ᴛʜᴇꜱᴇ ꜰʀᴀɪʟ ꜱʜᴀᴅᴏᴡꜱ ᴡᴇ ɪɴʜᴀʙɪᴛ【ＡＮＴＨＯＬＯᦃ

[Gum]

"These old rails never seem to end..." There was a grease stain smudging the ink on the yellowed page, its handwriting was lost like the spirit of those wild old days. He'd already paid his fare with his rough, suffering life. The iron rails at his feet were clean and shining, but the sleepers were dry and cracked. He stared ahead to to see the track lines and rails and lies stretch into the desert; either side he sensed the old friends lost along the way. He dragged a bag of bones in his hand and he strained his neck under a ring of skulls set across his sunken shoulders. "These old rails never seem to end..." Ravens, vultures, and crows twisted overhead, but he wouldn't look at their morbid union; their attendance persisted with haunting inevitability. Even from the distant brim of the world, those birds could smell death's tangling approach. "There is a voice that keeps on calling me." He shuddered under the cold blue sky, yet he was afraid to see the splintered wood cutting his feet. "I am on these rails, where I always seem to be." Memories of life were as hazy as the dust devils on the horizon. That promise was cruel and listless, and it was all his stinging eyes could see. "I must be almost there." He conned himself with the guile of his own whispers. "There is a voice that keeps on calling me." He admitted it aloud again. "I have made it through this far, maybe tomorrow I will reach the end." "These old rails never seem to end..." "My old friend," he begged when he stopped, wishing at the fading faces that visited him for every step he dared to stall. He turned around and the faces were gone again. "Maybe tomorrow." He kept moving on. He was on those rails, they never seemed to end. There were no bends or clouds or towns or trains, not even a hint of rain. He begged the ghosts to stay -- "Join me for a while?" -- but he lived like that, cursed on that melancholy trail. Tomorrow failed, so that narrow world went on to unfold. "I must be almost there," he said, clutching the tattered old page. "It is not tomorrow, so I will keep moving on." For all the desert's heat, he was cold and damp. "These old rails never seem to end..." In dreams, moments mixed with hours and years; the glue of continuity turned liquid in the cold sweat of a life's stalking anxiety. "How long have I really been here?" The question had no answer, for time had no anchor. "I remember a different life..." If he could tie himself to anything, it would be the slow devolution of his memories of that different life. He knew it was getting worse. "These old rails never seem to end..." He stopped at the sound of dogs barking in the distance, he looked around and saw, again, only the faces of his friends. "Friend, the hounds of hell are approaching... help me, please?" As before, the spectres twisted into the nether. Shaking his head in despair, he looked again at the soiled paper. "All these names... they are your names. I am carrying you all with me. Am I so guilty that none can afford me the assistance i require?!" The page disintegrated from his grip. "These old rails never seem to end..." The rails ran into something he had longed for, and in doing so, his mind entirely betrayed its hopeless setting. The imagined timeline of any nightmare could vanish with the flippancy of any faint notion; in spite of all the power they hold over the slumbering mind, dreams and nightmares were nothing but errant thoughts. "..." He pressed his hands on the lip of the station's platform and pulled himself up. "This isn't your stop," cawed the wretched carrion hunters from above. "It is my stop," he insisted, dismissing their poison into the whistling sands. The distance between the tracks and the platform was a good five feet, but his muscles didn't strain and his strength was all there. "Anybody here?" The ticket office was webbed and thick with dust. "When is the next train?" Nobody was there to answer him. A crack of thunder and rain washed out across the desert. The timelessness was gone and things were changing with a pace he hadn't known since his days in the warmth of the Overworld. Oxxad, that gruesome demon--a fairly fond comrade of the withered shaman--spindled a swirling waltz across the concrete. "Gum, so you're finally mine..." The Xangu death god smeared his words through his needle teeth and onto his thin lips. Swollen with the sorrow of so many moments gone awry, Gum's eyes were a secret held in with his bony fingers. Oxxad hissed at Gum. "For all your regret, you have served me well. You've brought thousands of souls to my domain." The shaman pressed the base of his palm to the thick creased leather of his forehead, sighing ruefully. "Paradise awaits, old friend." The demon's triple jointed arm wrapped Gum in an embrace and beckoned him towards the platform's edge. "Don't you see the carriage?" A steam engine had arrived at the platform, and had done so in the manner of dreams: suddenly and impossibly. The train's carriages stretched from one end of the platform to the other. Gum squinted at the chipped paint of the weathered engine, eager to read the plaque bearing the name of the infernal machine. He took in each letter at a time... J. A. C. K. "Jack..." The shaman's sullen frown turned to a scowl. "Is this a joke?" he asked his god and master. "Of course not," Oxxad giggled back. "Don't be sad for him," said the Underworld's dreadful shepherd. "The boy died, and we treated him like a prince here in my domain. And that was for you, Gum. We made him welcome here." "Ah, your bag!" The word's of Oxxad chastised the shaman for trying to board his carriage carrying that bag of bones. "This?" said the shaman, pulling open the bag's drawstring. "That," said the god, flicking his tongue with delight. "Show me its contents," he commanded. Obliging, Gum reached into the bag to pull out the bones. "What?" The shaman was surprised to feel dust between his fingers. He scooped out a handful of the bone dust and pressed it to his hooked nose, inhaling the stuff. "Do you understand now?" As he asked, Oxxad wondered if his underling would ever let go of life. "Take it," the shaman said, passing the sack of memories into Oxxad's spidery grip. "Ah, that's good, that's very goooood!" Oxxad bent down from his looming height to whisper in Gum's ear. "Friend, Gum, inside is paradise..." Oxxad laughed and clicked the handle to carriage, ushering Gum inside.

[Gum]

Droplets rippled in the puddles in front of their childhood home. They were busy-treading children again, in the dream at least. That old steamy abode was falling into a tobacco field. Rural and ramshackle, its structure was capped with the pelting chorus of a summer storm on a rusty tin roof. Without a wrinkle or a worry, a girl spoke. "I want to go outside!" Her whispers fluttered thinly into the dust particles floating around the old house. Mother chided the voice through the tattered net curtains. The threat of her little girl being struck by lightning was too much for the parent. She didn't know though, but she was in love with a ghost. From the long road came the city's pale face, it sulked around the ruined planks of the front porch and its outsider soul was inquisitive to a fault. "I'd rather die here, than live in that awful city." Even though a thunderhead loomed, saturating the black earth, the visitor went on unaffected. He barely reacted, nothing could dampen his fascination for the empty house. "Who's in there?" The boy, peering through the diaphanous window dressing, frowned with fright. Wind, like a wave, rustled through the fragrant crop and reminded the city slicker of those swells, rolling ashore. The girl, shivering with excitement inside, stared right back at him. "Don't look at him, he'll see you!" She, the mother, sighed dejectedly. "Or maybe he won't." She'd remembered she was in love with a ghost. And the child had forgotten. "Of course he can see me!" The daughter, flicking her chin-length hair, turned to the mother and exclaimed with frustration. The mother faded away... "Mother?" The daughter faded away... "Who's there I said!" The stranger faded away... The road was empty. The house was empty. Wind blew across the field. The field was fallow.