The Four-oh-Six Train

I. The Driver

The junkie burst from the cab and fell right up into the orange-lit dark. Ralph leaned out his window and squinted up into the night sky, watching his pinwheeling silhouette until it dissolved into the clouds. His stomach churned. Ralph was getting lighter every day. He hadn’t told his wife yet, but he practically floated out of bed in the morning.

“Why didn’t you take him to the hospital?” the girl asked. She waved her hand up at the sky where the junkie had disappeared, and glared at Ralph.

“He didn’t want to go,” Ralph said with a shrug. She stared at him, open-mouthed. “They don’t wanna go, I don’t take ‘em.”

“Where’s my twenty?” She asked. Her left sneaker was held together with duct tape, and there were greasy stains on her shirt.

“I gave it to him,” Ralph said. She kept staring, her mouth a small, dark circle. “Junkies,” he said with a shrug, shaking his head as he pulled away from the curb. In the rearview mirror, she was still standing in the empty street, staring after him. It was four-oh-eight a.m.

II. The Addict

It must be worse than he thought, the way she was carrying on about it. He couldn’t feel it, was the thing. All he felt was the burning in his bones, the jittery, queasy, squeezing, needing, screaming song singing in his veins. Cold sweat dripped into his eyes, and he blinked it away.

“Just give me the fucking money.” He hadn’t meant to say it like that, but the way she was carrying on… he just needed twenty bucks, just twenty in cash between him and tender relief.

“… you’re going to lose it if you don’t get to a hospital now, like, right now…” She was going on and on about it as she took the money from the atm. It had to be bad to get her to the atm. The orange street lights flashed off the whites of her eyes, and her mouth kept going and going. The light around her was so bright and green that he had to squint to look at her, and it made him hate her even more. Some people never were so green. He’d never been that green, not even as a kid. She’d never had to lie or steal or hurt anyone for what she had. Just thinking about it made him so angry, he would have walked away if he hadn’t needed that twenty so bad.

Why did some people get to waltz through life, free and easy, while others had to fight so hard for every little bit of it?

“The money,” he said, staggering close behind her wild hair as she ran into the street. She was giving his twenty bucks to a cab driver, going on about his arm, his stupid fucking arm. He couldn’t even feel it. What did she even know? He followed the twenty-dollar bill into the cab.

“Give me the money,” he shrieked, his teeth clenched so they wouldn’t chatter. He wiped the sweat from his eyes. The cabbie shrugged.

III. The Dishwasher

If she were late again, she’d lose her job at the bakery, and the four-oh-six train wouldn’t wait. She tried to tell the junkie she didn’t have anything, but when he spread open his coat like a sidewalk salesman, it took a moment to realize the thing inside was an arm. The skin was black and so tight it had split in places, showing the red meat below. The hand was a claw, a gnarled thing you’d find in a New Orleans voodoo shop.

Her scream rose up into the dark, roiling clouds. The orange lights of the city lit the sound like a fireworks display as it sprayed across the sky and rained back down over them. It was so bright it lit up the world, if anyone had been awake to see it.

The arm was cooked clear through, barbecued right to the elbow. How did you cook an arm and not even notice? How did you cook an arm? Bunsen burner, table-top hibachi, a sudden, white-hot magnesium fire, nothing seemed feasible, nothing you could get up and walk away from.

One thing was certain; she was going to have to find a new job.