Meat Wagon

Submission for Surreal Saturdays #5

It was Monday again, the hell-day. November rain was pissing down in ice cold torrents. It clawed from the darkness at the window, striking again and again in rapacious fury. The water seeped into the roof through two dozen or more little cracks in the chassis, dripping on the hundred wretched souls packed into the meat wagon of the morning commute.

I tried to get back to my book, stuck shoulder to shoulder between two phone-talkers. Every word I read was drowned out by the chattering of my fellow commuters. Each syllable was a nail through my brain, bringing me back to the cold, clammy reality of sopping wet winter jackets pressing upon me. The air was thick with the smell of morning breath.

I made the mistake of seeking mercy through one of the windows. The black tombstones of the city flashed by. Hateful names were carved on them in neon. Megacorp Inc. Omni-Bank. Customer Solutions Ltd. The lords of the dead, fed a thousand meat wagons’ worth of lifeblood every single day. And all to produce another pallet of plastic garbage destined for the landfill. Another cup of Piss-Coffee like the one being waved in my face by the corpse in front of me. Another box of noisemakers to terrorize the damned on next week’s hell-day.

The meat wagon came to a sudden halt, spewing the damned on top of each other like so much bile. A shower of rancid coffee splattered into my book and down the collar of my coat. I suffocated under the stinking, sodden bodies that piled on top of me. Clawing my way through the pile, I found my footing just as the noxious machine lurched forward and sent another pile of wretches hurtling onto me.

This time a woman landed on top of me. I almost choked on a mouthful of her damp, caustic hair. She was hideous to look at, a skeleton with plastic wrapping for skin and rat-gray hair. To lie so close to her was like the most unspeakable of acts. It was enough to make me jump out of my skin. I spit her cobweb hair out of my mouth and crawled once more to the surface of the pile of human flesh.

When I stood up I saw the hundred damned faces staring back at me. They chewed, whimpered, growled and spat. Some looked like they were about to weep in the bathroom lighting of the commute. Others smiled rictus grins at their glass-faced toys, the jabbering sound of ticks and tocks escaping from the speakers. Most simply looked dead, a half-life of toil in the crypts of the city disfiguring them into human cockroaches.

Disgust. Disgust. DISGUST.

I couldn’t take it anymore! The grotesquery assailed me from every corner. When the meat wagon opened its doors, I fought like a rabid beast to get off. I trampled the wretches under me, pushed them away, fought them back with the coffee-sodden filth that had once been my favorite book.

But it was all useless!

The lights flickered and the wagon grew longer and longer. Each step I took seemed to keep me further and further away. Snot-yellow eyes judged me from every seat and streams of gibberish flew at me from every rotten-toothed mouth. A thousand beady little eyes bore down on me. Chitinous limbs spun nylon webbing to stop me while chittering mouthpieces threatened to devour me. I pressed on in pure, bestial desperation.

I was almost there, almost out. But just as I reached the door it closed in front of my eyes, sealing me into the infernal tomb. I banged my fists against the glass, but it refused to yield. So I cried and I pleaded. The million insect faces clicked and whirred in mockery at my feeble attempt at escape. My eyes were pale with terror when, in a final act of perverse sadism, I saw them turn their noisemakers on me. Autotuned rap music. I howled like a skinned pig.

Then, beyond the horrid wailing in my ears, rose the feverish beating of a heart. Wild madness ignited within me. I would not die here, not like this, not among these cockroaches and their tombstones! The pathetic desire for human dignity drove me to pull at the emergency door opener. It refused to budge. The brood descended upon me, a thousand hungry proboscides stabbing into my back.

With a surge of strength like the last defiant cry of the living, I pulled the emergency opener straight off its hinges. A crack of howling wind opened in the door before me and I pried it apart with my fingers. They were all pulling at me now, screeching and biting. But the wind bit harder, tearing through them like a cleaver through meat. I felt it tear through me as well, through my clothes and my flesh, searing my nerves with ice-cold pain. Chitin was strewn like knives in the gale when I made my leap of faith into the night.

My clothes were in tatters, hair and skin hanging like bloody ribbons from my bones. But I had no time to stand idly by, for down the highway a murder of cars came hurtling towards me. They threatened to mash into pulp the one who had gotten away, baleful eyes over the steering wheels aiming for me where I stood and shivered.

So I ran. I bobbed and I weaved. I even ducked and dodged, but it was not enough. Just as I threw myself off the highway and onto the sidewalk, one of the killing machines clipped me. I felt the wheels chew through my foot, rubber tongues swirling it around the ankle as they delighted in the pop of the joint.

I could merely whimper from the pain. My mangled foot dragged uselessly behind me as I crawled away from the highway and into the bushes of the nearby park. There I laid down, a rag of a man, hoarse and groaning, with neither life nor madness within me anymore. Beyond the leafless branches I saw a menacing red light exude from one of the surrounding edifices.

Right by the park, towering above everything else in the city, was the lair of the most feared of the lords of the dead. No other place in the city exuded such hunger, such malice. Not even Omni-Bank dared to defy the crypt-master that ruled from that black citadel. When I realized where I was, I wept.

From the slavering jaws of the citadel came a pack of black-clad acolytes. They circled me as I lay curled up and begging for death. Like piranhas they fell on me, tearing away my rags, my bloody meat, even the dust of my bones. When nothing was left for them to gorge on, they shambled away with great reluctance and disappeared back into the black citadel. Behind them they had left a scrawled note written in demon blood.

“Tax underpayment penalty. To be paid in 30 days.”