Lucifer Travels-Book #1 in the suspense, mystery thriller Page 3
Deep in the night, Daniel works his shift just as he does any other day. He has driven the same streetcar since his first day on the job: train C114. It has been thirty years, and it still runs strong, never needing a single repair.
Because he works the night shift, there are rarely any passengers. This affords Daniel the privilege of listening to his radio, something that is forbidden for the day shift conductors.
He prefers not to use earphones, so he turns it loud enough to hear. But not loud enough to disturb the few passengers that do come aboard the streetcar. He listens to recorded sermons of a local priest who is really popular in the community.
Every night, Daniel listens to his sermons, word for word, though he is not a religious man at all. It was the strangest thing; when passengers asked him why he was listening to a priest speak when he is in fact non-religious, Daniel’s only response was, “Because I love his soul.”
That’s his response every time. But the passengers aboard train C114 know Daniel. They ride that train with him every day. For years, it has been the same old faces every night. There’s the happy drunk, who, unbeknownst to many, tells the most fascinating stories. He always sits in the front of the train near Daniel and tells stories of his travels around the world and how he once met the artist formerly known as Prince. He is an interesting fellow. At one point, he claimed to have held the Guinness Book of World Records for most times landing on the moon. When asked how he managed to get to the moon, the drunk pulled out a package of what he called “Mexican horse.” When Daniel asked him how “Mexican horse” got him to the moon, the drunk responded, “Well, I got on the sonofabitch and rode it all the way there.”
As I said, he was a very interesting fellow.
Besides him, there is the single mom. Though Daniel seldom speaks to her, he assumes that’s the only reason why a young woman like her would work the night shift in such a dangerous area. Plus, every time he boards C114, she has this look in her eyes. You know, like when someone just finished crying. All Daniel knows about her is that she has a prosthesis on both the left leg and right arm. He always wanted to ask, just to find out how she lost those limbs.
One of the few times anyone ever heard her spoke was last Memorial Day. Many of the passengers came wearing emblems from wars before there time. Likely the wars of their ancestors. The funny drunk told stories of his grandfather in Patton’s army and his father’s stint in Vietnam. He spoke about how he regretted never serving his father’s country. It was powerful when he said it too because he paused for a single moment, and, in the short second, everyone on the train could see through the funny stories and petty jokes. They saw a man dying, not from sickness, but from Father Time because he has and still is passing by slowly.
“It is the most dreadful of pains to watch life slowly carry on while you’ve done nothing,” said the drunk. He mused about life and the sacrifices that soldiers all too often made and said, “Thank God for the soldiers who serve our country, especially those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice.”
Out of nowhere, the single mom’s eyes popped open and she shouted all the way from the back of the streetcar. “What do you mean by that?”
Her accent wasn’t from this place. There was a deep rasp in her voice and she stressed many vowels that she shouldn’t. She was most likely the daughter of Jamaican immigrants.
All the passengers turned to the back of the streetcar as the drunk replied, “Are you referring to me?”
The single mom slowly got out her seat and calmly walked to the front of the streetcar.
“You can’t stand while we’re moving ma’am,” shouted Daniel.
She bent down, while ignoring Daniel’s orders, and placed her hand on the shoulder of the happy drunk. “What do you mean by that?” she asked for the second time
The drunk face, slack-jawed as he was mystified by her question and the assertions behind it.
“What? You don’t think they made the ultimate sacrifice by dying for this country, the country that you live in?”
The single mom, stern in her certainty, smiled and took a seat right next to the drunk, looked down to the floor of the street car, listening to it tumble. “Those who are dead. They be the lucky ones,” she said.
The drunk made no response. After a brief moment of silence, the woman rang the bell for the conductor to stop. She exited the streetcar.
The other frequent passengers are simply referred to as the “the lovebirds”. Every night, they board and exit at the same stop, at the same time, every day. Every time they are holding hands, staring at one another with a craving that can’t be mimicked by another. It was the way they looked at each other that made their love so majestic. They loved like children. Free from the world’s cynicisms and all of its trappings; and, they touched each other merely by looking, and made love in the same dream they prayed in because God made their bond in his image of what love is supposed to be. That’s why they are the “lovebirds”. They epitomize all that is great about love.
Daniel can’t help but watch them as they carry on aboard C114. They’ve been riding on this streetcar for the last five years and they have never stopped holding hands. Their union is a constant reminder to Daniel of the woman with no face. He often tells the story of this woman he once knew. He describes their relationship as similar to that of the lovebirds. But through the years, he has never mentioned her name. He merely calls her the woman with no face, because her beauty is understood. And somewhere amongst the people, she hides. Till this day, he awaits her return just as he’s done for years. You see, she leaves just as she came. And every time she passes, she touches him in places that he has since kept sacred. So for years, he has tracked her. But she has avoided him. Yet this is no fault of her own; she is who she is. And she is how he always envisioned. So he tells stories of her to whoever will listen. And he watches as everyone basks in awe as he describes her beauty by simply describing her soul.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Lake that Burns with Fire