#2 Erik Larson – Conducter

Everyone gets their juice from somewhere. Some get it from shootin’ up, others get from dumbin’ down. I know one guy that cranks up watching women step on rats. Now that’s some sick shit.

My juice comes from the trains. Just watching those massive beasts cruise down the rails at seventy miles per hour, gets me so jumped up I could piss lightning and run around the world before you could blink.

But that’s nothing to what it feels like when I’m actually on one of them. When I riding on the tracks, it was like there was nothing else in the world but me and the rails. The entire universe just widowed down to a thin strip of metal running off into the horizon, and I was tagging along for the ride.

And getting the ride for free made it all the sweeter.

I was only a boy when I made my first jump. It was a short ride, just taking the commuters into the city. The transit cop was sleeping off the last night’s boozer, so he barely even grumbled when I hopped over the turnstile. I was off the platform and on the train before he even went back to sleep.

Man, I’d ridden on the rails before, but this was better. When the train reached the end of the line, I hid under seats and rode it back the other way. Kept that up all day, just heading back and forth along the line. Watching all of the other people clamor on and off the rails, and I knew that they were the idiots.

They had money in their pockets and someplace to go home to every night, but I had something better. Freedom. And now that I had a taste, I wasn’t going back.

After the last run, the train pulled into the yard for the night. I crawled out of hiding and snuck around, looking for a train. I wanted a heavy freight, one that could be going anywhere.

In the morning, I was on that train going west, looking for I don’t know what from I don’t know who, but I knew that there was no other way that I could live my life.

Category: 2011, Drama