The chances are decent that if you are reading this, you have already seen our thought-provoking masterpiece, The Night Train. I also assume, since you are reading this, that you are numb enough to the horrors of the world presented to you that you didn’t automatically scream when it was all over. Probably not even while it was happening. Good job!
Well, you curious little scamp, seeing as you’ve already gone to the trouble of finding where we document what will certainly in the future be referred to as “Exhibit A,” I’ll give you some insight into the machinations that drive our viewable nightmares, and the surprisingly low number of Devil interactions involved:
I really should have known from the start that this was going to be a weird night. The sole light along the long walk home was the sickly yellow moon. It was bulbous, and a decidedly unhealthy yellow, like some manner of cosmic infection. The thought of space pus was really driving off any desire to put any sort of liquid in my stomach, but I knew it had to be done. Tonight was video night, and we were only mildly inspired.
I turned my thoughts from stellar ailments and braced myself with brief counsel from the Red Queen. At the time, that was my euphemism for drinking the cherry-flavored NyQuil I was keeping in my coat pocket. I don’t remember when I started penning my own clandestine expressions for drugs that weren’t really drugs, but it sounded more poetic than “casually ingested cold medicine on the sidewalk.” Then again, I guess subtlety is a low priority when you’re carrying a sack full of the stuff.
I arrived at Keith’s door sometime past the point where time no longer meant anything. He couldn’t appreciate that at the moment, as Kyle had already shown up, and was using Keith’s own script as a filter through which to berate him. I couldn’t focus on his particular selection of curses over the crackling of plastic from the bag of NyQuil. I instead opted to launch a bottle toward Kyle, and he casually grasped it out of the air. He was finally getting accustomed to my habit of throwing things on video nights. Keith, however, was not.
Over the resounding clunk of one fluid-filled object colliding with another, and Keith’s alien groans of mild agitation, Kyle started explaining the ruckus I had walked in on. Keith’s script appeared to have been written by shredding a thesaurus and then dragging a length of tape through the pile until he felt it had picked up enough words.
“Nobody is going to understand this shit!” Kyle screamed. “I don’t understand this shit. How are we supposed to- What the fuck is this?”
Indeed, as his senses had alerted him, I had not tried to calm him with an offering of booze. He parsed the bottle momentarily, then blankly maintained eye contact, quietly requesting an explanation.
“Drink up,” I said. “Nature will take its course, and we will have our video.”
As all those meetings had likely advised him not to do, Kyle accepted the foul potion as the solution to our problem. Two seconds and half-a-bottle later, questions seized him like an incredulous poltergeist.
“How are we going to work out this video if we’re passed-out on NyQuil? You asshole, this was a terrible idea!”
Keith sipped gingerly at his bottle like a caged hamster. “I’m glad, actually. I really am feeling kind of crappy.”
“Easy, boys. I thought about that.” I swung my arm back violently and assumed the clanking sound I heard to be the empty bottle landing safely in the garbage. I was offering consolation in a considerably louder voice than I had intended. Probably due to the two bottles of Wizard Blood swimming through my brain already. “That’s why I spiked the Dream Syrup with NoDoz.” I occasionally fancy myself a junior alchemist.
Kyle shook his head and lifted the bottle back up to his lips. “Whatever. I don’t work tomorrow.”
Keith did the same. He actually did have to work the next day, but he still sought convalescent properties of the Crimson Panacea. I reached out to take the script from Kyle’s hands, only to find that my empty bottle had returned to my hand, full as the day it was born. I snagged the paper with my free fingers and sipped at the Sanguine Elixir while browsing its pages. Keith had apparently written this all in the language of devils just to trick me. I would have to remember this for the future. I carried on nonchalantly so as not to break the ruse.
“We can do this.” It was the only response I could conjure.
We tried every combination of actors and cameraman available to us. Keith couldn’t act, as he spoke at consistently accelerating pace. Kyle refused to read Keith’s words. He too, I surmised, was unable to speak the devil tongue, but was more up-front about it. They both tried to tell me what I was doing wrong simultaneously, but without moving their mouths. Their words meant nothing to me now.
I offered-up the only solution I could think of (besides NyQuil and NoDoz). We would sit down and hash-out a new script. Keith had some ideas, but they were unintelligible. He carried on like a coked-up, sentient dictionary. His words slurred together as he spoke faster and faster, until he began to glow. Kyle’s face started to melt away, carrying his emotionless expression with it. He was doing this on purpose. I knew he was.
I took a pen in each hand and started scrawling furiously with both hands at a sheet of paper. Keith’s hyper-speech was white noise to help me tune-out everything else. It was just me and the Scarlet Muse, and apparently all the ink in two pens.
When I was done, I tried to offer the draft to Keith, the most comfortable of our group with the written language. His glowing intensified, then emitted a blinding flash, and he was gone, presumably through time and dimensions. Kyle started his reading by taking in a deep breath that whistled through his nose. I didn’t think to time it, as I was afraid my dad was still staring at me through my watch, but I don’t think I heard him let that breath out for three or four minutes.
He calmly stacked the papers back into a neat pile when he was finished and placed them on the desk. He then walked into the bathroom, and proceeded to screech like a dying rabbit. That was apparently the sound he makes when he vomits Fever Juice. He was gone when I checked to see if he was okay. There was only a smoking hole in the ceiling, and a bathroom splattered with cherry-flavored Nightmare Candy.
I’m not entirely sure how the video actually got made. When I stared into what appeared as a toilet full of blood, I started zoning out, and woke up at home. The video was on YouTube that day. My first viewing was interrupted by Keith’s concerned roommate. He was pretty shaken-up by his findings in the bathroom. By its red-splattered appearance and cherry scent, he described the room as “a murder in Candy Land.”
Forensics refuses to release the script back to me on the grounds that they’re not entirely convinced that what I used to write it was actually ink. If I had it in my hands, though, and if it was in English, I’m sure it probably didn’t detail anything like what we put up. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
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