Chapter 1: Hell is a Train

Hell is a train, but I don’t think anyone knows it. Hell, I didn’t know until I arrived.

I suppose if I had thought about it I wouldn’t have been surprised. I was never a very good person, but no one ever admits how bad they really are. But, whatever, I was there.

The damn thing was so big. The cars stretched on for miles in both directions. I remember being confused. What was going on?

The ticket collector stepped out of the nearest car, sort of folding out carefully.

He was a tall demon, at least ten feet plus horns. He had a shock of white hair, a wide, craggy mouth, and large yellow eyes. He was dressed in a pressed navy blue ticket collector uniform. “Ticket, please,” he said in a rumbling baritone wrapped with nightshade.

“Erm,” I said, patting down my pockets.

The demon rolled his eyes. “Ticket,” he repeated firmly, and then pointed at his forked tongue.

Confused, but obedient, I reached into my mouth. My fingers brushed something foreign. I pulled out a thin wafer of gold stamped with my name and birthday. Self-conscious, I wiped it on my pants and handed it to the demon. He inspected it for a few moments.

“Very well,” he said. “Car 858. This way.”

We started walking. Rather, he walked and I jogged to keep up. We passed the cars, all non-descript, some appearing as freight, some as passenger. The numbers jumped randomly.

“Here we are,” the collector said. 858 was a freight car with peeling red paint and a smell vaguely reminiscent of old blood or perhaps rust. He threw open the door. It was dark and unfathomably deep. I looked in as a lamb into a lion’s mouth. “Go on.”

I stepped up, tripped, and fell in. The door slammed behind me. I fell. It was dark. My senses flailed for anything to hold on to, anything to give me some indication as to which way was up.

Then I didn’t even feel like I was falling anymore. I didn’t feel…anything. There was no temperature, no air, no light, no feeling.

Absolutely nothing.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I touched my face. Nothing…I screamed but there was only a deafening silence.

It felt like years that I hung there, unable to move, to breathe, to anything.

I began to forget…to lose all thought.

All at once sensation in my eyes. At first it just burned, but then I remembered where I had felt it before: I was seeing.

Far away, something glowed, soft and green. I know it sounds absurd, but it was an exit sign. I scrambled for it. I don’t know exactly how. Soon, I had reached the sign. I held on like crazy, clawing away at the surrounding space. At last, my right hand struck a solid surface. A wall? A door? An object? I didn’t care what it was. I ran my hands over the smooth surface. What was this? A bump? A knob! I felt with my other hand and found a crack. It was a door!

I pulled with all my might and it swung open. Light and air rushed in. I was blind, freezing, deaf, but I didn’t care. I pulled myself halfway out of the opening. We were zooming along at several hundred miles an hour, coasting easily over mountains and oceans alike.

I took a deep breath. The world had never looked so beautiful. I pulled myself up further. My body was blasted by the clean, fresh air. It was cold and crisp. I felt alive. We were coasting into a city, slowing down. I twisted my legs free and stood on top of the train. The sun beat down with a friendly grin, as if to say, “Hey, there, November. How’s it going, buddy?”

I couldn’t help but feel good.

Abruptly, a thousand knives of fire and agony sliced through me and I felt like I was flying through the air. I felt stretched, twisted, turned. I could no longer see. I choked on dust and grime and blood and sweat. I was slammed, beaten and bloody, screaming my head off, flying through the void with no sound and no light.

And suddenly I was on my back on a freezing cold lab table surrounded by candles and incense burners with seven voodoo priests (as evidenced by the shrunken heads around their necks and the George-Clintonesque hairdos, complete with bones) in pin-striped power-suits glowering over me.

My head throbbed plaintively; I tried for words but only managed a pathetic mewl. Tears blurred my vision and I tried to move, but foundered. My head was heavy. My tongue felt like a lead weight in my mouth.

The man directly over my head laughed in a forbidding way, showing all of his slimy yellowy teeth. “Hell is a train,” he said to his compatriots in a thunderous tone. They all nodded approvingly over me. “And, like any train, it can be derailed.”