“Is youz tiredz, or wouldz youz likez to do somethingz to pass zhe timez?”
“Nope. We can play a game of backstory. I pick a passenger, and you tell me a story about what led them here. Then we switch. Nope?”
“ŃyōꝑƏ. Youz tellz storyz, so I kan learnz to properly playz zhis gamez.”
“Nope. You have to pick a passenger.”
“Howz aboutz zhat beardz-man sitzingz six seatz aheadz ov us, on oppositez sidez ov zhe aisle? Youz seez himz?”
I use the overhead mirrors and darkly reflective windows to take note of all this character’s visual details to construct a corresponding backstory. I consider his faded black stocking cap, torn and tattered jean-jacket, mud-battered work-boots, and the t-shirt with zombie-figures and wrinkled letters which likely spells-out some horror sim’s title. I also note how his eyes appear so bloodshot and unblinking as he stares lifelessly out the window that his thick, yellowing, and over-long fingernails almost appear as animate as the rest of him…
“Nope. That’s not a man at all which lies before us. Perhaps he used to be, but he ceased to truly be a man even before he died this last week. What we see ahead of us in this train car, is merely the flesh and bone remnants of what had previously been known to almost no one other than himself as Dagon.”
The horror story embellishments in my voice causes a nearby teenager’s ears to inadvertently eavesdrop as my absurd and ominous tale continues.
“This was once a sailor you see, and the hat upon his head had once been the only thing keeping him from freezing to death after being shipwrecked in the eternally frigid winter waters of the north-most seas. The commercial fishing vessel and its 144 souls had capsized in those cold and merciless glacial waters. He’d been the only survivor to make it to any shore, though he’s long lamented the fact that fate had forsaken his life in having spared it in such an insidious and interminable way.”
The teenager tries to help prod my story along.
“Is that why his fingernails is so yellow?”
“His fingers are the least of all his menacing maladies. You see, the only way he survived his castaway kismet was by burning the clothes of all his fellow dead sailors and eating their briny flesh as the ominous ocean had vomited them onto the abominable, austere shores of a black sanded abyss. This dark isle upon which his sorrowful soul had been cast did not belong to any earthly realm. Nope, this tenebrific torment of an island could only exist in a realm of pure lightless oblivion where sinister shadows are cast by the eternally ancient forms of a most demonic darkness. This realm of otherworldly shadows had itself been stranded, forsaken, and forced to scavenge upon the rare remnants of the same most sorrowful souls of shipwrecked sailors.”
My unsolicited audience member interjects another interruptive query.
“So how’d this man ever get off this horrific hellscape-island?”
“You might say that his soul is still there, forever shrouded, shredded, and swallowed by the most sinister and shadowy specters. You see, this miserable man made a deal with that same demonic darkness. His rotting, gangrenous lips had shivered and sworn to whatever gawd might be lurking near him that he’d give anything if this condemned deity would only grant his eyes the chance to set sight on his home shores once more. A most ancient of evil deities who did reside within the darkest depths of this frozen abyss did indeed hear his plea, and this dark demon decided to grant his desperate wish in the worst of ways. This darkness had ripped the soul right out of this battered body you see before us now before slithering its way into the empty place his soul had once resided. Then this demented dark deity dissolved his soulless body into a formless and ethereal shadow so it could be cast back into the blackened abysmal depths of the wintery waters under the cloak of a blackly blanketing winter storm. This dark shadow-spirit slowly drifted unto the promised shores of its corpse’s covenant where it cast itself as a sinister storm-cloud over those unsuspecting sands and excreted this body back from the bowls of an abysmally starless sky.”
Agent Phoe struggles to contain an outburst of absurdist laughter as the teenager’s mouth hangs in ecstatic awe of my preposterous proverb.
“It was only upon being cast onto that shaded shoreline, like a shadow from another realm, that this former man had realized the abominable sin his forsaken soul had committed within that darkness of otherworldly despair. He’d traded his mortal soul for an interminable existence as an empty vessel for this demonic darkness to use as its eternal earthly domain. From that day, everyone he ever loved or reached out to touch would themselves be turned into shadows, and their spirits would be sucked in and devoured by the same demented dark one residing within the empty place where his soul is no more.”
A stewardess passes by with a cart of snacks and drinks. The teenager tries and fails to coax this attendant to supply her with an alcoholic beverage before settling for an off-brand bottle of carbonated, caffeine-rich cola. Agent Phoe and I accept bottles of water and bags of peanuts before the attendant moves along and my sinister saga continues.
“These terrifying tortures made our subject come to wish upon each of his shamed and soulless breaths for a death which would never come to him. So, this last week he resolved to end this haunted hell of a life by setting himself ablaze and jumping off a nameless mountain’s lofty peak. Once he reached the summit of what was to be his final descent unto the end of his darkened days, he doused himself in gasoline.”
I pour a small amount of water onto my head for dramatic effect.
“When he looked down at the snow-covered ground beneath this lofty peak, the distant drop was not seen as the space between him and his end, but as the time between this moment and the start of his shipwrecked sorrows. His eyes gazed down from the height of this abyss, but as he lit his match, stepped over the earthly edge, and awaited the impact of impending doom- the depths below drew him no nearer to his intended ending.”
My fingers hold up a dark colored peanut and drop the salty stand-in to the floor. I pause for a moment to look down on it with an expression of perplexed pity before resuming my paranormal narrative.
“You see, the dark one which this former man had hoped to escape, can only be removed from the body of a spirit which has pledged itself to this bestial bleakness when no celestial shade nor earthly shadow can fall upon its ashen form. Dagon’s corpse had failed to fully absolve itself of this most formidable phantasm as night’s inevitable darkness had chased the setting sun from a surrendering sky, allowing this most sinister of shadows to reclaim its vagrant vessel And now, only a week later, this very vessel has been brought by that eternal and most sinister of shaded specters to appear so bereft before us now. It has carried this forfeited flesh and seated it here before us where it restlessly waits for this train to deliver us all unto the utter depths of darkness, or Denver.”
