anthorn
Well-Known Member
Excerpt from a short story I'm writing. Set on an alienish world. About 1300 words.
The train passes beneath a sky turning the colour of purple, the smoke billowing from its chimney a yellowish green, and the people clutching at the side of the cattle car holding on as tight as humanly possible. The rest of the train is nothing to speak about, nothing to earn more than a cursory glance as it passes through. The sight of some 1940s Americano is no longer something to remark on. Neither is the head of the train, a giant head of a bull complete with vicious horns on either side of its skull.
Sasha has no recollection of how much time has passed since she’d hitched a ride from back east. There is no recollection on how long her arm that’s hooked between and around the wood boards has hurt. To think on this would remove focus from other things, things she could not afford to lose focus on. She hears exhilarated laughter but she doesn’t care. She concentrates on the landscape coming into focus as the train begins to slow. There are people in the fields dressed in the same dirt smeared overalls and the same weather beaten, life worn expression on their faces. The fields themselves are bluegrass.
The old man behind her calls out in a raspy voice. Three seconds later, he and the other two jump from the train and roll in the grass. One second later Sasha follows, rolling quickly to make distance between herself and the chugging wheels. The others keep low in the long grass as they wait for the train to fade into the distance, but Sasha does not. She watches the ribbon of smoke trailing through the sky and resists the urge to look back over her shoulder, back the way she came and back the way she can never return.
“Think they’ll come look for us?” asks one of the men.
“Don’t be stupid,” says the old man, rasping voice verging the line between cough and laughter. “Think they’re gonna risk a couple of fare jackers?”
Sasha ignores them and starts making her way toward the dozens of tiny lights on the horizon. She is only a few steps ahead before she hears them fall in behind her. I should expect trouble, she thinks. Cause though her flame red hair is short, her face nothing anyone but a mother would call pretty, she is still, under all the grime and the muck, a woman.
One of them, the old man, hurries to walk side by side with her. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye and sees him staring intently at her, eyes narrowing and then widening several times, tongue pushing against the inside of his cheek. “Not often you see a woman out here alone. Not often you see one jacking the fair either.”
Sasha does not reply. She’s distracted by the second man appearing at her left side. While the older man looks at her with what seems like genuine curiosity, this younger man is almost leering. She wonders where the third one has gone but his whereabouts are less pressing than the two at her sides.
“So where you from?” the old man continues. “Where are you going?”
She doesn’t respond.
“Doesn’t matter t’ me which way. We’re all going somewhere, am I right? I am, I am right.” He chuckles slightly. “There’s only one way to go from here, yes.” He motions to the lights on the horizon. “You’re going to New Haven.”
Again, Sasha does not reply. Besides, answering would only state the bleeding obvious. Where else can she go? There is nowhere else to go from here, not until New Haven.
“Safer with us,” the second man says, voice rich and deep. “Dangerous there for a woman alone.”
“Dangerous in truth,” agrees the old man. “More so for women. A haven in name alone. Take my advice if you can. Go to New Haven if you must, but do not linger. Do not trust those who approach you on the street. Just do your business and leave soon as you can. Trust me. It’s not worth the risk to you or your sanity. There’s nothin’ here for anything. Avoid it, please.”
She considers this briefly, keeping her gaze fixed on the lights up ahead. They were closer now, close enough to see that the lights were coming from pit fires and not houses. There were ragged lines of tents reaching either sides of them, spread out like fingers choking the land. New Haven lies beyond this. Over the hill and into the valley.
“Or,” sniggered the other, “you can come with us. We’ll look out for you real good like.”
Sasha flexes her shoulders, opens her long knee length coat from and reveals the knives and pistols slung across her belt. “Reckon I’ll be fine,” she says. At this the men fall silent and fall back a few steps. Satisfied, she quickens her own pace and soon she is alone on the path to New Haven.
#
It’s dark when she reaches New Haven and the town is lit up like the day. She notes its similarities to the other towns she’d been through, the almost identical appearance to the towns in those historical films called westerns. There is even a saloon a little ways down the street complete with swinging doors and a neon sign. She’s never understood this, that fascination with things dead and gone, probably never will. Why bother travelling from one planet to another if you are just going to remake the previous one?
She stops outside the saloon and looks through the yellow tinted windows at the crowd inside. There are more men than women but that’s alright. Making her way to the bar, people turn from their drinks to look up at her. She does not look back at them. She swings her legs around a stool and places her palms flat down on the chipped wood surface of the bar. The barkeep, a man of indeterminate age, looks at her for a minute, then asks. “What you having missy?”
“A drink,” she replies. “Whiskey.”
The barkeep does not move to make the drink. “You got money?”
“You got Whiskey?”
“Yup, but I need to see money first.”
“Alright then.” She reaches into her pocket and hands the man five notes. “Should cover it.”
“One Whiskey comin’ right up,” the man replies.
The man pours one from a green bottle all scratched up on one side into a glass equally as scuffed. She downs it in one go and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.
“Another?”
“Another.”
He pours another Whiskey and she drinks it-slowly this time-trying to savour the taste and finding it still tasted of ashes and blood. “You just arrive?”
Sasha nods.
“Where’d y’ come from?”
“East.”
“That so? Whole lot o’ people coming that way these days I reckon.”
“That so?”
“It is.”
Sasha considers this. Behind her someone breaks into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Curiosity wins over simply not caring and she looks back. “Get a lot of them do you?” she motions to table filled with JFKs and Marilyn Monroe’s.
The barkeep makes a disgusted noise in his throat, keeps his tone pleasant. “You bet, but what can you do?”
“Not a lot I suppose.” More proof on mankind’s inability to detach itself from its past, that when they finally perfected cloning they recreated something from their past. Some decades ago there’d been a fetish for things of the world before. Companies with access to cloning machines shat out JFK after JFK and Monroe after Monroe, sold them to whore homes, museums, and anyone with more money than sense. When the trends moved onto other things the world was left with a thousand Monroe’s singing happy birthday to a thousand Kennedy’s.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking; what brings you to New Haven?”
“I’m looking for someone,” she says.
“Oh yeah?” the barkeep raises a bushy brow. “What kind of someone?”
“The dangerous kind.”
The train passes beneath a sky turning the colour of purple, the smoke billowing from its chimney a yellowish green, and the people clutching at the side of the cattle car holding on as tight as humanly possible. The rest of the train is nothing to speak about, nothing to earn more than a cursory glance as it passes through. The sight of some 1940s Americano is no longer something to remark on. Neither is the head of the train, a giant head of a bull complete with vicious horns on either side of its skull.
Sasha has no recollection of how much time has passed since she’d hitched a ride from back east. There is no recollection on how long her arm that’s hooked between and around the wood boards has hurt. To think on this would remove focus from other things, things she could not afford to lose focus on. She hears exhilarated laughter but she doesn’t care. She concentrates on the landscape coming into focus as the train begins to slow. There are people in the fields dressed in the same dirt smeared overalls and the same weather beaten, life worn expression on their faces. The fields themselves are bluegrass.
The old man behind her calls out in a raspy voice. Three seconds later, he and the other two jump from the train and roll in the grass. One second later Sasha follows, rolling quickly to make distance between herself and the chugging wheels. The others keep low in the long grass as they wait for the train to fade into the distance, but Sasha does not. She watches the ribbon of smoke trailing through the sky and resists the urge to look back over her shoulder, back the way she came and back the way she can never return.
“Think they’ll come look for us?” asks one of the men.
“Don’t be stupid,” says the old man, rasping voice verging the line between cough and laughter. “Think they’re gonna risk a couple of fare jackers?”
Sasha ignores them and starts making her way toward the dozens of tiny lights on the horizon. She is only a few steps ahead before she hears them fall in behind her. I should expect trouble, she thinks. Cause though her flame red hair is short, her face nothing anyone but a mother would call pretty, she is still, under all the grime and the muck, a woman.
One of them, the old man, hurries to walk side by side with her. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye and sees him staring intently at her, eyes narrowing and then widening several times, tongue pushing against the inside of his cheek. “Not often you see a woman out here alone. Not often you see one jacking the fair either.”
Sasha does not reply. She’s distracted by the second man appearing at her left side. While the older man looks at her with what seems like genuine curiosity, this younger man is almost leering. She wonders where the third one has gone but his whereabouts are less pressing than the two at her sides.
“So where you from?” the old man continues. “Where are you going?”
She doesn’t respond.
“Doesn’t matter t’ me which way. We’re all going somewhere, am I right? I am, I am right.” He chuckles slightly. “There’s only one way to go from here, yes.” He motions to the lights on the horizon. “You’re going to New Haven.”
Again, Sasha does not reply. Besides, answering would only state the bleeding obvious. Where else can she go? There is nowhere else to go from here, not until New Haven.
“Safer with us,” the second man says, voice rich and deep. “Dangerous there for a woman alone.”
“Dangerous in truth,” agrees the old man. “More so for women. A haven in name alone. Take my advice if you can. Go to New Haven if you must, but do not linger. Do not trust those who approach you on the street. Just do your business and leave soon as you can. Trust me. It’s not worth the risk to you or your sanity. There’s nothin’ here for anything. Avoid it, please.”
She considers this briefly, keeping her gaze fixed on the lights up ahead. They were closer now, close enough to see that the lights were coming from pit fires and not houses. There were ragged lines of tents reaching either sides of them, spread out like fingers choking the land. New Haven lies beyond this. Over the hill and into the valley.
“Or,” sniggered the other, “you can come with us. We’ll look out for you real good like.”
Sasha flexes her shoulders, opens her long knee length coat from and reveals the knives and pistols slung across her belt. “Reckon I’ll be fine,” she says. At this the men fall silent and fall back a few steps. Satisfied, she quickens her own pace and soon she is alone on the path to New Haven.
#
It’s dark when she reaches New Haven and the town is lit up like the day. She notes its similarities to the other towns she’d been through, the almost identical appearance to the towns in those historical films called westerns. There is even a saloon a little ways down the street complete with swinging doors and a neon sign. She’s never understood this, that fascination with things dead and gone, probably never will. Why bother travelling from one planet to another if you are just going to remake the previous one?
She stops outside the saloon and looks through the yellow tinted windows at the crowd inside. There are more men than women but that’s alright. Making her way to the bar, people turn from their drinks to look up at her. She does not look back at them. She swings her legs around a stool and places her palms flat down on the chipped wood surface of the bar. The barkeep, a man of indeterminate age, looks at her for a minute, then asks. “What you having missy?”
“A drink,” she replies. “Whiskey.”
The barkeep does not move to make the drink. “You got money?”
“You got Whiskey?”
“Yup, but I need to see money first.”
“Alright then.” She reaches into her pocket and hands the man five notes. “Should cover it.”
“One Whiskey comin’ right up,” the man replies.
The man pours one from a green bottle all scratched up on one side into a glass equally as scuffed. She downs it in one go and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.
“Another?”
“Another.”
He pours another Whiskey and she drinks it-slowly this time-trying to savour the taste and finding it still tasted of ashes and blood. “You just arrive?”
Sasha nods.
“Where’d y’ come from?”
“East.”
“That so? Whole lot o’ people coming that way these days I reckon.”
“That so?”
“It is.”
Sasha considers this. Behind her someone breaks into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Curiosity wins over simply not caring and she looks back. “Get a lot of them do you?” she motions to table filled with JFKs and Marilyn Monroe’s.
The barkeep makes a disgusted noise in his throat, keeps his tone pleasant. “You bet, but what can you do?”
“Not a lot I suppose.” More proof on mankind’s inability to detach itself from its past, that when they finally perfected cloning they recreated something from their past. Some decades ago there’d been a fetish for things of the world before. Companies with access to cloning machines shat out JFK after JFK and Monroe after Monroe, sold them to whore homes, museums, and anyone with more money than sense. When the trends moved onto other things the world was left with a thousand Monroe’s singing happy birthday to a thousand Kennedy’s.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking; what brings you to New Haven?”
“I’m looking for someone,” she says.
“Oh yeah?” the barkeep raises a bushy brow. “What kind of someone?”
“The dangerous kind.”
