It's moving across the bridge so slowly, the train. It might be the slowest train in the world. Yet, somehow, she can't move at all. Can't move to save her life. The train may be slow, but her body is frozen in time. Caught. The air around her is squishy, like a marshmallow.
"Do I even like marshmallows?"
She watches as it silently gains the bank and swings its head towards her, like a giant snake. Ouroboros, she thinks. The train that eats its own ass.
If you eat yourself, do you disappear or double in size?
For a while, it doesn't seem to move at all, aside from lazily gathering its tail, which disappears from view behind the head. But then all at once it crosses some kind of boundary and the terrifying clang of its iron wheels hits her like a wave, and she begins to fight.
Out of the boot.
Obvious, right? Except it's a no go. The rail caught her just above the ankle, and tight. She tries to wiggle and pull, but it hurts like a motherfucker. With or without the shoe, up is a no go. The only other way is back towards the turnout, which would have been easy, if her foot wasn't sitting in the gap between the ties, not to mention a huge nut and bolt thing where the whole switch box and pull rod assembly is attached to the rail.
It's an epic rusty clusterfuck, basically.
Still, there is nothing else to do, so she pulls. She pulls on it with her entire weight, laying herself out almost horizontally, backwards and sideways, grasping at the ties and the gravel, straining, growling like a wild beast, as the train gets close enough for the dumbass engineer to see her on the rails and hit the brakes. For something that seemed to be moving so slowly, it sure takes an effort to stop. Wasted effort, since despite its screeching and sparking up all hell, it clearly won't stop in time. The rails begin to vibrate, a low hum rising in the air all around her. It sounds almost… grand.
She pulls harder, and thinks she can maybe feel the tiniest bit of movement, tiniest hint of something giving, and she pushes back to the starting point and tries again, and there it is again, the slack, but it stops seemingly in the same place as last time, just a tease then, while the train is gaining, its cow catcher as rusty as the bridge.
Her last thoughts are about sawing her foot off with her knife, and a lament that a push from Steph would probably be enough to free her, but there's no time to saw through the bone, and it would never work anyway, and the fucking gun is useless, except to maybe blow her brains out, and why the fuck did she decide to walk alone up these motherfucking tracks. No Max to rewind and save her. No Steph to give her a push or a pull. The train is almost slow enough to be able to stop in time. Almost. Maybe the train will give her a push. Maybe it's slow enough now to punch her out of the points, mess her up a bit maybe, but maybe not kill her.
Fuck, she thinks, pulling harder, as the noise fills her membranes and her teeth and the back walls of her eyes.
I'm not gonna die here.
I'm not gonna die.
She closes her eyes and pulls.
Please.
"Hey, dickhead!"
She opens her eyes and there's Rachel, all leather and black mascara and hair in some kind of a mullet-pony tail that looks completely punk rock and badass. The shout carries magically over Firewalk totally thrashing the shit out of the place, causing the dickhead in question to loosen the grip on her just enough for her to smash her beer bottle into his face. The dickhead's sidekick backhands her across the face, but it's fine, because that frees her from the grasp and sends her stumbling towards Rachel…
…who is sitting in the booth at the Two Whales. She's looking out to sea and across it to the lighthouse, and the sun is on her face, but her face is sad, worried. Feeling Chloe's gaze she turns and grins, the worry gone like it was never there, her grin becoming more playful and conspiratorial when Chloe just stares and says nothing for half a minute.
"See anything you like?"
"Uh… is this seat taken?"
"Well… I'm kinda waiting for my girlfriend, but… that blue hair is just too hot. Go ahead."
"Wow," Chloe says, "You're easy."
"You bitch!" Rachel throws a packet of syrup at her, as they both laugh and Chloe plops down…
…Behind the wheel of her truck. It's parked by the side of the road, in the middle of the skeletal landscape of burned trees. She looks at the passenger seat, which is empty, except for a dark spot on the back of the seat that grows larger and darker as she looks, but then she blinks and it's gone.
She climbs out of the cabin and stands looking at the tree carcasses, catching her breath.
"All this destruction," she says. "All because Rachel got mad at her dad, who's been lying to her all her life. And he's still lying."
"Being a dad is tough."
She turns around and there, behind her, is Rachel.
"Rach, did you ever… lie to me about something big? I mean something that would hurt me to know?"
"What do you think?"
"Everybody lies."
"Would you love me less?"
She turns around and she's on the cliff by the lighthouse. It's the goldenest hour you ever saw. There's about a million gulls hovering above the waves. Rachel is standing by the bench with her back to her. She's wearing a black dress and looking out to sea. Her hair is flowing on the wind. Her hands are clenched into fists.
"Rachel? Rachel!"
She calls to her and runs to her, but Rachel doesn't seem to hear, and when Chloe tries to hug her from behind, she falls right through her and off the cliff, plummeting towards the jagged rocks below.
SPLASH.
"Oh my god! My hair!" Rachel screams in mock horror.
"It's OK. A little chlorine is good for your beauty queen locks."
Her own locks are soaked, and not yet blue, though they look sort of teal in the fluorescent light of the pool underwater lamps. It's around 1 o'clock in the morning, and the twilit school pool belongs to the two of them. It was totally worth the risk stealing the step-douche's key. Rachel was right. Again.
"How can someone so skinny create a splash that enormous?" Rachel says, suddenly right behind her, her hands slithering around Chloe under water.
"I'm dense," Chloe replies, spinning around to face her.
"No argument there…" Rachel's voice goes quiet. Her wet face gets closer…
Rachel pushes her away. Pushes herself away. They're in a large room with a desk, a bookshelf taking up the entire left wall. The wall behind Rachel is plastered with framed diplomas and certificates. Chloe knows this room. It's James Amber's office.
"I'm so sick of you not seeing who he really is," she shouts. "When will you realize what he's doing to you?"
"Chloe, take a step back."
"No! You need to listen to me. What has your relationship with him gotten you?"
"You… You don't know what you're talking about."
"First night you hang out, what happens?"
Rachel rolls her eyes and tries to walk past her, but she pushes her back, hard.
"Why did you make me do that? Can't you just listen to me?"
Rachel catches on fire.
A notebook page filled with handwritten verses catches on fire.
"But the dark gods laugh" is the only thing she manages to read before it's ash.
Was that laughter?
"Hey," Rachel says, "chances are, pretty soon this entire town will be burnt to a smoldering pile of ashes. So, you know, things are really looking up for us."
They are in the truck in the junkyard. The black cloud of smoke is rising from behind the hilltops to the right. Rachel is in the driver's seat.
"From what I tasted of desire," Chloe mumbles, "I hold with those who favor fire… Wait…"
"Do you think there is a point when you were acting so much you don't even have your own personality anymore? You're just whatever you think other people want you to be?"
Chloe's hands are grasping the steering wheel. Rachel is in the passenger seat now.
"Huh? Uh… I think you have a personality."
"I wasn't talking about me."
It's dark and quiet and, like, really warm. They are walking up an empty street. The streetlights flicker from all the insects knocking their heads against the light bulbs. Rachel's hand is in hers, and her heart feels too big for her chest, but at the same time she's aware of something else happening. It's not exactly wrong, just something hidden. Something happening behind things. Like she was a million miles away a second ago.
White flakes begin to fall from the sky.
"What is this stuff?" she asks, remembering snow falling from the sky suddenly, in the middle of a sunny day. When was that? Lighthouse? …Max? A tiny house covered in snow? Except the stuff falling on them now is not snow.
"It's obviously a sign!" Rachel exclaims.
"Rachel?"
She can't quite believe it. Rachel Amber, the princess of Blackwell, dressed for mosh pit, has just saved her throat from being sliced with a broken bottle by a skeevy asshole in the attic of an abandoned mill during a DIY Firewalk concert. Like, it's way beyond strange. It makes no sense. But there's no time to figure it out, because the skeevy assholes have recovered and are coming towards them with murderous looks.
Staring into her eyes so deep, it makes Chloe feel like falling, Rachel shouts, "Run!"
So she runs.
Down the stairs and down the embankment, skidding to a stop in front of some reeds, falling on her ass so that she doesn't fall into the river. The world thunders around her and for a moment she thinks the earth itself has exploded into pieces.
But then she remembers and spins around and it's just the train, its spray-painted cars passing by slowly, but also slowly picking up speed.
What did that graffiti say? Too close and fast to make it out. Life is… something.