had once made Shale Lake a respectable city. Their clothes either clung to them or hung from them, sometimes both at once. Their faces were black, their eyes a staid white, and their gnarled hands twisted in the large pockets of their soot-stained jeans. He pressed the brake, and the train cried in protest. The cabin jittered and shook.

He opened the doors.

“See the game?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Good one. We won by two. Took the full time. We scored with less than a second remaining.”

“Johnson?”

“Who else? That boy’s got a future. Too bad we won’t see it. As soon as he gets a chance, I bet he leaves for a bigger market, more exposure.”

“He’s local, right?” Russell rarely watched the games anymore, and what he did know came from Larry.

“Yep. Born and raised. Went to Wentworth High over on Eighth. I used to watch him coming up. Can’t afford the tickets now, though.”

“Maybe he’ll stay at home.”

Russell’s eyes glazed. “Big kid. Always big. Six-four as a fifteen-year-old. And two-thirty. Ball handling like you’ve never seen. Kid can do it all. Has it all, but he ain’t loyal. Wore a Typhonia hat to a charity event last spring. He’s on his way out, I’m telling you.”

“So he likes another city’s team. Big deal.”

“Loyalty. He don’t have loyalty, and it will be a big deal. You know how much revenue that kid alone gives this city?”

Russell had seen the billboard downtown, as tall as the state building. We didn’t dwell on sports and celebrities up above, at least not like they seemed to here.

I looked out the window at the splintered wood and cracked pavement of the platform and wondered if they’d been to my apartment yet. I’d snuck off-city aboard a waste shipment as soon as I’d heard. The guard looked the other way for twenty quartos. It was cheaper than I’d expected, not that I’d ever expected to make it all the way down here.

Larry flipped a switch, and the doors began to close. A dull hiss.

“Cheryl tell her parents yet?” he asked.

“Don’t think so,” I said.

“What? You two aren’t talking anymore?”

“She didn’t mention anything.”

The train lurched. I clutched the back of his chair. “She’d mention it if she did.”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“She’d mention it, kid. I’ve been through it five times myself. She’d mention it.” It annoyed me that Larry still called me kid after all the time we’d been working together. It annoyed Russell, I mean.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

Larry looked up from his locker. “What?”

“This. All of this.” I zipped my bag.

He squinted. “I don’t get it. How do I do what?”

“This job. The family. All of it.” We’d just finished our ten-hour shift on the trains. It was five.

“You’re worried, huh? Worried about how you’ll balance everything once the baby comes. You find the time. You make the time. You’ll see.” He closed his locker. “You put the important things first.”

He hadn’t answered my question. I didn’t care about the baby, about family, about how to balance anything: I wondered how he did this: working on the trains for ten hours a day, six days a week. My head killed me. My ears rung. Every joint in my body ached, and all I wanted was a strong drink, a heavy sedative, and a long sleep. I didn’t know if I’d get any of them, down here.

“Coming?” he said.

We left the changing room and entered the concourse of Saturday Station. It vibrated with people. The sounds of their individual conversations intermingled in a dissonant push that pressed against me. It made the air heavy, and each step difficult. Larry worked his way through the crowd, saying “excuse me” and “pardon me” in a quiet, yet strong voice. They parted for him, and I followed.

As we passed, the people turned away. No one looked at anyone else. Their eyes searched the cracked-tile floor or the tarnished guild ceiling. They stepped out of your way, but never acknowledged your being there. They held their belongings tight against their bodies, their scuffed and faded clothes stretching with the pull. And every person’s eyes were red rimmed and set above paunchy dark bags. They were tired. To a person, the citizens of Shale Lake were tired, and I was among them.

I held my bag tighter, like the crowd, and hurried behind Larry, who walked in quick, small steps. There was music in the background, something with a stronger harmony than melody, but I couldn’t make it out over the noise—maybe Beethoven. Children darted this way and that, looking for a loose wallet or purse, I assumed, but there wasn’t much for the taking. They, too, looked tired and dejected.

Before the doors, a man in black stopped us. He handed Larry a sheet of paper and then gave one to me.

“Seen this man?” he asked.

Larry shook his head.

“You?” he eyed me.

“No,” I said. It was my face, my old face on the paper, just above the word WANTED and an offer for two-hundred quartos for information leading to capture. I tried to look away from the man. His black suit was clean, creased. He was obviously Bureau. Obviously from above.

“The number’s on there, if you do,” he said.

Larry and I pushed our way through the door. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Of course,” I said.

He looked at me, thinking. “How long have we worked together?”

“Long time,” I said.

“Five years, give or take,” he said. “Maybe I don’t know you that well, but I think…want to get a drink?”

“Really should be heading home.” The sun had begun to set, laying shadow across Shale Lake. People rushed this way and that from the station, some home, some to dates or parties or bars.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked again.

I wondered where he was going.

“It’s just…I know you, and you’ve been…off today. You’re not acting like yourself.” He waited a minute. I said nothing. “Something happen at home?”

“It’s fine. Cheryl’s fine. The baby’s fine,” I said. I smiled at him. “Maybe I’m just worn out, worried about the baby. It’s a big change.” I started walking.

“It is,” he said, following. “But nothing you can’t handle.” He clapped me on the back.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

At the corner another Bureau man handed out sheets. How had they tracked me here?

“You sure you don’t want that drink?” A big smile stretched across his face. “I won’t keep you long.”

A street musician had begun to play. The music glistened above the heavy press of the crowd exiting the station. Larry dropped a quarto in his upturned hat as we passed. It was a lot of money to give away. “If it’s quick,” I said, and we crossed the street.

Russell smiled inside of me. He loved Larry, looked up to him. Russell’d been raised by his mother, had never known his father, not even a name. For the last five years, Larry’d filled that empty spot in his life: giving advice, lessons, listening to his problems. He was the closest thing Russell had ever had to a father, and Russell cherished the small amount of time they’d spent together outside of the station. In many ways, he felt closer to Larry than he had to his own mother, before she passed, and in some ways closer than he did to Cheryl. There were things he could tell Larry that he’d never be able to tell her, and he needed that. He needed Larry, and therefore so did I.

I set my plate in the sink and walked over to the chair where Cheryl sat watching the viewer screen. I rubbed her shoulders. “That feels good,” she said.

“I expect one later, then.”

She turned her head and smiled. “Long day?”

“As always.” I pressed my thumbs in hard circles and she moaned. “I was thinking about getting away. Maybe taking a vacation.”

She closed her eyes. “Sounds nice.”

“We could go anywhere,” I said.

“Where were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. Maybe vacation on a floater, see what they’re like. Maybe—”

“I always wanted to visit Cloud City,” she cut in.

“I was thinking North Capetown or Beijing Fu. Cloud City’s too close. I wanted to get away.”

She moaned again, and I moved my hands to the tops of her arms. “When?”

“Now. Tomorrow. I’ll call off work. I have vacation time.”

“We can’t.” She turned to look at me. “You’ll need that when the baby gets here. Besides, we need to save our money.”

“We have enough.”

“I don’t know what bank statement you’ve been watching,” she said.

“I just thought it would be nice.”

“And it would be, but we can’t. Not now.” She smiled at me. I leaned down and kissed the red curls atop her head. “Later,” she said. “As a family.”

“What if we did have the money?”

“We don’t.” She changed the channel. “It’s probably not good for me to fly anyway.”

“It’s early. You’d be fine.”

“What’s going on?” she asked and turned. She eyed me up and down.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Seriously, Russell, what is it? You’ve been acting strange these last couple days. And now you’re pushing for this vacation. What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s nothing.” I leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away. “Really.”

“You have to be honest with me. I know you’re worried about money, but we’ll be fine. You need to talk to me.”

Russell didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. “I’m just overwhelmed with everything right now. It’s so much to take in, you know? I just want to get away. Just the two of us.”

She kissed me.

I thought about leaving that night, but Russell couldn’t. I wanted to put the forty thousand quartos in an envelope on the table with a note telling her I’d gone, but I couldn’t. She deserved more than that. If there was a chance for her to have the family she’d always longed for, I had to give it to her. Russell would not let me leave. He wouldn’t let me walk out on her. I’d started the note, but when I looked at what I’d written, they weren’t my words. He’d walked out on her once, given his life for a lump-sum payment, and he now knew the mistake he’d made. He wouldn’t do it again. He wouldn’t let me leave her.

I tried to explain the danger she was in. If the Bureau found out who I was now, they’d kill all of us, but he wouldn’t listen. His voice chattered inside of me, a voice that was as much mine now as his. I fought with him, and I fought with myself. We were one, and my will was being thwarted. A will, a being that was not me, controlled my actions, my choices, and I controlled his. We battled. We argued, and yet neither won. When I slid back into bed beside my wife, Russell moved my hand across her stomach. You’re endangering them both, I told him, and, I can’t abandon them, he responded in my own voice, the voice of my own mind.

She’d leave if she knew what we’d done, I told him.

She won’t know.

I prayed for her safety, for our baby’s safety, but I knew they’d find me. If they’d tracked me this far, it was only a matter of time.

(continued on page 3)

 

 

Saturday Station by Christopher Shearer 1 2 3
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