Plan of Action (278 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Stagger Lee (View user info) at 2006-11-21 06:36:02 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
By the time the interstate train arrived, my nerves were shot. It was only about five minutes late, but that was more than enough time to run over every possibility for the plan to go wrong. I tried to tell myself that my sweating palms were a product of the humidity; that hands were shaking in anticipation rather than fear. Self-deception isn't the most productive endeavour in the world.
The train rolled on in, late afternoon sun gleaming off the glass and chrome of its surface. I hoisted my backpack, telling myself that all my worries were for nothing. It was the simplest of plans, utterly laughable. Board the train. Locate your seat. Poison the drink of the man next to you. Disembark at your stop and leave nothing behind. Easy, right?
There were only a few other passengers on the platform. The town was too small to warrant much traffic. I took a last glance around and boarded the train. Inside, the train seemed insulated from the warm sunlight, gloomy and divorced from the world outside.
For the most part, you'll find that people are quiet on trains like these. They'll murmur quietly amongst themselves, they listen to headphones, they read, do crosswords, whatever. Some just stare at the landscape; the endless fields unrolling beside the tracks, the cattle, the sheep, ponds, trees, fences, and the odd golf course. The result of this is that I was paid very little attention as I boarded. Excellent; the less attention, the better. A few people raised their heads briefly and gave me disinterested glances. Nobody would remember me.
My ticket was booked under a false name, and I was deliberately sat next to my target. All of this had been arranged by my contact, for an outrageous sum. The money was a mere detail to me. I hadn't been able to afford it straight away, as I pull down a meagre salary, but I had scrimped and saved. Then, for a final fee, he had provided me with my means; the small sachet of poison that felt as though it would burn through my front pocket at any moment.
There he was, my target. That rat fucking bastard. I recognised him from the photos: a man in his late middle age, prematurely grey hair now running wildly towards total whiteout. He was a handsome devil, I'll give him that, one of those lucky pricks whose lines and creases only serve to increase the sense of maturity and stature. He was wearing a grey suit. From what little I knew of that sort of thing, it was expensive. He was one of the staring crowd; he had no book or portable music device, nothing to distract him from the journey but the landscape and his thoughts.
I removed a battered paperback from my backpack, and placed my backpack on the overhead shelf. He glanced up at me, smiled a quick, small smile and then turned his attention back to the scene outside. The train began to move, the platform rolling away behind us. I sat beside him, my heart hammering away in my chest, as the last waving family vanished from sight.
I opened my book. The words blurred together, meaningless, devoid of context. I had no chance of concentrating on the page with the object of my hatred seated calmly next to me.
When I was six years old, my mother went on a business trip north. She was supposed to be back after the weekend. She never came back at all. After she was gone, my dad did his best, but after awhile things got to him down the plant and then he only ever took time out from his drinking to hit me. You learn a lot about people if you live in poverty with them, let me tell you.
Turns out my mother met someone. She never came back because she found another man; ditched me with my father, who turned out to be the kind of man who can't stay the course without letting his anger out occasionally.
"I love the country."
I looked up from the book and to my left. He had spoken. My target. Just opened his mouth and spoke to me, as though he had every right to engage me in conversation, as though I wasn't here to deliver his just reward.
He wasn't looking at me, just staring out his window as the hills sped past.
"Look at that. No pressure out there. Nothing but sky above and horizon ahead."
I forced myself to relax, pushing the tension out of my vocal chords. "I guess," was all I managed, my voice cracking and straining. I swallowed, cleared my throat. "Yeah, I suppose."
He looked at me, and a wry smile lifted one corner of his mouth. I made a concerted effort not to drop my eyes from his friendly gaze, and I just about succeeded. I think I flinched slightly, but he either did not notice, or affected not to.
"Maybe when you get to my age, you'll appreciate what I'm talking about." He chuckled and turned back to the window. "My job carries a lot of pressure, you know. It'd be great to just walk out one day. I keep telling myself, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow." He chuckled again, a hearty, slightly forced sound. There was something forced about the entire speech so far. It seemed as though it was a conversational opener he'd used many times before, so much that he'd got it down pat.
Somehow, in all my plans, all my dreams of how this was to pan out, I didn't think he could talk to me. I didn't want to talk to him, with his expensive suit and economy class seat. A white collar son-of-a-bitch who thought he was "in touch" with the working man.
"Come on," he said. "You're telling me you wouldn't like to just break free and head out one day? Just let loose?"
"Can't...can't say that I have," I told him, managing to keep most of the tension from my voice. I considered that to be a minor miracle.
"Don't you have any dreams?" he asked. "Young lad like you? You don't want to see the world?"
I had dreams; dreams where I had a mother. But I wasn't going to say that to him. He didn't recognise me.
"If I didn't have a wife, I tell you, I'd have flown the coop years ago."
If he didn't have a wife. If he wasn't married to my mother.
"She's something, though," he said, and he chuckled again. I wanted to hate the chuckle, I wanted to hate him, but it possessed some charm in its artificial jocularity. He smiled and continued, "I'll tell you about how we met."
There was nothing I wanted him to tell me, least of all that. I didn't want him talking to me, in his friendly and slightly muddled fashion.
"Are you always this up front with strangers?" I asked.
He laughed then, not his forced chuckle, but an honest laugh. I felt some of my tension ease, some of my animosity fading. Goddamn him, I was warming to him, being swayed by his natural charm. Goddamn him for that.
"Most times, most times," he said. "Can't help myself, really; I love to talk to people." He looked out the window. "Do you not want to hear of my wife?"
I opened my mouth to say no, but I said "Yes." I don't know what drove me. Perhaps I wanted to know. Or maybe, I just didn't want to be rude to an old man, despite my purpose for being there. Yeah, maybe that was it, absurd, to be sure, but human.
The window beyond his face showed the plains, the light in the sky turning red as the sun fell to meet the peaks of the hills. Shadows and red light fell across the lines and hollows of his face.
"I met her at a conference, up north. She was selling something; I can't remember what it was now. She had a trade stand in one of the halls, and I worked for a company who was doing some buying at the show. And that was it. Nothing to it, lad. Talked to her for awhile, went out for dinner that night and never looked back."
He was facing me, but not quite looking me in the eye. Instead, his gaze had drifted slightly above my eyes, at some far-off point in his own past.
"She had some ties to sever back home, you know. Not much. Didn't have a family of her own."
You lying bastard, I thought. Some stepfather you are; you don't even acknowledge my existence. I was fairly certain that they had never had children of their own. How could neither of them wish to claim me?
"Everything was so easy, it all fell into place."
So this was all there was to it? She went north and met a charming, well-dressed man and that was it? That was all it had taken for her to leave us behind; sending my father into a spiral of drunken depression and me into a life of beatings and missed opportunities.
He talked for some time after that, expounding on the joys of travel, and the adventures of his youth. I cannot remember most of it. What I remember is him standing, and climbing past me to go the bathroom. He had a cup of water sitting on his tray. I fumbled the sachet from my pocket, nearly dropping it to the floor. I looked around. Nobody in the carriage was paying me the slightest attention. I tore it open and spilled the tiny amount of white powder into his plastic cup.
It was done. Now there was only waiting. I felt no sense of accomplishment. At least, not yet.
He returned to his seat. The interior lights had come on, and the landscape outside was now invisible. I had stuffed the torn slip of paper into my pocket, and I gave him a lukewarm smile as he settled in his chair.
"So, have you got a girl of your own?" he asked.
I didn't. None would have me long. I had too many "issues," too much baggage to carry around. Sooner or later, it was always see you later, so long, get the fuck outta my house, Joe.
"Sure, sure," I said, "I got a girl. I'm going to meet her when I get off the train." I told myself I was lying to him to establish, to anyone listening, some sort of alibi. I told myself that I wasn't lying to him in order to impress him.
"Ah, that's great," he said. "For all my talk of leaving home, I wouldn't trade her for anything, you know?"
How could I possibly know? I never had a chance to know her. Not like he had.
"All this talk is thirsty work," he proclaimed, and picked up the cup of water and drained it. Just like that; my vengeance, consumed in a heartbeat. My single-minded plan, completed by an offhand comment and a single gulp of water.
He spoke to me some more. About fifteen minutes passed before he first began to have trouble breathing. He attempted clearing his throat. I could have told him not to bother, but I didn't say anything. I just watched him. His eyes began to bulge, and he was clawing at my arm. He would have risen from the seat and run for aid, I could see that, but he didn't have the strength. He wanted me to go to help. I wasn't going to.
Before he could breathe his last, before he could expire in his proletariat, economy class seat, I leaned over and whispered the phrase I had promised myself I would: "You stole my mother, you fuck. You stole my life. Now I've got yours." And then, without precisely meaning to, not even knowing I was going to until I did it, I added, "You should've been my father."
His face was baffled, uncomprehending. He hadn't the faintest idea what I was talking about. He flapped in his seat like a hooked fish. Then he was, finally, still.
I sat, staring at him. Then, the plan took over, and I pushed him backwards until he was resting, in apparent comfort, in his chair. I grabbed the blanket and pulled it up over him. I steeled myself and closed his eyes. Then I shot a quick look around the train; zero interest from anybody, oblivious.
His body began to grow cool beside me. I waited patiently in my chair, waiting for my stop. Thinking about what he'd said. About how she didn't have a family of her own. How he didn't recognise me, or even consider who I might be. And a possibility surfaced in my mind.
What if my mother had wanted out? What if she knew more about my dad than I ever did in those days? Of course she would. And what if she'd taken the opportunity, no matter the cost? If she'd just seized the first exit that presented itself, without thinking of the consequences; without thinking of me?
What if she'd never told him about me or my father?
The man I'd just killed might never have known about me.
If this is the case, then there's only one way to find out. My mother would be the only one who would know. I'd have to ask her, look her up after all this time. One more if; if she was completely responsible for all of this, she might go the same way as her charming lover.
I disembarked from the train at the appointed stop, and I stood on the darkened road outside the station. I wasn't ready to rest just yet, however.
There might be one more stop to make.
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Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:55:22 EDT (#)
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