What Did You Do, Jake Sullivan?

The stone warehouse was vast and extended beyond sight in all directions like the halls of a desolate god without name. Smooth pylons, some twenty feet across, rose featureless and without seam into the darkness above where in the dim shadows he could just discern the whispers of limitless stone arches. They crisscrossed without order in an ancient latticework that he imagined carved with glyphs and dead languages lost to time and war. He walked in the grey shadowless light which emanated without source towards the only sound he could hear – a metronomic click-click, click-click which sounded from not far ahead. He’s had this dream before but it was different this time.

In his hand slunk a pale stuffed rabbit, his first toy of memory and whose ears were sewn back countless times and eyes long replaced by buttons of different size. Looking up, a house stood before him, an amalgamation of every place he had ever lived. The facade of his childhood home but with the porch of the house he purchased after the wedding. The worn brown paneling lit soft by porch light, the curtains shifting in a wind that could not be felt yet wafting in from his right from the looks of it. The click-click grew louder as he entered through the front door and found his way into a liminal space of half rooms, free standing walls and the partial floors of the story above. He knew his task, for about him in every corner, along each wall and upon every shelf were the lost possessions of a lifetime – shoes he wore in college, toys from childhood, books long given away, posters of bands he had outgrown and all now returned for this moment.

With delicacy and care, he arranged them all in groups that gave him comfort – Some toys he placed carefully in a shoe box because he perceived them to be friends and tucked them tight against a wall, shoes he ordered from oldest to newest under a rack like he did in his first studio. His wife hated those shoes. Books he arranged by color in a symmetry from blue to red to blue and upon the mantle he arranged the photos of his family. Mom and Dad, his brother and his two children next to that. From a worn box he assigned to moldings, cracks and recesses the faded silvering images of his ancestors most of whom he never knew and some whose names died with them for lack of viable children. Taking a step back, the gallery of his past stared back from all sides and he knew it was soon time, for in the corner sat the two jerry cans of gasoline for this purpose. It all had to burn.

The click-click emanated from the only adjacent room. Before the Christmas tree adorned with his grandma’s ornaments was the antique train handed down to his family from his grandfather. Three railed and forming a figure-eight, the set was made in the 40’s and lovingly assembled each year until the time he returned from college to find his parents sold it at a garage sale. Looking at it now he grew immeasurably sad. With the train was a small torn box that held one remaining smoke pellet too precious to ever use and which sat alone in the box year after year. He wondered if it felt forlorn for never having fulfilled its purpose. Just like him.

Against the wall his father's old chair sat broad in its threadbare pride as he rested upon it and watched the train in its tight circuit among the plastic trees. Click-click, click-click. He was still holding the rabbit and takes a long swig from the bottle of bourbon that rested on the floor. He laid his head back and closed his eyes as he could smell the scent of pine and the tainted wallpaper made musty by his father's cigarettes. Dull light flashed left to right beyond his eyes and he felt his body rocking in a gentle rhythm from the chair. Clack-clack, clack-clack.

Outside the window the landscape past in a blur, twilit and grey. Dark trees passed stuttering like frames from a zoetrobe and encased in thick vines that rose snake-like beyond sight among the upper branches till the land opened her arms to a vast sparse field where a shallow stream wound away through the low hills and cast itself away into oblivion.

The train car was lit with small gas lamps flitting behind leaded glass and framed with dark brass fittings and which lined the mahogany walls appointed with tacked padded leather that ran the length of the empty car. He looks about in a confused daze and finally squeezes his eyes shut in dismay and leans his head on the seat in front of him. He couldn’t afford this. “What did you do?” he asks himself in utter bewilderment. He knew he had been drinking and his neck hurt. It’s like the time he woke up with box seat tickets in the mail and no rent for the month. He checks his pockets. No wallet, no keys, no phone and not even a ticket. “You stupid dumb idiot,” he hisses under his breath. No hangover, so that’s good he thought, but now he was lost beyond reason and having to find a way off this train and back home. Looking out the window the landscape wasn’t even familiar. He knew he could be hundreds of miles from home by now and shakes his head in disgust.

Panic... But not panic yet. Some vague unknowable sense enveloped him, like a hand on his shoulder that kept him from the edge of dissociation and fear. A sense of an other, but there was no other here. Just this train now passing between cliffs, an ocean bay a hundred feet below. He shambles towards the front of the car steadying himself on the seats. Just find where he is and get off, get home, find his kids.

He pressed down the brass handle on the door connecting the cars as it slid open and a blast of cold wind shot from beyond the bellows that covered the juncture as he entered the next car. Towards the front an old couple sits together, but none others. Approaching them he saw they had their heads bowed and leaning towards each other as the man stroked the woman’s frail hand in comfort. Despite his presence they didn’t look up and he became overwhelmed with a sense not to disturb them, to just leave them in their palpable sorrow and wander to the next car.

The woman stood up ahead, her leather jacket and torn jeans like an anachronism against the rich surroundings. She leaned against the bench, her booted foot against the other seat and cocked her head at him.

“You got a cigarette?” He stares at her blankly. “Never mind, I know ya don’t.”

He looks awkwardly about the cabin trying not to look awkward. “So, I kind of lost my ticket. Do you know which train this is?”

“You don’t know what train you’re on?”

“No.”

“Well, it looks like you make some strange choices, mister.”

“Well look, I think I might have blacked out. Maybe, I don’t know.”

“So a drinker, huh? That’s some serious boozing to not know how you got on a train.”

“Okay, I don’t even remember buying a ticket. I’ve never even bought a train ticket before. I'm sorry, this is stupid.”

“Ain’t no black out I think, but yeah you bought a ticket, just not the way you think.”

He looks at her baffled. “What do you mean?”

“You’re seriously telling me you have no idea why you’re here? Like, none? And take a breath, panicking ain’t gonna help you.”

“I have to get back to my kids.”

She looks down frowning then stares out the window. “Kids, huh? That’s a rough one that.”

He rubs his neck trying to think. “Well, can you just tell me how long before the next stop?”

She continues to stare out the window. The landscape has turned lush with rows of cherry trees by the hundreds, their white blossoms spiraling in the air like flocks of tiny gentle birds. “I always like this part. It’s pretty. Life in it’s livin' and all that hope flutterin' in the air. Good to know there are promises out there for some people still.”

“But what about the next station?” as he begins to get frustrated.

“Well, mister…”

“My name’s Jake.” She turns her head quickly back to him.

“I don’t wanna know your name. No offense. I don’t like knowin’ peoples’ names.”

“Look, I just want to get home.”

“It may be awhile, mister. Long while in fact.”

“Well...you mean an hour? Two hours?”

She purses her lips and stands up. “Mister, let me show you somethin’.” She turns and walks to the next door yanking it open, her blond hair spiking in the wind as he follows and shuts the door behind him. In the next car a dozen or more people are dispersed in their own private isolations. Teenagers, middle aged men and women, an athlete still in his uniform and a priest who stands alone facing into a corner. A collective sorrow hangs in the air like a miasma of grief. Jake stares dumbfounded.

“I don’t get this.”

“No, not yet. What do you see?”

“I just...They’re all sad. Terribly sad.”

“Why do ya think they’re sad?”

“I don’t know. Look, I just...”

“Why do ya think they’re sad, mister? What makes people sad?”

“Who knows? Because they lost something?”

“What did they lose?” She waits for him to reply. “What do ya think they lost, mister?”

“Listen, this isn't making a lot of sense so...”

“Does to them. What did you lose, mister?”

Jake abruptly stands up. “Okay look, I’m not really into this. I’m sure you’re a nice person but I’ve got to get off this train and this, this thing we’re doing here, is all getting too weird. So...thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” She turns to watch him pass down the car. “You might not want to go that way, mister.”

Jake quickly maneuvers through the car, past the huddled people and into the next car when he abruptly stops. The dark gunmetal walls were slick with damp and the pale yellowed windows cast the carriage in sallow light as if the carriage itself was engulfed in sickness. The travelers each hunched away from each other sitting alone in their isolated clots moaning in a low chorus of anguish. The bitter air reeked of sweat and infection and their clothes mottled with rot. Jake gagged covering his mouth as he swiftly turned to go back but the handle would not move. He violently shook it to no avail as his head grew light and he realized he was hyperventilating. When he swung around all the travelers had turned their blighted faces to him in unison, grey, bloated and pestilent. Their mouths opened in groaning howls, shaking their dull heads in an unholy disapproval at him. With no way back, Jake ducked his head and darted forward through the carriage, his shoes slipping on some unseen smear of dank liquid.

Thrusting open the far carriage door, he leapt onto the metal transom and into the brittle cold. He braced his hands against the next car trying to slow his panicked breathing but the deadly freezing air bit into his skin like invisible fangs whipping at this clothes and he knew there was no staying here. His quaking hands thrust down the handle and he collapsed inside into the silence save for the incessant dull pulsing of the tracks below.

“I said you didn’t want to come this way.” Still shaking, Jake looks up to the woman who now sits cross-legged on a gilded bench and smoking a cigarette. “Found one,” she shrugs and eyes the next car down. "You really don't want to go in that one." The carriage was ornate with gold trim, long hand carved benches and red velvet wall paper adorned with fleur-de-lis - but something was wrong. As Jake scans the room he saw that nothing quite fit together – the benches weren’t square but not by much, there were gaps in the gilded moldings that were just out of line to each other and every decorative flourish was tilted just a few degrees off giving the entire space a sense of unease. And on the far side of the carriage was an ancient brass clock with ornate silver arms which appeared like the first clock of all clocks as if it invented time itself and would be the last keeper of all eras to come. And it was counting backwards towards midnight. The woman takes a long drag from the cigarette as Jake tries to speak.

“No no no. Don’t do that. Everyone does that. It’s boring. And no, it’s not a dream. You already had that before you got here.”

“But it has to be.”

“Does it? This feel like any kind of dream to you?” He shakes his head lost. “Then stop it!” she shouts.

Jake, confused and out of breath gazes up as she briefly turns transparent then back as if the air glitched and all he can do is helplessly stare.

“What are you then?”

“Mister, that would take more explainin’ than you have time.”

“You have to have a name. Can you just tell me that?”

She smiles. “If I told you, you wouldn’t understand it. It’s beyond your reckoning, mister.” And her voice sounded like the roar of many waterfalls.

Jake glares in shock and then has to look away. He twists his fingers in knots and sits shaking. “There isn’t any stop is there?”

“No, mister there ain’t.”

Jake leans back against a bench, coughing loudly as he looks forlornly off to the side. “I’m dead, aren’t I? That’s it is isn’t it? Just like all these people. Everyone here is dead. I finally drank myself to death didn’t I?”

She looks back at the clock. “Nah, ain’t that simple really. People want to make it so, but it ain’t that cliche.”

“Then why are we here?”

“That’s not the question you should be askin’.”

“Then what is?”

“The question is why are you here?”

“I don’t know now!”

She leans in, dragging on her cigarette. “I think you do! I think you do know. As for these people here? I can’t speak about them, each got their own stories, but I can tell you one thing. They can leave anytime they want. It’s true. Any one of them. Just like that.”

“Then why stay? They’re miserable.”

“Yes! They are miserable! Every single one. And you want to know why people stay in their misery?” Jake coughs uncontrollably shaking his head as she leans in. “Because...it’s familiar. That’s why.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“No, it doesn’t. But people do it. People do it all the time. It’s a scary thing to look in the mirror and don't know who you are without your misery. Especially when you hung onto it for so long. And when you hang onto it long enough, it becomes more you than you. Then you’re just a shadow crawlin’ through time. Like them.”

He shakes his head and gets to his feet. “I need to go!” But she stands in his way.

“Why are you miserable, Jake Sullivan? What did you do last night?”

Jake stares wide-eyed at the woman as fear crushes him as he desperately tries to stay on his feet. Suddenly a shaking wracks the train car as he stumbles against the wall. Outside wild embers flare in the hot wind careening against the glass like burning snow. In the distance a house burns, curtains melting and dropping from their frames as the thick flames engulf the porch in arcs of sweeping chaos.

“That’s…”

“Yes. Your first house. The one you bought with your wife.”

“Jenny...”

“And where you raised your kids.” He nods furtively and begins to sob. “What did you do, Jake Sullivan?”

“She left me.”

“After you lost your job. I know”

“She took my kids. And I don’t know where they are. It's gone. Everything...I just drank it away. It's gone.” He covers his heaving face as she looks plaintively at him and whispers.

“Yes, and every Christmas now you get the cards with pictures of your friends’ families all happy and perfect, all with the life you wanted but no longer have. And outside your door your neighbors go about their lives as if nothin’ has ever happened tragic in their lives ever and here you are and no one understands or even sees your pain. That right?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do, Jake Sullivan?”

“What do you want from me?!”

“No! It’s what do you want from you!” The train now careens banking hard to the left as it accelerates tossing Jake to the side as the clock approaches backwards to midnight.

“I want my life back the way it was!”

“That’s never going to happen, so now what?”

Jake begins choking as he tries to breathe. “Then I want to die! I want it to be over.”

“Over for who? For you? All so very simple right? Over for your kids when they got the news? Over for your father who has to identify his only son while your mother weeps in the next room and your brother has to take an emergency flight and sort through your apartment and throw out your bottles? Who is it really over for, Jake Sullivan?”

The train now shakes uncontrollably as bolts from the carriage seams pop loose like bullets and the benches begin to wrench from the walls. Jake leans back against the wall resigned and stares out through the window to the inferno overtaking the car. “It’s too late,” he says defeated. “It’s done. I’d take it back if I could. Start over again but I can’t.” He then looks back the woman, holding her eyes in his. “Forgive me…”

She gives one last glance at the clock. Seconds from midnight. She flicks her cigarette away, leans over to him, smiles and whispers her secret name in his ear.

Pale light and coldness. A sharpness of agony shooting down his entire right side. Arm immobile and his hand as limp as dough. He stares up at the bathroom ceiling, the shower rod across his chest. It pulled loose from its fragile mooring over the tub which was encrusted in soap scum and lined with empty shampoo bottles. They would have been the last things he ever saw, he thinks to himself. And with his good hand, he pulls the belt from around his neck, tosses it aside as he sits up, his whole body trembling in unmitigating quakes and rests there doll-like for a long long time.

In the sparse living room, Jake Sullivan sits upon the used couch as empty bottles line its periphery like mindless soldiers. His hand is coming back as he painfully clenches and unclenches his fist and he can finally feel his legs again. The take-out food from the night before lies shrunken and hard at the edge of the worn table and there’s a crack in the plaster he had never noticed before. It’s beautiful he thinks. So beautiful he laughs. Agonizingly he stands and slowly drops the bottles tinking into two plastic trash bins and limps outside. The night is cool as he shambles his way down the cracked drive. Tuesday tomorrow. Recycling day. You can always tell the drunks on recycling day. And he empties the bins in a roar of deafening glass. His neighbor Mildred stands staring aghast in her mumbled bathrobe as he smiles and waves before she flicks her cigarette away and turns back in loathing.

Back on the couch he sees his wallet, keys and phone on the end table. He holds the phone in his hands, turning it over and over again and finally dials.

“Hey. Hey, sweetie. It’s Dad.”