Things don't always work out how they should
A basement
At the dark and shadowed far end, drums and amplifiers and a guitar on a stand. Follow the wire from the amp.
Follow it across the echoing floor til it gets to a power strip.
On the ground next to the power strip an e-bike battery, plugged into a charger, plugged into the strip. On the charger is a red light indicating it's not fully charged.
And the moment you step close to it
the light turns green.
A purple diesel locomotive
A train car, double decker
It's only got a few people. A woman is sitting with her head tilted back, eyes closed, earbuds in.
She is not asleep. Not yet at least. That she looks asleep is what matters.
She has not yet bought a ticket. She might not need to.
It worked like this: she would get on the train and promptly close her eyes with her earbuds in before the train could play its announcement that all passengers must have their tickets activated. Then, when the conductor walked by, if the conductor walked by at all, she would take a moment to wake up, fumble for her phone, fumble into the app, take her time entering her password and finding her origin and destination from the list. If she was lucky the conductor would say "take your time" and move on to another passenger, and maybe never come back.
The insides of her eyelids go darker and she falls through the back of her skull. She is back in a b&b out of state with her parents who are just getting used to calling her their daughter. The snow blankets outdoors and a man pours orange juice from a glass pitcher.
"TICKETS" (loudly). She snaps back to the train carriage. The conductor is standing over her. "E-ticket, credit, or cash."
Christ these conductors are insistent.
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discodeerdiary) wrote2025-03-18 10:07 pm
