"Where's My Ticket, Anthony?"

It wasn’t the piercing shriek of the steam whistle that woke Anthony. It was the icy grip on his shoulder that roused him from a dreamless slumber. The man towering over him was wearing a wool uniform; its tarnished buttons polished to an impeccable shine. His conductor’s cap was pulled low over his brow, casting a shadow which obscured his face. However, even with his features concealed, Anthony could feel the conductor’s eyes upon him.

“Ticket please.”

Anthony sat up, startled by the man’s hold on him.

“Where… where am I?”

“Ticket please.”

The fog of unconsciousness was lifting slow as he scanned his surroundings to see where he was.

‘Cotton upholstery… plaid draw-down curtains? Iron armrests?’

He grimaced as a lose bulb in the ceiling offended him with an obnoxious series of flickers.

‘What in the Sam Hill… am I on board the Silver Streak?’

His eyes peered upwards, and sure enough there, on the conductor’s cap, was the logo for the Pioneer Zephyr. He’d been a passenger of the train’s Burlington route a hand full of times to get from his dreary apartment in downtown Chicago to his secluded cabin out in the Rockies of Denver for a quiet vacation.

“Ticket please,” asked the conductor again, his now firmer grip interrupting Anthony’s thoughts. With a wordless nod, he began to fish around the inside of his tweed-jacket pockets for his ticket. But he was only able to find his favorite Montblanc fountain pen, a gift from… someone. What an odd thing to forget. He knew someone close, very close had given it to him. But who were they? And why couldn’t he remember their name?

Aside from the pen, he had nothing else on him. Which was peculiar… no not peculiar, it was impossible. He never left the house without his everyday essentials.

‘Where’s… my wallet? Or my damn keys? Even the Rolex?’ thought Anthony as he observed his wrist in bewilderment.

“Ticket. Please,” the conductor demanded. His voice… was it changing? It was cold, certainly… but now it had a rather ugly and sinister tone to it.

Anthony opened his mouth to reply, but instead found himself choking on a gasp. The conductor’s stony fingers clenched firmly to his throat. He scratched feverishly at the back of the conductor’s hand. His pathetic attempts to get free were met with a gratuitous smile on the conductor’s face; teeth pearly white. Anthony’s eyes darted about the cabin, desperate to find help.

But the passenger car was empty.

His slender frame squirmed about in the chair, but his grip only tightened. An audible pop from within his throat jostled his inner ear. He was losing consciousness, a vignette of black obscuring his fading vision.

Leaning as far back in his seat as he could, Anthony lifted his aisle-side leg and kicked with all the strength he could muster. He connected successfully, propelling the conductor backwards into the row of chairs in the adjacent aisle. As he was struck, the conductor unleashed a scream in shrill, haunting octaves that rattled Anthony’s bones. But the instant the ear-splitting shriek began, it abruptly ceased; its end punctuated by the brutal crack of the conductor’s neck against the steel frame of the chairs he’d been violently shoved against. His body went limp and fell to the carpeted floor with a muffled thump.

Anthony gasped for air, attempting to process what he'd witnessed. He stared at the lifeless body lying in an unnatural heap. His heart racing, anxiety and confusion consumed his mind. But one thought, amongst the turgid flurry, stood out amongst them. He held the sides of his head; his palms pressed urgently against his temples.

‘That scream... where have I- no, why have I heard it before?’

Crick.

Anthony’s racing thoughts fell silent as his eyes fixed themselves on the body.

A tense pause.

...

His thoughts trickled back in.

‘What was… was that a popping noise? Just the corpse settling into place maybe. But… could’ve swore I heard another-‘

… CraaAAaaAack.

Now he knew he wasn’t imaging it. He could practically hear his heart pounding in his ears as the nauseating, more and more fracturing noises discharging in rapid succession from the conductor’s body.

Crack.

CRACK.

CRACK.

Anthony recoiled in horror as he watched the body… resurrect; limbs twisting about in freakish fashion, all while the sickening sound of sinew and bone gnashing together filled the train car. An arm, bending at an unnatural angle, smashed a flimsy, pale palm on to the empty seat cushion, and started to drag the limp body upwards. A disturbed, trembling voice came from the transforming corpse, asking a question that snapped Anthony out of his terrified trance.

“Where… is my ticket… Anthony.”

Without another moment’s hesitation, he scrambled out of his seat, and made a break for the door to the next car over. But as he took his first two steps, his weak constitution caused both his legs to go limp. The bite of carpet-burn on his knees and elbows singed him through the thick of his clothing as he skidded across the floor.

“Where is my ticket, Anthony?” The conductor asked once more, the end of his question warped by a sadistic, twisted cackle.

“OH, Where is my ticket, Anthony? WheRe is mY TiCkEt AnThONy!? whERE IS MY TICKET ANTHONY!?WhErE iS MY TiCkET ANtHoN Y!? W HeRe IS mY TicKeT A N tHoNy ? WHE Re I S mY TicKet ANthOnY? WherE iS mY TiCkE T AnTHoNy WhErEiSMyTiCkET A N T H O N Y ? WHERe IS M y TicKe t ANthOnY ? WHeReISmYTicKeTANtHoNy WHEReISmYTicKetANthOnY WHeReISMYTicKeTANtHoNy?”

Panic sent his already rapid heartbeat into a frenzy. He tried to stand up again, but his legs refused to cooperate. He punched his thighs with hysterical frustration.

‘Get up! Get UP!’

From behind, the sound of the conductor’s gurgling, deep throated clicks, and labored breathing lurched over his shoulder… Anthony peeked backwards from his knelt position on the floor, a decision he came to instantly regret. His body quivered as he watched the body reorganizing itself into a mangled shape; its new anatomy turning its appendages into crooked L-shapes for which to crawl. That image was enough to finally motivate his legs to work again.

He clambered towards the end of the train car, throwing himself against the door leading to the next car. He grabbed hold of the silver handle and gave it a vigorous shake, when that putrid, distorted voice of the conductor called to him,

“WHERE IS MY TICKET ANTHONY!?”

Anthony fumbled with the icy handle again, jostling it with all his strength…

…. but nothing happened.

“L- Let me out! Somebody let me the hell out of here!” he tried to pleaded in a sore murmur. Hyperventilating, he started throwing his body against the door in a futile attempt to break it down.

The door would not budge, and the rolling stomp of hands and feet were accompanied by a shrieking voice drawing close.

“WHERE’S MY TICKET ANTHONY!?”

Anthony instinctively clutched his chest as pain from his racing heart stabbed him.

And that’s when he felt it.

The pen.

He ripped the Montblanc from his pocket and held it like an icepick. He attacked the corner of the door’s viewing glass, causing the window to rupture into a series of large, jagged fragments. If he jumped now without clearing away some of the knife-like debris, he was going to get seriously injured.

“ANTHONY!”

The creature was upon him, its deformed fingers scratching at the nape of his neck.

Anthony screamed.

He jumped.

Time seemed to slow as he breached the glass. As his fingers gripped tight to the pen, a faint memory about it surfaced.

***

They sat together by a fireplace.

Nothing burned within the kiln, but it still felt scorching.

He held the box in his hands like it was a small, fragile bird.

It was tied up with an emerald, green ribbon.

He undid the bow. Inside was the pen.

She thought it was important to him.

And at first so did he.

But now the pen was a pen.

And now she was the world.

He took the bow and tied up her untamed hair.

“You’re the only present I need.”

She laughed. Called him stupid.

They kissed.

***

He could feel the glass slice his arms into thin strips as leapt through. But he’d prevented his stomach from sustaining deep wounds. He wished he could say the same for his head, which he'd landed on.

But he was quick to recover, rolling on to his knees and crawling away from the door. He knew he’d only bought himself a solitary moment to escape. Reluctantly, he looked over his shoulder to see if the conductor had made it through the web of tangled glass...

“… shit.”

… but there was nothing. No, deformed monstrosity peeling its flesh apart to climb through a craggy, broken window frame.

There wasn't a single sign that the window had ever been broken.

Anthony shot up to his feet and stared in disbelief. He looked down to examine his own arms and hands but found that his clothes and body were intact. He’d felt the burning of lacerations on his flesh as he jumped. Hadn't he?

He turned on his toes to examine the rest of the car. It was just like the one he’d come from; sharing the ordinary cloth-upholstered seats, the plaid pull-down curtains, and shoddy lighting fixtures.

But this room, unlike its counterpart, had several occupants, all facing towards the front of the train.

But these were not ordinary passengers.

Like trails of cigarette smoke, black wisps bled from their shadowy forms. Their bodies flickered as electrical surges disturbed what light did fill the dim car. Dread as thick as fog filled the air, suffocating Anthony. He could feel that pitiful weakness returning in his legs, prompting him to punch both his thighs out of frustration and panic. He prayed that pain would be enough of a motivator to keep his legs from giving out.

It was now, while he had a quiet moment, that he had time to think. ‘None of this can be real… none of this can be real. I have to wake up, I have to fucking wake up!’

Anthony’s eyes scanned the room, looking for any indication that this whole hellish scenario was just a bad dream. But as his eyes scrutinized each passenger, he had an eerie epiphany. Despite not having any distinguishing features, he realized he recognized several of them, just from their silhouettes alone. He took one meticulous step after the other, navigating the aisle with his eyes studying their smoky visages. The first was a tall figure with broad shoulders; the kind you’d see on someone who’d played football all their life.

“… Jack?”

There could be no mistake about it. That was the shadow of his older brother.

Sitting beside him was what Anthony perceived to be a little girl.

“L… Liddy?”

His younger sister, Lidia.

To the row across from the child’s were, presumably, a happy couple; the woman holding the man’s hand.

“Mother? Father?”

He gave himself pause in the middle of the train car. With reverence he reexamined all who were present.

All of his family were here... in a way.

He'd survived all of them due to one unfortunate circumstance after the other. His brother had been murdered in early February, caught up in an affair that cost him his life. Lidia had succumbed to diphtheria ten years prior, when the three of them had been children. And their parents had recently passed away peacefully on the farm back in Denver.

The next and last passenger on the train was…

“Mm… Muh…”

He was stuck on this one, but her name was right on the edge of his tongue. From the silhouette, he gathered she had long, straight hair, usually tied back with a…

… a ribbon of some kind.

As he thought about her more intently, visions began to fill his mind’s eye.

He saw a few of the woman’s stray locks get caught in the sunlight, her transient hair becoming blonde instead of mahogany. And he remembered that the ribbon that tied her hair back was as green as her eyes. Her eyes… they were inviting and radiant.

He started to imagine filling in the pigments within the void of her shape, hoping that his mental reconstruction would help jog something loose in his foggy memory.

And that’s when he noticed it.

A perfect, nickel-sized hole in the middle of where her forehead would’ve been; a beam of light shone through like the peephole of an apartment door.

He felt a sudden knot form in his throat, and his eyes stung. He reached up to feel his cheek wetted with tears. He stared at the tips of fingers as they glistened from a stray beam from one of the wavering lightbulbs. Who was this woman?

He peered up from his hand to study her again.

But he stumbled backwards into the chairs behind him when he realized the woman’s dark, featureless head, was turned in his direction. Her eyeless face stared at him, the knot in his throat growing worse and his eyes welling up with more tears with each passing second.

“Wh- Who are you?” he choked out, a crushing guilt overwhelming his body with grief.

Moment after moment, she stared in fixed silence. Then, suddenly, the shape trembled, as if recognizing him.

A crooked, pearly-white grin surfaced from the black void of her face.

“Where’s my ticket, Anthony?” she asked through the fractured smirk, her voice crackling like the static of an untuned television.

Anthony wanted to scream, but he couldn’t produce a sound. He closed his eyes and smashed his temples with his palms, his brain frothing with panic.

‘WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!’

He cracked one eye open, hoping with every fiber of his being that he’d discover himself far from this nightmare.

But to the contrary, she, along with the other passengers, were standing above him now; their shadowy forms cascading all around him. Vaporous strands rising from their bodies polluted the air, forming a fog that blotted out the lights.

“Where’s my ticket, Anthony?” They asked in perfect unison.

“I don’t... I don't kn-“

“Where’s my ticket, Anthony?”

“I don't know, okay? I swear to GOD. I. DON’T. FUCKING. KNOW!”

“WHERE’S. MY--“

“-- I DON’T KNOW! I DON’T KNOW I DON’T KNOW I DON’T KNOW!”

His shouts… he knew he was shouting, but physical sensation of it wasn’t in his throat. Was it in his head? Was it his screams? He was crying now; he could feel the tears. But he wasn’t weeping here… and the wailing was elsewhere. Someplace quiet, save for the manic cries from a voice that wasn’t his own.

The shadowy figures emerged from their seats and converged on him, the familiar “loved ones” offering him no warmth at all. They suffocated him in a dark curtain, his body being consumed by the void. He felt the icy fingers of the woman play with his hair, mocking his desire to be comforted as he felt the nothingness pull him apart from the inside.

Suddenly, her caressing hand dug into his skull like a bear-trap and squeezed. It felt like his brain was about to explode.

Crack.

CRACK.

CRACK.

In those final moments, before the world collapsed into the emptiness… Anthony recovered another memory.

***

He thought they were in love.

But, over the line, when Jack spilled it all,

His world came crumbling down from above.

They’d take everything and let Anthony fall.

“Green’s a bad color for Anthony.”

But not for her, not for those eyes.

And certainly not for the prize.

It had always been about the money.

She loved Jack, not him, “the loser.”

All he’d ever done was simply “amuse her.”

“But he’d never know, since this call was secret.”

All that was left was to pack bags and beat it.

In confidence, they thought, was their plan,

But Anthony’s own twisted plot had began.

Jack was to be the first thing corrected.

Then her next when she least expected.

No one believed he, who was meek, could be driven to

M

U

R

D

E

R

Then pack all his bags and sneak off to Denver.

***

It wasn’t the piercing shriek of the steam whistle that woke Anthony. It the icy cold tip of a revolver barrel pressed to his temple that woke him in a dizzied panic. He could feel a burning soreness in his throat, as if he’d been screaming for hours.

“HEY! Hey asshole wake up!”

The steel against the skin of his temple invited him to raise his hands above his shoulders.

“What… what do you want from me?”

“What do you think, dipshit?” another voice asked impatiently.

Without moving in his seat, his eyes flicked over to another man who was standing behind the first, a baseball bat held tight in his white-knuckled fists.

“Empty your pockets, and no funny stuff,” the mugger with the gun demanded, holding out a burlap sack for Anthony to place his valuables in.

“I don’t have anything of value! Please, I woke up on this train with nothing--“

Whack.

The man crushed the top of his head with the butt of the pistol. He could feel a steady flow of something viscous pouring down over his left eye.

“You’re either a terrible liar, or you’re just stupid.”

“I swear to you two gentlemen I’m not-“

The man pushed the pistol’s barrel deep into his neck.

“If you don’t give me your god damn wallet and Rolex in five seconds, you die, shit-heel.”

Wait, Rolex?

Anthony’s eyes flicked over to his wrist. There it was, his father’s Rolex. And there was a heaviness in his suit pockets. His wallet maybe?

“What the hell…” Anthony muttered.

“One… two…”

“Yes! Yes alright!” he shouted over the mugger’s countdown. He was quick to start turning out his pockets, slipping off his watch, then digging into his coat pocket for the wallet.

Only… there was no wallet to be found.

Instead, he’d produce a…

“GUN! FUCK CHARLIE HE’S GOT A GOD DAMN GUN!” The first mugger shouted as he recoiled backwards.

Anthony held it in his hand like a small, fragile bird. The nickel-plated, pearl-gripped pocket pistol felt... heavy for its size; the weight of the thing more than just the sum of the steel used in its construction.

He looked up at the panicking muggers, now arguing amongst themselves.

“SHOOT HIM!”

“I DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE ANY BULLETS IN THIS FUCKIN’ THING!”

“WELL, DO SOMETHING!”

Before thinking at all, Anthony slipped his finger over the trigger of his pistol and squeezed.

The first and last bullet fired lodged itself into the ceiling. Before he’d get a chance to reposition for a more accurate shot, the mugger with the baseball bat brought it down on his head with a vicious crack.

Crack.

CRACK.

CRACK.

Anthony felt something rupture behind his eyes, but by the third swing of the bat, all had gone dark.

The last thing he'd see was a crooked, pearly smile on the face of the man wielding the bat.

***

Her scream was piercing, but abrupt.

Now it was silent as a mortuary.

A summer breeze invited gossamer curtains on the nearby balcony to dance.

The sun was a spotlight for the appalling scene.

In his hand was something cold and burdensome.

Before him was a woman, lying face down over a suitcase halfway packed.

Strands of her hair floated in the zephyr; turning gold as the sun touched them.

He resisted an urge to vomit, his hands sweating and cold.

His dagger eyes stabbed the dead woman deep.

His blood began to boil beneath the heat of the spotlight.

He answered a question.

“You won’t be needing one.”

He took a breath…

… and screamed.

***

Anthony was startled awake by the piercing shriek of the train whistle. He sat up in his cotton-upholstered chair rubbed at his crusted eyes and looked about the car in a haze.

Empty.

The lights flickered, and he winced at the fleeting glow of the bulbs. He wondered if they were any closer to Denver. He checked his wrist for the time.

No watch.

Trepidation consumed him and his heart sank. His hand went for his jacket coat pocket to look for a wallet.

No wallet.

He was hyperventilating; eyes darting about the train car.

With no one in sight, he slid from his seat on the aisle to the seat nearest the window. He drew up the plaid curtain and looked outside.

He couldn’t believe his eyes.

Empty.

No rolling hills or long stretches of fertile land.

It was just the train, it's tracks... and an infinite expanse.

The tracks continued forward in perpetuity, meaning this train wasn’t headed to Denver.

It had no destination.

Suddenly, he felt an icy grip on his shoulder.

“Ticket, please.”

***

[[Thank you so much for reading my first story ever published to Vocal! I don't have a lot of writing experience (I'm sure it shows), and I needed a lot of help from some of my closest friends to tell this story. A big thank you and shout out to them! Couldn't have done it without you guys!]]