All Forums  Tim Reynolds Message Board  Friends Aboard the Space Pod  The whole first part of my story is here now.....

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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Antispam question: How many total fingers does a human have? Answer: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by Jay[/i] [br]Here's my shitty story... It was early summer, when the days where long and the nights short. The clear skies always showed every star in the sky, unless you where in town. There, light pollution prevented your eyes from seeing many stars. In the backyard of my good friend’s house, the light pollution got so bad in the summer that seeing the big dipper was rare. That summer I had spent most of my free time sleeping and listening to music. Once and a while, and this is once or twice a week, I would ride in the passenger seat of my parent’s cars (albeit one at a time) to David’s house. The entire ride there would be in awkward silence, broken only by a horrible song quietly playing on the radio. I’d be dressed for school, with my black guitar in my black guitar case; ready to blare those old folk tunes I loved so much. I never really got to play it, though, because David didn’t like it. He had been trying (not as hard as he could have been trying) to play bass for a while, but he didn’t trust me in that you have to play with people and listen to music to play good. Some folks think that skills just fall in your lap, I guess. I used to think that, but after a while, I realized that I had to at least try to get what I wanted. I was never a worker, but I tried. Most of the time, whatever I wanted would come easily. It was natural sometimes. After finding my way down David’s driveway, avoiding any contact with anyone but him, we would sit and talk for a while, just before going on a walk. Music would be playing in the background while David babbled on about what happened to him, interrupting me whenever I brought one of my many grievances up. These conversations usually consisted of this, first goes David, then I: “ How’s it going champ?” “ Good, I guess.” (I’d have my guitar in my hands for approximately three seconds before this:) “ Can you put your guitar away for now, I wanna talk.” “ But you told me to bring it.” “ I know, but it’s antisocial.” “How?” “ Cause you aren’t talking to me.” “ Yes I am.” “ But you don’t listen to me when you play that.” “ Yes I do it’s-“ “ OH! Did I tell you what happened on Tuesday?” “ You interrupted me. You aren’t listening, chum!” “ Sorry. Well, anyway, John and Phil went to get ice cream, and that got in this fight, and then, like, they threw their ice cream at Jim! He got so pissed, and it started running down his shirt! God that must have sucked! C’mon, put the guitar down, you didn’t even hear my story!” “ Yes I did. I have a similar one, it happen on Tuesday, too. We were-“ “ And then Jim got so mad that he started to turn all red! It was so funny, mostly because it was Jim, you know. God that must-“ “ You int-“ ‘ Stop interrupting! You aren’t even listening!” “ I am I’m just trying to show y-“ “ Want to go on a walk?” “ Sure.” And so, off we would go. It was always well past curfew (At least with the black and white police force we had, thirty seconds after curfew is still after curfew, you know!) when we left. It just wasn’t fun to go past the back yard before then. We would find a spot to sit, lighting David’s stolen cigarettes. This is when the true conversations would start. No interruptions, just taking about whatever was on our minds. Philosophy wasn’t unheard of with us, we often times traveled well into the depths of intellectual thought, procuring various theories and thoughts. This would continue for approximately forty-five minutes, when, after this time and depending on the weather, we would retire to the darkness of his basement, or to a bench behind the barn. Yes, the “barn” was really a garage, but who uses them for cars anymore? This garage was an entire building altogether, so it is only fair to call it a barn. Here we would sit for another two hours, talking, until we decided to do something else. At one time, we decided to go to the high school track, and sit in the woods in our special spot. It was there, nearly thirty years ago, that I could honestly say that I was frightened beyond belief. The human body reacts to fear. I am stated the obvious when I say that, but it is necessary to understand that fear takes over. One person cannot know fear at least once in his or her lifetime. I am talking about real fear, not movie-scared. Movie-scared is like when you are about to crash on your bike. Real fear is when you are riding in a car and the brakes fail while going down a hill on a congested highway. Then, above this, is the type of fear where you are frightened instantly, and then scared for the rest of your life afterwards. After our usual happenings, David and I would trudge to wherever we wanted to go. This was usually around two in the morning. This particular morning found us traveling to the high school running track. We would go to the rear end of the loop, and back into the woods. A few cylinders of rolled chain-link fence stood right above our place, on top of a dangerous hill. The reason I say the hill was dangerous was that it dropped suddenly, and tons of scrap cement blocks stood waiting for someone to fall on them. At the bottom of this hill stood three cement blocks, each measuring about six feet by eight, and at least five feet tall, making them perfect to sit on. A pipe stuck out of one, creating a step-up for the vertically challenged. About three hundred feet of dense woods gave way to the railroad tracks to the north of the spot. These tracks were used about three times a week, always early in the morning. On many nights, David and I would arrive just in time to hear the train rocketing down the steel track at fifty miles an hour, making more noise than you can imagine. We never really went to the tracks, unless it was daylight, because the woods were so dense you couldn’t even walk five feet without tripping. “ How’s your mom?” David asked, with a look of serious concern on his freckled face. “ She’s good, I guess. The doctor told my dad that it’s some kind of rare virus. He said that she must’ve got it in the woods somewhere, from a bug-bite or something. He also said that she’d be fine if she gets enough rest, and eats enough. I hope so, I’m sick of seeing her sick like that.” “ I hope she gets better, too.” David looked up at the sky, then down at the ground. “ Look at the stars tonight. You can see almost every one!” He said this with a big grin. It was true. Back here, the light pollution was very moderate. Orion, the hunter, was long gone by now. I could see the Big Dipper of to the northwest, and that meant I could see Cassiopeia, too. The constellations still amaze me, even now, through all I’ve seen and heard. They still make me realize that we are so tiny, and so insignificant when you look at the universe as a whole. The train wasn’t due for another few hours, we guessed. It was funny sometimes; the train would come early in the afternoon or early in the morning. Usually, we were still outside when it flew by. The lights shone through the brush and onto our faces, sending shadows everywhere. As we approached the place, I was suddenly chilled to the bone. It made no sense to be cold on a sultry summer morning like this one. I dismissed the feeling as just an after-affect of the “herbs” we consumed earlier that night. David wasn’t cold, I could tell. He was muttering a song under his breath, looking up at the stars, and lighting a cigarette. He always said he couldn’t smoke when he was cold. He was in short sleeves, which meant he was trying to show off his muscles. He did this often. It’s another flaw he had. He’s a bloody show-off. Many people don’t agree with me when I say that, but those people don’t know David as well as I do. He was my best friend, and for years he was always the same. I, myself, am too modest to be cocky. I could save the world from aliens with only a spoon, and then when someone congratulated me, just say something like, “ Oh, anyone could’ve done it!” So, as we sat down, cigarettes destroying our lungs, the woods fell eerily silent. This usually happened when a train was near, for no apparent reason. The whistle was still a long way off, probably four miles or more, but we still braced ourselves. If you’ve never been outside, at night, when a train passes within fifty feet of you, it’s a sight to behold. It’s like standing next to a jet about to take off. Sure, people say that trains are like that if you are first in line at a track crossing, but being outside, ten feet form a train moving at fifty miles an hour is incomparable to anything else. It is by far one of the most exhilarating feelings. About two minutes later, we saw the headlight. It was a big train, for sure. It was probably hauling grain from Washborne, about twelve miles west of us. It was a Dash9 locomotive, with a consist of at least fifty. I could tell from the sound. As it crossed the road, I could hear the whistle loud and clear. It was a good twenty seconds away still, and it was slowing down some. This was not uncommon, as all train traveling through this area had to slow to 25 while going into town. Slowing a train that long was a slow process. We assumed our normal positions as the Dash9 flew past us. It had another identical Dash9 behind it. The ground shook as the snake like creature past us, shaking the gravel loose. The towering grain cars blocked whatever light was coming from town from my eyes. I found that a bit odd, that grain cars (which are normally relatively short and long), blocked the light form my eyes. As a car past, I read it as quickly as I could, and found that the cars were from Pennsylvania. That was even more out of the ordinary. They did say, “ Carson Grain, Carson PA” on the side, but why would an interstate train use a small local line when it could travel as fast as it could on the main line south of Cleveland? I shrugged it off and figured that it was stupid to find this out of the ordinary, as I did see a train pulling only ostriches once on this same line. That was a sight to see More is still to come...It'll get better I hope...the story is loosely based on events taht have happend to me, and stories that I've heard. Jay " It's a scavenger hunt in the best of times, a one armed man with a box of dimes. Throw the stick and let the bulldog roll." KJP [/quote]   Check here to include your profile signature.