Featured Author / Fiction ~ Fall/Winter 2018
Jennifer Courtney (jl courtney) is the aging mother of three children, two dachshunds, and a cat named Schrödinger. In her spare time, she uses rejection letters to decoupage distressed furniture.
Point A to Point B Trains thundered by, the winds from their passing sulfurous or sweet. Where the scents mingled, the air sang of honeysuckle and hard decisions. Breathing it in, a soul might shift, bare foot stamping the dingy platform, but mouthless, they couldn’t speak. dead stared at the endless tracks, at others like themselves, at the trains. They waited. Now and then, fractures broke the gloom and revealed a brighter world. Some spirits closest to these cringed, but for every soul that leaned away, one hundred pressed forward. Too many dead, not enough space. Trains slowed, scarred doors opened and the dead shuffled on. Off they raced to parts unknown. One unfortunate, caught by the door, ended up shredded. His tatters faded into purgatory’s landscape. Routes were unmarked, and yet the dead climbed aboard. There was nowhere to go but the trains. Ahead, behind, to each side; tracks, trains, and the silent masses. In South Korea’s Pyongtaek station an old woman with no legs hawked satsumas, chilies, and fish shaped bean-paste cakes. She gap-tooth grinned at customers from her braided rug, griddle close to hand. A crack opened. The aging entrepreneur became a blotch of color on the spirit’s platform. Souls squeezed back, tried to edge around her, and found no space. She raised her tongs to turn a fish on the griddle, brushing one of the dead. The spirit ripped into mist. The others had no tongues to plead his salvation or to wish him safe travels. At the platform in Itaewon, near Seoul, twenty souls were lost to a crack when a soldier on leave strode through. Her boyfriend followed her head through the crowd, juggling coffee and a camera. He took out three more dead with his elbow, before the crack closed and they disappeared back into their own world. The crowd of dead hadn’t thinned. Stateside, near Houston Community College, a child waited with his mother on a bench near the light rail. A train stopped—its doors opening. The boy jumped up and ran toward those disembarking, arms lifted. “Daddy I missed you.” A crack yawned. A dozen spirits, touched as he ran by, shredded into spider-silk. Always, there were others pushing to fill the space. A foot away, one among the crowd watched the crack narrow and the child vanish. Its eyes held no relief. Their stories hung like a question marks, unresolved and meaningless. Mouthless, not one complained as rain dripped from the rusty gutters. Drops turned to deluge, drawing a curtain between the silent dead and the tracks.