Saturday, March 24th, 2007. 1:56 PM
Return trip to nowhere
I killed someone last night. I dreamed it, but I felt the taste of someone else’s blood in my mouth when I woke up.
I took the train after a hard day at work and fell asleep. When I woke up, I saw places through the window that I didn’t recognize, and the rest of the passengers were standing nervously. Their faces showed more fear than concern. Suddenly, a robot voice informed that they had made an error in displaying the destinations at the station, and that when we reached the next stop we were to request a return ticket at the ticket window. The passengers shouted and protested, while running through the car and pushing each other. I remained in my seat, contemplating the strange landscape, absorbed. An eternity afterward, the train stopped.
The station was in the middle of nowhere. Meadows and woods surrounded it, but you couldn’t hear the wind or birds. It was total silence, and the passengers kept on yelling, although now without sound, and bumped into each other like a herd of animals next to the train as they got off. I navigated the crowd without any problems, without even brushing against them, as if I’d turned into a liquid sliding between them, using any hole or crack, and reached the ticket booth. A uniformed man, with one of those old station chief hats, watched me from the other side of the window. His eyes seemed like those of a traitor, a cheater or a compulsive liar; they never looked straight ahead. A cleanly trimmed moustache finished off his look as a character straight from an old movie; he was suddenly dressed like a thug from the twenties in Chicago, and lost all color and turned black and white.
“How can I help you?” he said with a fake smile, condescending and bitter at the same time.
I explained to him that I had to go back to the station the train had come from, and that it had brought me here by mistake, and showed him my ticket. His smile got even wider and froze, and I waited. A minute later, he came back to life and asked for my documentation. I looked and looked in my wallet, but couldn’t find it, and at the same time, I wondered why he would need my ID. I asked him if my driver’s license would work. He kept smiling and shaking his head, as if it wasn’t important. He was again dressed in the blue uniform with the hat, and recuperated color. He filled out a form by hand, with a fountain pen, and gave it to me while still smiling.
The paper said, in two lines:
Valid for one return trip.
Bullet-proof.
When I turned around, the train had gone, and there wasn’t a trace of the passengers who had arrived with me. The platform was deserted. I went up to a wooden bench and sat down to wait. I relaxed under the pleasant rays of sunshine and fell asleep. After an undetermined amount of time, a woman’s cry awoke me, and when I turned my head, I recognized the two security guards, who were now wearing mechanic’s overalls covered in grease. They were hitting my neighbor lady.
Then everything happened quite fast. Mere sketches of bestial violence. I bit one of their tracheas out, and savored his thick blood while the other fled toward the woods. Then, savagely, I made love with my neighbor on the station floor.
The train arrived right when I was zipping up my pants, announcing its arrival with a deafening whistle. A column of white smoke gave away its route.
And then I woke up. My nose started bleeding again, and the flavor filled my mouth. I went to the bathroom and washed myself. I think I spit out at least half a gallon of blood.
I have to call Rafa.