The Noxious Neighbors Part 7
The whole world is blinding light and deafening rumble and PB is watching his own death approach. The squealing of the breaks makes his blood run cold and he looks away, not willing to watch the impact of the train head on. He spots the crevice under the platform when he turns his head. Without thinking he has launched himself over the tracks and into the tight space between the platform foundation and the tracks.
The train is rushing by and PB can’t breathe because of the dust and fear in his lungs. His whole body is shoved up against the dirty cement and the force of the passing train tears at his back. He’s relieved that death is relatively painless and then realizes he has dodged the train and is very much alive. The rumbling and the squealing die down. The train has come to a complete stop, trapping PB between the tracks and the platform.
He hears a few cries, a woman desperately screaming, and then every now and then the murmuring of a voice and footfalls above him on the platform. He lies there for twenty minutes until the train slowly eases down the track passed where his is pinned. A rescue worker drops down along the track and spots PB lying stiff and dust covered. The paramedic hollers up to the platform.
PB is arrested by BART police and then handed over to city cops who drive him to the local station. He is held in isolation for three hours until an on-call psychoanalyst makes it over to give him an evaluation. They meet in a blank white room on the third floor and the analyist introduces himself as Dr. Fischer. Dr. Fischer looks over his reading glasses at his subject and speaks from a dry mouth surrounded by a salt and pepper beard.
“Do you ever feel depressed Mr. James? Do you ever feel like life is just not worth living?”
“No.”
PB tries to take the edge off his tone but he’s very tired and hungry and his patience is used up.
“Do you ever have thoughts of ending your life? Maybe something comes up-“
“Look, I didn’t try to kill myself. It’s just like I told the cops: there was a man with a gun on the platform, Lord Zaldig, and he-“
“Lord Zaldig?”
“Yes, and he was coming at me with a gun. So I was stepping back-“
“When did you first see Lord Zaldig Mr. James?”
“Up in the hills. He was leading some people in some sort of ritual that involved killing a goat and then they were going to kill a girl. I filed a whole report on it. You can ask the cops.”
“And this is the first time you ever saw Lord Zaldig?”
“Yes.”
“The police said the person at the service booth never saw anyone like who you describe.”
“So what? Those people are morons. They’re sitting there yakking on their cell phones when old ladies are getting robbed by teenagers.”
“Has Lord Zaldig appeared to you before? Maybe when you were a child?”
“When I was a child? What the hell—“
“Have you had some emotional trauma lately Mr. James? Something significant?”
“Are you kidding? All I’ve had is trauma lately. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Maybe you had a break up? With someone important to you?”
“Sure I had a break up. Who gives a shit? This is serious.”
“Sometimes we can’t tell when we’re affected by something like that. The wound is too deep for us to respond in an emotionally mature way. We lash out or maybe we try to harm ourselves.”
“You’re a quack.”
A couple of cops take PB back to a holding cell and he sits there for an hour. He paces the cell. The girl from the night before may still be alive but for how long? He decides that he must get out of there by any means necessary. They bring him back to the interview room and another analyst is called in. This one is an older woman. She sits at the table, stone faced and over weight.
“How are you PB?” she asks.
“Fine. But I do think there’s been a misunderstanding here.”
“How’s that?”
“This whole falling in front of the train thing.”
“Yes. Dr. Fischer says in his report that you claim there was a man that pushed you on to the tracks?”
“He didn’t push me. In fact he doesn’t actually exist. May I be honest with you doctor?”
“Please.”
“I simply fell. I don’t know how else to put it. I was thinking about something else and next thing I know I’m down on the tracks. It’s embarrassing.”
She scrunches up her face until the doe in her cheeks is expanded out. She looks for the truth in the bags under his eyes.
“So you made up this thing about a Lord Zoblad because you were embarrassed?” she asks.
“Yes.”
She leaves him in the room by himself for some time and then an officer comes and escorts him to a clerk who explains he will probably receive a fine in the mail from Bay Area Rapid Transit.
He leaves the station and the sun is starting to go down. He runs into Officer Timmons and Officer Schelznek on the steps.
“You’re the one with the car right? The one who said some cult took it up in the hills?” asks Timmons.
“That’s right.”
“You’re in luck bro. They found it earlier today, we just got the report. No damage either. They didn’t even take the catalytic converter. You probably can still pick it up at the garage if you hurry.”
PB thanks them, goes back inside to pick up the proper paper work, and catches a bus to the north side of town where they are keeping the car in a lot. The owner of the tow company is just shutting down for the night and PB has to plead with him to get his car out before the gate gets locked. He wins the man over but not before paying $150 for the few hours the car sat in the lot.
He drives down San Pablo Ave, relieved to push an accelerator again. He goes through a Jack in the Box drive through to celebrate with a vanilla milk shake and slurps at it with all the windows down. A street light shines off a bald man’s head from the sidewalk and PB chokes on his shake and some of it spills down the front of his shirt.
He pulls over and searches between the seats for a napkin. He comes up with one in the door pocket and begins to clean the spill. He notices a logo on the paper. It reads “Flores Familia” and he remembers a restaurant by that name a few miles from his apartment that he has never been to. He wonders how the napkin got into the car. He studies the logo, a bandito with burritos in his holsters instead of guns. He decides to go by.
Flores Familia is over half full when he arrives and he lingers near the long bar with the wood paneling in back. He doesn’t know what he expected. People are filling the room with pleasant conversation and filling their bellies with beans and rice and meat. He orders a margarita. He sips and the events of the last few days play through his mind. He can still hear the cries of the dying goat in his mind. He can still see Lord Zaldig raising the dagger above his head in the moonlight.
PB is half way done with his drink when he sees a waitress make her way along the tables. She is familiar and he realizes she has a striking resemblance to the captured girl from the night before; very similar eyes with the same nose and shape and rounded face. It’s not the girl though, very close, but not the same one. He wonders if it’s just the exhaustion messing with his mind. He approaches her as the waitress heads back towards the kitchen.
“You look very familiar. Do you have a sister by any chance?” he asks.
“I don’t got no sister. You don’t know me,” the girl snaps and her brown eyes flash at him.
PB finishes his drink and goes out into the parking lot, puzzled and not sure what to do. He is almost to his car when the Lexus with the tinted side windows pulls off of the street. He doesn’t notice it until it stops next to him and the shotgun barrel is sticking out the back window directly at his head.
“See you in hell puto!” a voice says and PB waits for the flash, too tired to try to duck this time.
To be continued in Part 8.
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