I sat at my desk but Rebecca Farmer suggested we go get some ice cream . It was unusual because I had never really spent time with her before.
“Sure,” I said and we went down to the lunch hall, but when we got there there was a long line of people with trays.
Read more“We must have hit the lunch time,” I suggested. And instead we returned our desks and talked a little bit. We sat face to face and Becky, as she preferred to be called, propped her feet up on the chair next to mine.
Only we did not have much to say to each other. Until she asked me about my high school.
“I went to St. Pariah’s,” I said, “only it was very difficult for me.” I struggled to find the right words. “Because I was… was slightly darker than the other kids.”
And she looked at me and said, “It can’t have been that bad.”
“No, you got to realize this was in the eighties.”
After our conversation I decided to leave the office and take a ride on the train.
I got on the overland and it clanked out of the station. It headed through unfamiliar stops into the Bangkok suburbs and snaked across the rusted rail tracks of a major railway intersection.
We passed tall buildings either side of the train that I did not recognize.
We passed a big white sign with the train stop written in green lettering. Underneath, it said “Sponsored by the Thai Democratic Party” and I thought it strange that they would sponsor a railway sign.
I was depressed, so I decided to take the train to the end of the line because I could always just take it back again.
And the route map above the window looked like it would return the same way, and wouldn’t fork in another direction, though I couldn’t be sure.
I put on my headphones and called Elaine.
“I just unloaded on a colleague,” I told her.
We tried to talk, but the screeching sound of the wheels against the rails made it difficult to hear her. Then we hit a dead zone and she went silent for a bit.
And when the train hit the end of the line I got out and there was already a train on the opposite platform so I stepped right on and settled into the last cabin by the door.
As it set off, I looked around at the other passengers and they were all locals. I could see a family with babies but though I looked across at the seats the other side they were not there. Instead the family was a green tinted figment mirrored in the glass. They must have been behind me, or on a parallel train passing by.
It made no sense, but just as I thought I had figured out the illusion, and seen where the family was actually sitting, a young woman smartly dressed in a matching pale pink jacket and shorts walked up to me.
I was taking off my headphones at the time. I remember the warped mouth piece, and she got real close. Too close for comfort. She stood directly over me. She grabbed my wrists with both hands, before sliding one hand under to grab something from my inside pocket.
It was an object I had not seen before, half oval, flat and black but smooth and no larger than the woman’s fist. Like a blackened Venus shell, or one of a pair of castanets.
Photo by Bernard Spragg via Flickr