Samuel gritted his teeth, his mind blurring side to side, up and down at the whole new situation. Before he could speak, a whirlwind of hell sprinted forth with disturbing inferno. At the ghost train reveal, his feet went limp for some reason even though he was not flesh.
The locomotive engineer who drove the train was a grim reaper. In the death train, fumes of ash and distortion became its gas. An abyssal loom was within, both of intense heat and intense cold. The passengers were slaves and imprisoned.
These were the people who saw the rituals of the ghostly civilians and broken contracts with the phantoms they had a deal with, or the people who got themselves in situations they should not see, orchestrated by the civilians of the ghostly realm.
The grim reaper was a half-skeletal, half-flesh, half-phantom female figure in a black ancient coat, a seductive scythe, and web gloves tugging around her bony fingers. The hood of the cloak made her face appear a null world.
Jurassic chains were wrapped around the death train, and the heads of the slaves did not look up or to the sides but only down. Their skins were pale, both the men and the women, as if the sun denied them. They were mostly nude except for ragged undergarments. Chains were wrapped around their necks, kissing obsessively. Their eyes were a pale heartbreak, a tomorrow that never came.
All of them had no hair. They were depressively bald, as if hair had no breath to breathe out of their cells. No crying, no hatred, no fighting, no sighting other dimensions of their positions, no moving, no breathing, no blinking — only the inevitable fate and pain.
...
Samuel looked at the suffocating scene, a film wrapped around pollution.
"Why are those people inside the train looking... trapped?" Samuel said, eyes widening with silent horror.
Armos did not laugh, did not mock, did not judge. But he gazed with amusement.
"Those are the damned, my friend. That's all you need to know. The physical should never intervene with the ghostly activities or break contracts.
Unless, of course, if the situation was like you and I. Though I am not a phantom, my existence broke a boundary between the two worlds, benefiting me only. And I am not the only one. We are not the only ones in this paranormal phenomena."
...
Samuel pointed at the grim reaper who only looked forward and chuckled. A sound from her was like a smooth siren, different types of females chuckling with trauma. Though it sounded more like children than adult audio.
"Who is that?" Samuel asked, his chest heaving.
Armos looked at where Samuel pointed.
"That's the grim reaper, a locomotive engineer who drives the train. Oh, it seems she is here to pick up some other humans. Look over there, what an expired performance," Armos said.
From one of the households of the neighbourhood just across Samuel and Armos, lashes were being lolled on other people. Their bodies started to somehow enter the train as they were aggressively dragged by litch hearts.
Litch hearts: Litch hearts are distorted beings. They are beasts from a world of hungry brain forests and blood oceans. They smell of garbage and expired stomachs.
Their bodies are only intestines tied up together with an ache of red and wounds of acid. They have no eyes, no mouth, no ears, but only veins twitching and pulsing like hearts.
They carry lashes that look like aggressive black mambas that swirl with rage and frustration, and cut like chainsaws.
None of the damned and defilers against the ghostly realm stood a chance. If they did, it would only be theatre for the litch heart, an uncomfortable slaughter session. They would see the origins of Christian failures if they spat a tongue of rebellion.
...
As the passengers were thrown into the poisonous caressing abyss of the train, the grim reaper tapped the skin of the train with the bottom of the scythe, and the train instantly burst away in a clustered pattern of a river stream, a meandering apocalypse to the dimension that would make eyes ache and phantoms look away in refusal.
...
"I fear that would be another list to my nightmares. An ache of trauma, maybe, even if I only saw it and did not experience it. Anyways, like I said, I am not going to go with you..."
With another summon, this time it was not of a hellish painting. Rather, the train that came this time was luxurious, looking like a classy architecture. It fumed with alluring perfumes and ghostly cash.
The interior felt like a casino and a sin. Inside, ghosts relaxed, talked, gambled, and enjoyed high-class hospitality. Odd, since it was in a train.
The locomotive engineer of the train was a skull knight, a male figure wearing a tuxedo. The windows were vintage scripture, and the music sounded like pop opera.
"This is the one, asshole. This is the train that we are taking," Armos said.
Before Samuel could reply, he dragged him from the sidewalk into the train. He saw men and women enjoying the wealth of their ghostly lives.
The skull knight snapped his bony fingers and the train moved in a gentle silk stream.
Not rough, not unbalanced or old, but a definition of aged wine.
Thunderstorms punctuated its tracks, and the scenery was an ancestral gift.
The luxurious train whispered through the bastions that looked like bars of deities. The smooth tracks sailed down. The horizon in its stream was a secret scroll of elites.
Inside the train, Samuel trembled with anxiety and panic, and Armos
only rubbed his hands and grinned with patient excitement.