Of Dreamscapes: D-Line, pt. 1
The man opened his eyes, startled. The train tracks clicked and clacked below him, the carriage rocking back and forth gently over ancient warps in the wrought iron they rode above. It was no wonder he dozed off. He glanced absently at his watch and distantly registered the time, or rather, his lack thereof.
“Can’t believe I’m gonna be late.. This always happens, I have something important to do and life finds a way to mess it up. Maybe traffic will be merciful and I’ll get there on the dot…” he mumbled to himself.
He heard a rustling and glanced up to see a stranger sitting across from him quickly raise his newspaper back in front of his face, but not quick enough. He saw the raised eyebrow, the attempt to return to normalcy after gawping at him, the awkward clearing of his throat to try and seem innocuous.
He shook his head, he’d never much liked people, they had a habit of disappointing. All of them except his sweetheart, Laura. She had a smile like a patch of sunflowers and wore a sundress like she intended to kill with looks alone. He missed her. It was only the second week since they had split up.
“Decided to see other people,” is what he told coworkers, family, friends. He hadn’t gotten much of a decision, she told him what was happening, and he listened. He always listened to her. Not because he was indecisive, or weak of will, her ideas always made the most sense, and they’d all worked out well for him in the long run. So he agreed to the split, because it would work out for him in the end, right?
Sure didn’t seem that way now.
He crossed his arms, tilted his chin down to rest on his chest. Did the train always take this long? The city whizzed by outside, blurry to take in all at once, but defined if your eye was quick to follow. Strangely it seemed to be more blurred than usual, but the train had to be running slow. “Just being impatient..” he thought, bouncing his leg noiselessly.
The stranger across the aisle rustled again, bringing his newspaper down just far enough for his eyes to peek over the top.
“Say buddy, you got the time?”
The man glanced at his watch again, squinting to make sure he was reading it right. He’d never gotten used to the analog watches, especially not with the digital ones becoming more prevalent. “It’s uh…” he felt his face scrunch up trying to read the watch face.
His brain told him numbers were there, but which numbers they were he had no idea. Even the hands of the watch seemed to mold and warp in front of him, never staying in one place long enough.
“Uh.. I’m not sure, seems my watch decided to stop working..”
“You remember to wind it?”
Wind it, wha-.. No, no, this has a battery. Who still winds watches?”
The stranger shrugged, “Dunno, some people still like that old fashioned tick. Rely on newfangled technology too much and it’s liable to crap out on ya,” he chuckled, his eyes said he was smiling.
“Well, that appears to be the case now. I already know I’m gonna be late.”
The man sighed, thinking to himself, “the train has to be running slow, it hasn’t even hit the mid-town tunn-”, and the carriage was plunged suddenly into darkness. The sounds of the train echoed and rose in volume as they chugged along, the occasional clack and screech reverberating within their car as they went.
For a moment, the interior lights hadn’t come on, and the man felt a primal panic begin to well within him. Before it had a chance to manifest itself into full-blown terror, the lights flickered. The man looked to the stranger across from him, wearing a nice three piece suit, a dark red with some light accents, a straw hat atop his head.
He looked gangly, like he hadn’t had enough to eat growing up, but his body went ahead and did it anyway. The skin on his hands was stretched so thin it almost looked like a skeleton clasping the paper, and in the flickering cabin lights he would have swore that’s what he saw.
When the lights finally stayed on, he double checked and saw a normal hand again, a wedding band glinting at him. He leaned forward in his seat, rubbing his eyes with one hand and supporting himself with the other.
“You alright, friend?” the stranger asked, folding his paper into his lap, “you look like you’re not doing so hot.”
“Yeah, yeah.. I just.. Your hand, the ring, it..”
The stranger’s eyebrow popped up again, “Something wrong with my hand?”
“No, no,” the man sat back up, forcing a smile on his face, “Your ring just brought up some fresh wounds is all.”
The stranger nodded in a way that said he understood, but obviously wasn’t buying it. “Well, I can try taking it off if it’d make ya feel better. Don’t think it’s liable to budge though.”
“No, it’s fine, just.. My wife came to the conclusion that we should see other people, and I’m on my way to..” he let out a trembling sigh, “on my way to finish that whole thing up.”
He shook his head again, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I told you that. None of your concern.”
The stranger chuckled again, it was a pleasant noise, the man thought. “No need to worry yourself, I get that a lot. Something about me seems to get people to open up.”
The stranger smiled, a gentle grin, the eyelids squinting slightly, and the vibrant blue irises glowing behind them made the man feel calm. It wasn’t often that you met genuinely kind people in the city, and the man was glad he had hopped aboard this particular car.
“You wanna talk about it?” the stranger asked.
The man stared down at this feet, found that his leg was bouncing again of its own volition.
“Well.. I mean, if you don’t mind, it’d be nice to get some of this off my chest. First though, what’s your name? Be weird talking to someone I can’t address.”
The stranger nodded, “Sure, I don’t mind. Name’s Silas, Albert Silas. You can call me Al though.”
The man smiled, “A pleasure, Al. I’m-” the smile faded from his lips, fell into a frown, he felt his forehead bunch together again, “I’m… I’m.. “ that internal, primal feeling welled within him again, “Why can’t..”
Al waved a hand dismissively, “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re going through some stuff, it’ll come to ya.”
The man nodded slowly, rubbing at his temples with his hands. “Yeah.. yeah, just stressed out right now, sorry about that.”
“No worries, friend. So, tell me about this damsel of yours.”
The man had no issues remembering his Laura. The way she wore her hair, her annoying quirks that made her all the more endearing, the intimate dates they shared, her love of movies and cinematography. The man spoke at such length about her that he lost track of time entirely, but all the while Al sat and listened, making the occasional remark about how lovely their time must have been together, smiling and laughing when a funny memory came up.
The newspaper was long forgotten by Al’s side, and the man had gone on for long enough that he felt his throat beginning to get dry and raspy. Finally he came to an end, and Al, now leaning forward with his elbows on his knees spoke up,
“Well, that all sounds rosy. but what about where you’re headed to now?”
The man sighed again, a bittersweet smile played across his lips, “Well, you see.. She managed to land a nice job halfway across the country. I offered to go with, but that’s when she told me she couldn’t stand me. That I would just kowtow to everything she said. I tried telling her that I went with her decisions because they’d always worked well for me, that going against that grain is what led to a lot of instability early in our relationship. She told me that’s exactly what she missed though: something dynamic. In the end, I told her I couldn’t quit my job, and she told me she couldn’t stay married to me. So here I am, going with her last decision, because Boletta Industries wants her, and apparently I’m not enough to convince her to stay.”
He felt his voice waver, the raspiness was gone, replaced by a constricting tightness in his throat, a welling in his eyes. He fought hard to keep everything in check, but he felt a few tears escape, crashing needlessly on the rubber mats below him. “I’m sorry.. Like I said, this all still pretty fresh.”
Al nodded at him from across the aisle.
"I get that, I do, but.. I feel the need to ask. You see, I deal with stocks pretty often, like to think I know my companies pretty well. Boletta Industries, wasn’t that a pharmaceutical thing? Some kind of knock-off drug corp?”
The man nodded, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
“The same corp that got bought out fourteen years ago by Tridel, Inc?”
For the third time the man felt his face scrunch up. Tridel.. Why did that sound so familiar? It came back to him in pieces; a news clip, the news ticker mentioning an up-and-coming company buying out others to diversify, a news article claiming some absurd amount of money to purchase Boletta in its entirety, his daughter mentioning her mother had-.
He blinked a few times, his eyes widening and searching for nothing physical as he skimmed through his memories, his daughter! How had he forgotten her?
Al cocked his head to the side, “Everything alright?”
“Yeah, just..” the train emerged from the tunnel finally, glaring daylight reflected off the countryside as they whizzed past. “Think I just need a minute here…”
Nodding, Al picked his book back up, “No problem, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
The man nodded with him, watching the hills rise and fall in the distance, the wildflowers whipped past them, but he could see the ones in the distance as posies.
They were his daughter’s favorite. He remembered now, he was sure, he was late for her surgery. Laura had called him up and begged him to make the trip, not that she needed to. He hadn’t seen Nicole in a few years, and it was always nice to see Laura again, even if she didn’t feel that way about him anymore.
The doctor’s had reassured them both that the surgery would be relatively quick and simple, considering how fast tumors tended to grow, and that her prognosis was good all around. Still, it was frightening, and anxiety inducing, and his train had already been delayed twice before it finally got moving.
His leg starting bouncing again, he couldn’t help it.
“Can’t believe I’m gonna be late.. This always happens, I have something important to do and life finds a way to mess it up. Maybe traffic will be merciful and I’ll get there on the dot…” he mumbled to himself.
He heard a rustling and glanced up to see a stranger sitting across from him quickly raise his newspaper back in front of his face, but not quick enough. He saw the raised eyebrow, the attempt to return to normalcy after gawping at him, the awkward clearing of his throat to try and seem innocuous.
He shook his head, he’d never much liked people, they had a habit of disappointing. All of them except his sweetheart, Laura. She had a smile like a patch of sunflowers and wore a sundress like she intended to kill with looks alone. He missed her. It was only the second week since they had split up.
“Decided to see other people,” is what he told coworkers, family, friends. He hadn’t gotten much of a decision, she told him what was happening, and he listened. He always listened to her. Not because he was indecisive, or weak of will, her ideas always made the most sense, and they’d all worked out well for him in the long run. So he agreed to the split, because it would work out for him in the end, right?
Sure didn’t seem that way now.
He crossed his arms, tilted his chin down to rest on his chest. Did the train always take this long? The city whizzed by outside, blurry to take in all at once, but defined if your eye was quick to follow. Strangely it seemed to be more blurred than usual, but the train had to be running slow. “Just being impatient..” he thought, bouncing his leg noiselessly.
The stranger across the aisle rustled again, bringing his newspaper down just far enough for his eyes to peek over the top.
“Say buddy, you got the time?”
The man glanced at his watch again, squinting to make sure he was reading it right. He’d never gotten used to the analog watches, especially not with the digital ones becoming more prevalent. “It’s uh…” he felt his face scrunch up trying to read the watch face.
His brain told him numbers were there, but which numbers they were he had no idea. Even the hands of the watch seemed to mold and warp in front of him, never staying in one place long enough.
“Uh.. I’m not sure, seems my watch decided to stop working..”
“You remember to wind it?”
Wind it, wha-.. No, no, this has a battery. Who still winds watches?”
The stranger shrugged, “Dunno, some people still like that old fashioned tick. Rely on newfangled technology too much and it’s liable to crap out on ya,” he chuckled, his eyes said he was smiling.
“Well, that appears to be the case now. I already know I’m gonna be late.”
The man sighed, thinking to himself, “the train has to be running slow, it hasn’t even hit the mid-town tunn-”, and the carriage was plunged suddenly into darkness. The sounds of the train echoed and rose in volume as they chugged along, the occasional clack and screech reverberating within their car as they went.
For a moment, the interior lights hadn’t come on, and the man felt a primal panic begin to well within him. Before it had a chance to manifest itself into full-blown terror, the lights flickered. The man looked to the stranger across from him, wearing a nice three piece suit, a dark red with some light accents, a straw hat atop his head.
He looked gangly, like he hadn’t had enough to eat growing up, but his body went ahead and did it anyway. The skin on his hands was stretched so thin it almost looked like a skeleton clasping the paper, and in the flickering cabin lights he would have swore that’s what he saw.
When the lights finally stayed on, he double checked and saw a normal hand again, a wedding band glinting at him. He leaned forward in his seat, rubbing his eyes with one hand and supporting himself with the other.
“You alright, friend?” the stranger asked, folding his paper into his lap, “you look like you’re not doing so hot.”
“Yeah, yeah.. I just.. Your hand, the ring, it..”
The stranger’s eyebrow popped up again, “Something wrong with my hand?”
“No, no,” the man sat back up, forcing a smile on his face, “Your ring just brought up some fresh wounds is all.”
The stranger nodded in a way that said he understood, but obviously wasn’t buying it. “Well, I can try taking it off if it’d make ya feel better. Don’t think it’s liable to budge though.”
“No, it’s fine, just.. My wife came to the conclusion that we should see other people, and I’m on my way to..” he let out a trembling sigh, “on my way to finish that whole thing up.”
He shook his head again, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I told you that. None of your concern.”
The stranger chuckled again, it was a pleasant noise, the man thought. “No need to worry yourself, I get that a lot. Something about me seems to get people to open up.”
The stranger smiled, a gentle grin, the eyelids squinting slightly, and the vibrant blue irises glowing behind them made the man feel calm. It wasn’t often that you met genuinely kind people in the city, and the man was glad he had hopped aboard this particular car.
“You wanna talk about it?” the stranger asked.
The man stared down at this feet, found that his leg was bouncing again of its own volition.
“Well.. I mean, if you don’t mind, it’d be nice to get some of this off my chest. First though, what’s your name? Be weird talking to someone I can’t address.”
The stranger nodded, “Sure, I don’t mind. Name’s Silas, Albert Silas. You can call me Al though.”
The man smiled, “A pleasure, Al. I’m-” the smile faded from his lips, fell into a frown, he felt his forehead bunch together again, “I’m… I’m.. “ that internal, primal feeling welled within him again, “Why can’t..”
Al waved a hand dismissively, “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re going through some stuff, it’ll come to ya.”
The man nodded slowly, rubbing at his temples with his hands. “Yeah.. yeah, just stressed out right now, sorry about that.”
“No worries, friend. So, tell me about this damsel of yours.”
The man had no issues remembering his Laura. The way she wore her hair, her annoying quirks that made her all the more endearing, the intimate dates they shared, her love of movies and cinematography. The man spoke at such length about her that he lost track of time entirely, but all the while Al sat and listened, making the occasional remark about how lovely their time must have been together, smiling and laughing when a funny memory came up.
The newspaper was long forgotten by Al’s side, and the man had gone on for long enough that he felt his throat beginning to get dry and raspy. Finally he came to an end, and Al, now leaning forward with his elbows on his knees spoke up,
“Well, that all sounds rosy. but what about where you’re headed to now?”
The man sighed again, a bittersweet smile played across his lips, “Well, you see.. She managed to land a nice job halfway across the country. I offered to go with, but that’s when she told me she couldn’t stand me. That I would just kowtow to everything she said. I tried telling her that I went with her decisions because they’d always worked well for me, that going against that grain is what led to a lot of instability early in our relationship. She told me that’s exactly what she missed though: something dynamic. In the end, I told her I couldn’t quit my job, and she told me she couldn’t stay married to me. So here I am, going with her last decision, because Boletta Industries wants her, and apparently I’m not enough to convince her to stay.”
He felt his voice waver, the raspiness was gone, replaced by a constricting tightness in his throat, a welling in his eyes. He fought hard to keep everything in check, but he felt a few tears escape, crashing needlessly on the rubber mats below him. “I’m sorry.. Like I said, this all still pretty fresh.”
Al nodded at him from across the aisle.
"I get that, I do, but.. I feel the need to ask. You see, I deal with stocks pretty often, like to think I know my companies pretty well. Boletta Industries, wasn’t that a pharmaceutical thing? Some kind of knock-off drug corp?”
The man nodded, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
“The same corp that got bought out fourteen years ago by Tridel, Inc?”
For the third time the man felt his face scrunch up. Tridel.. Why did that sound so familiar? It came back to him in pieces; a news clip, the news ticker mentioning an up-and-coming company buying out others to diversify, a news article claiming some absurd amount of money to purchase Boletta in its entirety, his daughter mentioning her mother had-.
He blinked a few times, his eyes widening and searching for nothing physical as he skimmed through his memories, his daughter! How had he forgotten her?
Al cocked his head to the side, “Everything alright?”
“Yeah, just..” the train emerged from the tunnel finally, glaring daylight reflected off the countryside as they whizzed past. “Think I just need a minute here…”
Nodding, Al picked his book back up, “No problem, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
The man nodded with him, watching the hills rise and fall in the distance, the wildflowers whipped past them, but he could see the ones in the distance as posies.
They were his daughter’s favorite. He remembered now, he was sure, he was late for her surgery. Laura had called him up and begged him to make the trip, not that she needed to. He hadn’t seen Nicole in a few years, and it was always nice to see Laura again, even if she didn’t feel that way about him anymore.
The doctor’s had reassured them both that the surgery would be relatively quick and simple, considering how fast tumors tended to grow, and that her prognosis was good all around. Still, it was frightening, and anxiety inducing, and his train had already been delayed twice before it finally got moving.
His leg starting bouncing again, he couldn’t help it.
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