Haunted

I have started riding the last car of the train on the way in to work. I found that I can just walk around the end of the train and then directly to the parking garage without the ordeal of going up and over the walkway. Vertigo and stairs do not go well together.

The last car is an interesting place. It seems that many old people ride on the last car. Today, I found a seat across from two women – one who was doing the “I am sitting here with my eyes closed and ignoring you and pretending to sleep” thing, and another who had an inordinate amount of makeup on. The makeup lady decided to do the “sleep” thing, too, so I was sitting there – wide awake – staring at her eye makeup and super shiny lipstick.

You might think this is bad enough…but it gets worse. The lady by the window decided to prove my “pretend” sleeping theory wrong by beginning to snore. Not dainty little snores, but rattlely, snorty and somewhat horribly embarrasing snores. And nobody acknowleged it. Everyone just keep doing what they were doing. Not one person was willing to look at her or even smirk at her sad situation. I felt very alone. And eventually irritated at the snoring.

I moved. Just across the aisle to a group of seats that was only occupied by a middle aged man – a completely awake man – reading a book. I felt he looked alert enough to possibly make it all the way to Kent without snoring and drooling all over the place. Amazingly enough, snoring woman slept soundly (no pun intended) through both the Sumner and the Auburn stops without once being roused from her slumber. At Auburn my area of seats filled up with a woman (sitting next to me) that smelled strongly of cigarettes and beer (freshly drunk beer – not the “I got drunk last night on beer and didn’t brush my teeth this morning” beer smell) and a woman who – I kid you not – was a witch.

The witch wasn’t wearing a pointy hat and carrying a broom, she was partially disguised as a librarian. She was very tall and painfully thin with a large hooked nose. She carried a big umbrella, the kind that looks like a cane, and wore an orange Halloween sweatshirt with a black sequined cat on the front. I was a little bit scared. She had a long black coat on with a fur collar (probably black cat fur harvested during a full moon) and pointy black witchy shoes. She had a large black bag, the contents of which I can only imagine.

As I disembarked, I had to wonder if this last car thing is really a good idea. Maybe falling down the stairs would be less painful, overall.