UNLEASHED

There's a light at the end of the tunnel. It wakes me up. All is discomfort in this place, not just on a train cramped on a seat headed from one imagined territory that only exists in minds and on maps to another, but in every single place I mark with my temporary presence.

Mine is a cabin in a train car seating three strangers who all look alike in spite of their differences. Through bleary eyes I blink at them in a passing moment of curiosity. Human eyes have a tendency towards two options in the infinite dance of interaction; look away or look back. I'm sure these have names, wants and needs, likes and dislikes, but how invested am I in getting to the point of knowing these things?

I wonder what Ed Terryn liked or disliked. Did he want to live?

I wonder what he would think of me using his body as I am, for a purpose other than what I can only assume he was using it for before he died.

In my inner conversation my eyes inadvertently meet the eyes of one of my fellow passengers, I quickly look away and pretend to fall back asleep.

I wish this sleep was actual and permanent.

Life is suffering no matter where and how you live it and I wish to be rid of it.


The parked car contained four men, two in the front and two in the back. One of those men, Arkady, massaged his finger along the worn gunmetal of the Russian PSS in his lap. 

"This seems a little excessive to me," Andrei, a larger man, spoke into his takeout cup of coffee before taking a sip, watching the crowds of people file in and out of the train station.

"I'm telling you the man is no good." Piotr Orlov felt besieged with the questioning stare of Viktor craning his body from the driver's seat to eye him over the back of the car seats expectantly. Arkady turned his attention from the tiny handgun in his lap to Piotr with a heavy, expectant gaze.

"I hardly think shooting the man you suspect of having sex with your woman is worth the effort, Piotr. This is one favor you'd best reconsider wasting."

Piotr shifted defensively, like a full body dry-heave to illustrate how serious this was to him.

"He has money. He's a fighter. I saw him win in Serbia. He made a mess of my apartment. He paid cash."

Andrei took another sip, his eyes watching the train station arrivals and departures.

"Big purse, little purse?"

"Big enough. I heard something upwards of 30k." Andrei took another sip of his coffee. Viktor eyed Andrei for some silent notice as Arkady went back to eyeing the weapon in his lap. Piotr looked to the three of them and wondered if they were right, this was excessive. 

"Could you pick this man out of a crowd?" Andrei asked after another sip of coffee.


Three cars down from where Ed Terryn pretended to sleep, Greg Shears pretended to read a newspaper printed in Russian. Across from him sat his wife cradling their sleeping son close as she watched the scenery zoom by and felt a pang of regret she let Greg talk her into this vacation. 

Why Serbia, she thought, and clutched her son tight to her chest, glanced at him peeking at her oddly from behind the upraised newspaper. His eyes upon meeting hers momentarily flew back to skimming the text.

"What are you reading about?" She asked, trying to make conversation.

Greg had no idea. He cursed as much under his breath before responding,

"Sports," he surmised uncertainly. He hadn't been able to pull away long enough to watch the fight in Serbia. He hadn't told her about that underlying rationale behind taking a family trip to places his wife, Madeline, had never desired to go. It was a tough sell, but he'd convinced her of the romance inherent in a train ride across Europe in time to land in Serbia for UFC 3. And now Greg scoured the newspaper for some hint of coverage of Terryn's fight.

"What is it you're hoping is gonna happen on this trip, Gregory." Noticeably, the words hissed through her teeth, her stare lay dead upon him. The kid slept soundly, and Greg momentarily frowned as he hid behind the foreign language newspaper. However many miles they'd already traveled, and pictures they'd pretended to smile for in front of sights they didn't find beautiful the elephant in their proverbial room had followed them here, and was gorging itself to an unbearable size.

"I think I need some air," Greg pretended not to hear her as he shook the paper closed and stood up with an aloof smile and edged past her like her side of their train cabin was a wall of spikes.  She watched him exit with a scowl.

Once out, he leaned his back against the door and loosened his collar to get some air to his lungs and contemplated how one person could make him feel so trapped now, where previously she had not.

"Gregory?" He looked down the train corridor towards the voice of exclaim and saw a familiar, and unwelcome face of Doctor Karen White rushing to greet him.

"I can't believe it!" Neither could Greg. His eyes widened, and he realized the air flow through his throat was still constricted, choking on the sight of her. Radiant, glorious, and soothing all at once, just as she'd been in the medical clinic when he'd first met her and asked what she'd known about the patient she'd had an appointment with, whom he had informed her at that time was Ed Terryn, and had died thirteen years earlier, single-handedly kick-starting a raveling process that bonded them together.

"W-what are you doing here?" He stammered.

"I saw him, Gregory! Ed! I was at the fight in Serbia! He's alive!"

Greg blinked. Was she here for the exact same reason he was?

"Huh," he managed, wide-eyed like a high school boy crushing on the prettiest girl in school as she looked pleased to find him here. His wife sat in the car, likely boring holes through the 4 inch thick door he leaned against.

"So, do you wanna—"

"I g-gotta, I gotta go." He stammered pointing, first, to his neck, then the door, silently implying his wife but not wanting to bring it up. Karen White watched him with a slowly growing confusion as he slipped back through the door he'd just come, careful to not allow her to see inside before locking the door behind him.

"Back so soon?" His wife sat looking at him crossly upon Greg's reentry, turning to greet her with all the dismay he'd just gathered from meeting Karen White in the same train car, on the same train bound for Saint Petersburg he was currently on, avoiding the rapidly advancing conversation of unhappiness shared with he and his wife, Madeline.

There was a dainty rap on the door, undoubtedly Karen. Greg scratched his head in the face of an unimpressed wife.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" she asked after moments of Greg's silent confusion.

Another rap on the door, this time with a bit more urgency.

"Gregory?" Karen's voice asked through the thin material of the door. His son stirred at the mini commotion Greg didn't know how to avoid, and his wife grew increasingly less impressed.

"Someone knows you here?"

"Uhhh..."

A voice, thankfully granting Greg respite, crackled over the train's intercom system and spoke in stentorian Russian the obvious signal that they approached their stop.

"Oh, thank god," Greg murmured, further disconcerting his wife without alleviating her ever growing suspicions about her husband. He could feel the lingering presence of Karen White moving back to her own cabin, and for a moment he felt like a doomed man granted a reprieve, if only for a moment.

As he and his wife collected their luggage in quiet agreement to discuss the matter in the solitude of a hotel, the familiar voice of Karen White rose over the din of the railway station. 

"Gregory!" Greg felt his shoulders slump, his wife looked at him first, then turned to see this younger woman approaching them, approaching Greg, with frivolous recognition.

"You remember Patrick?" She said as she neared them, ignoring Madeline Shears entirely and turned to present the man Greg had met in Dempsey's pub almost a month prior.

"We found your ghost, Greg," Patrick said extending an offer of a handshake. Greg eyed the hand of the gothicly eccentric man he hadn't liked the moment he met him with some nebulous connection to Karen, then to Karen White's smiling visage staring back at him.

"We saw him fight!"

"Saw who fight? Gregory, who are these people?"

She wasn't pleased. This trip hadn't sat well with Madeline Shears. An impromptu vacation that would eat into savings she had intended to use to go someplace tropical, a deadline for the travel that seemed so odd and specific all at once, and now these two. Madeline's eyes narrowed further on her husband.

"Is t-this your wife?" Karen White's eyes settled on Madeline with a dawning revelation she had only teased at in her mind as to the way Greg looked at her. Greg stood there, hands full of luggage he'd refused to let go of in order to avoid a handshake with Patrick and didn't know what to say. His eyes trailed above the unwanted meeting to some vague point on the horizon he wished he could hide in, his vision fixing unwittingly on the man that had drawn them here, whether his wife liked it or not.

"Ed." Greg dropped the luggage as if in slow motion and drifted in between Karen and Madeline, drawn towards the sight of Ed Terryn sifting his way through the railway crowd like a wisp of smoke.

"Ed!"

"Oh no," Madeline cringed loudly, the dots connecting in her mind. "That's what we're here for?" The logic of it didn't matter, it suddenly made sense. Her husband's obsession, a white whale that had silently come between them since they'd met, it seemed.

Greg had already cleared half the railway tarmac when Karen and Patrick had clued in to who he saw and began to follow, leaving Madeline and the child to watch in frustrated annoyance.

In the parking lot, four car doors slammed upon sighting him.

All roads, this day, led to Ed Terryn.

"Ed!" Greg called with enough force to raise Ed's eyes from the ground to see him. Greg smiled with a glimmer of completion, and hope. It shrunk slightly as Ed kept walking, looking away without further notice right into a slowly closing semi-circle of men deadest on stopping Ed in his tracks.

Greg watched Ed stop in his tracks at a distance and began to pick up his feet into a jog noticing the four men taking on a more threatening posture.

"Ed?"

And then the gunshot brought those left in the train station to the ground, hands to ears, eyes panicking for the exits, and Ed collapsed to the tarmac in the midst of the four men scattering in four separate directions, one, Andrei as we know him, clutching Ed's carry-on bag away from Ed before he fell.

By the time Greg had made it to Ed's prone form, the four had vanished, and Greg stooped over a fading man recollecting the last time he'd seen Ed looked something just like this.

"Déjà vu," was all Greg could stammer in the midst of shock.

"No hospitals," Ed whispered as his eyes fluttered. "Let me die."

---

It's like looking through a veil, or thinly wrapped gauze. You can see the universe whizzing past as you travel to some destination, anywhere but here.

It was all an accident.

I never asked to be born here, in this place, to these circumstances, to walk among you.

I meant only to study the human condition at a distance, to learn what it meant, not experience it firsthand.

---

"He's waking up!" Karen White exclaimed, watching Ed Terryn's blinking eyes try to focus on her face as she looked down at him.

"Hi," She whispered, lovingly, soothingly, like a mother nesting with her chick. This is the bedside manner she'd never give to just any patient, but to this man who's story enticed her from half a world way to travel here to find him. Slowly, other faces came into view. Faces attached to names Ed didn't know, nor truly, if you asked him, cared to.

"Ed. I'm here buddy," Greg said, his back turned to the consistently scowling wife clutching once more her sleeping son to her breast.

"We're getting a divorce," she barked.

"Do we have to do this now?" Greg glared back at her, smiling once apologetically down at Ed. Karen eyed Greg with newfound sympathy before returning her attention to Ed.

"Can you hear us?" Ed blinked, feeling the pulse of blood and pain in his abdomen.

"I'm not dead." He stated with a flat disappointment.

"No. I'm a doctor. You've been out for a day or two, though. You're safe now."

"Who were those guys, Ed? That shot you. I think they took something." Greg asked, wincing at the silent barbs his wife was staring into his back.

"Not enough. Stop calling me Ed," he sat up grimacing at the pain in his side. Karen leaned back and watched him rise without fanfare.

"Careful, the stitches—"

Ed expertly dug his hands under the bandage of his neatly dressed wound and felt where the bullet had entered his side.

"I've had worse." He lifted onto his feet and stared blankly at the faces in the room who wondered at him.

"You shouldn't be moving. You need to heal up."

"This body will do the rest. Always does. Thank you."

It's an odd thing to watch the man rise from the makeshift table upon which you just witnessed a doctor remove a piece of spent ammunition from the man's flesh then seal him back up and nurse the wound with love. Even odder still, for them all, even Madeline who stewed over the revealed auspices that had truly brought she and her husband Greg to Serbia and now Saint Petersburg, to watch Ed collect a shirt and exit the room without glance, only a final request,

"Stop following me."

And then he closed the door.