A tall young man enters the train. He is scruffy-looking, with a day-old beard and uncombed grimy black hair. He wears a plain grey hoodie, oversized jeans and gigantic jogging shoes. He is 19 and he hates his life, but at least he is doing something about it. At least he is going places.

He takes a seat opposite an old lady who is doing a crossword from a glossy magazine. She gives him a brief look of disdain. What is it with young people these days, she thinks, don’t they at least have the decency to shower? She knows that her husband would agree. If he was alive.

Jennifer Delgado is walking around the train trying to find a seat. But the train is completely packed and she regrets she didn’t go before the rush hour, because now she might have to stand and standing makes it impossible to work. She desperately needs to finish that last bit for the client. She won’t have much time when she gets home, her son Ramón deserves her full attention now. He has been hanging out with nana too much lately and he is already talking like an old man. Kids need to be kids and for that they need their moms.

She finds a place. At last. She has started to sweat when sits down next to an older woman who gives her a brief look and then turns back to the magazine. The woman looks annoyed and Jennifer wonders why. Is it the short business skirt? Is it her make-up? The strong perfume? Or just that Jennifer is young and attractive while the woman looks old and worn. In truth, she would probably just have liked the extra arm space.

Jennifer digs out the laptop and as she waits for the Windows logo to disappear she looks out the window. Rain again, she thinks, how many days was it since she saw the sun?

The young man notices the beautiful woman sitting across from him. Young, latin, curvy, really nice lips. He wishes he could meet a woman like that. But then again, he never ever meets any women and he has no idea what he would do if he did. His parents didn’t prepare him for that did they?

A smell hits Jennifer nostrils. She his hitting the buttons frantically, trying to type away her anxiousness to get home to Ramón, trying to close out the rest of the train. That is she is even on a train. That she is not at home with her son, home where she is supposed to be, as her mother keeps telling her. But someone has to make a living and Ramón’s father is long gone, God knows where. Jennifer tenses up when he thinks about him. They way he just left them there and left to live some other life somewhere else. She would feel better about it if he was dead. It is a horrible thought but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. She would feel better then, but then again he is probably living in some other city, maybe in some other country, pretending he never met Jennifer Delgado at that fast food joint and that they never spent four years together and that they never had a beautiful amber-eyed son called Rámon. If it was possible to do that, Jennifer wasn’t sure.

The smell wakes her up. She glanced around the cart. Can it be the old lady? Can it really? Or the young man? He looks stressed, fidgety and his clothes look damp, probably from the rain, but she wouldn’t be surprised if there was some more infested dirt stuck there as well. His skin is so pale, he looks like bone, like a ghost. Why don’t young people take care of themselves these days?

He could see the beautiful Latina eyeing him, studying him, he has seen that look before, it is something close to disgust. He understands it. He feels disgusting. He has not been taking care of his hygiene of late. There has been too much going on. Too much. His head is tired. His soul as well. It can’t be right to feel this exhausted at the tender age of 19, can it? Does other 19 year olds feel like him? Do they have the same self-hatred? How do they live on?

He is not planning to take it much longer though. There is only so much a person can accept. Only so much suffering.

Only work, work, work, what is with the world today? The lady has left her magazine temporarily and is now observing Jennifer’s fingers dance around on the keyboard. It was like she was playing a frantic piece of Chopin. The crazy tempo of it all. Why is there such a rush to everything? The world doesn’t blow up if we just take it a little slower, but it might if we keep speeding up.

She knows her husband might want to poke out an arm from the grave and debate that. He always liked life in the fast lane and that is also what got him in the end. But he would debate that, after 34 years of marriage she knows his way like the back of her hand.

Sadness brushes over her. That lump in the throat she always feels when she thinks about him. It is three years tomorrow and she is going to the grave with the usual flower arrangement. Tulips he liked for some reason and tulips he is getting, every year until I die, she thinks, swallowing several times to get rid of that lump and not managing very well.

Give it time her friend Vera tells her, give it time. Time heals all wounds. But at this age she doesn’t really have the time to heal. She wishes there was a faster way to heal.

Healing is also on the young man’s mind. In different forms. Healing is not really the right word for it, more relief.

He has turned on his iPod on full blast. Korn. Sepultura. They know how it feels. But the young man never screamed at loud, only inside. Everyday inside, but never out loud.

His fingers fumble around inside the jacket. Finds the inner pocket. The coldness of steel. He could shoot six people. He could end six people’s lives today. Now. The power of that. The power of death.

But how could he? Can he even take his own? Can he even take the lives of those who has made his life hell? I guess we will see when we reach the end station. Then we will see. The only thing sure is that someone will die today.

The train chugs on. Jennifer stops writing and looks out the window. One of those days when she would have liked to stay under a blanket in the sofa with Ramon, eat popcorn, watch some shitty movie and just forget that the outside world exists. But there are bills on the kitchen table, there are bills in the mailbox and there are soon bills coming out of her ears. But she will work extra, she will get a second job, whatever it takes to get her and Ramon on her feet. She has a decent job, she makes decent money, they can live a more than decent life, if she just keep going for a few more months. Although it takes her toll on her and definitely on Ramon too, there is no other way.

She looks at her watch. 45 minutes now. 45 minutes from home.

But the train is slowing down. Slower, slower, and slower until in the middle of nowhere it comes to a halt. The speaker comes on. There is a problem with the train engine. They are trying to fix it right now. Sorry about the delay.

Shit! Jennifer can’t help but swearing out loud. The old lady frowns. Jennifer couldn’t care less about foul language though. Delays! Shit, shit, shit. She is hungry and dying for some of her mothers beef stew, but mostly she is longing for Ramon. This is just not her day. She silently prays that they will fix the train in a few minutes.

But the engine problem is severe. In 15 minutes the speaker is on again, announcing that the problem is worse than they thought and that they are asking for your patience.

The young man is starting the sweat. They must have put on the heat in the train or something. He feels drops on his forehead, but he can’t really take of his thick jacket. He can’t risk revealing his gun. Not now. Now that he went through all this trouble to get it. He needs to stay cool. Literally.

He also feels the hunger pangs. He could do with Mars bar or something. Something to keep him on his toes. But this train has no food service, no vending machine, nothing but a engine malfunction in the middle of nowhere.

Thirty minutes pass. Jennifer is starting to bite her fingernails and the young man’s smell is oozing from him with the heat and the sweat. The old lady tries to ignore both of them, but she is having a problem with the smell. Outside a drizzling darkness.

The speaker comes on again. He sounds tired and a bit broken. He says they can’t fix the problem and need to transfer people to another train. The train is approximately one hour away. This means it will take two hours or more Jennifer Delgado can see her son’s face and by then he needs to go to sleep for school. She can’t have that. Not today.

Surely this can’t be that far away from civilization? There must be cabs? There are houses not that far away, I saw them. A road I might hitchhike from? There must be someway to get home without waiting all this time. I need to eat something.

Jennifer makes a decision. She is going to try to get home some other way. At least she can always get back to the train if she doesn’t find another way. The rain has stopped, at least that’s positive.

The young man watches the beautiful Latin woman put on her coat, tighten her scarf, and slip on her gloves. Is she leaving? Where? The train is definitely not moving. The old lady is asleep. He is still sweating pretty warm and uncomfortable. Is there a way off this train he might as well go for it. What has he got to lose after all?

The woman takes her laptop bag and walks away. It looks like she is leaving the train. When the young man is sure she can’t really see him, he follows. The woman pushes the button and open’s the train door. Her face tenses up when she feels the cold air.

She is walking alongside the train and has come quite a way when the young man opens the train door and steps out quite some way behind her. There are people out there now, smokers, trying to cure the boredom and hunger with their favourite fix. This is good, it is some kind of diversion. He used to bike around not very far from here so he knows where the nearest stretch of civilization is. Her dark coat is not easy to follow in the dark so he speeds up to get a bit closer. He wonders what her plan is. Maybe she has someone waiting on her? Is she going to call a taxi? She has the face of a strong woman and maybe she is even contemplating to hitch-hike?

She steps over the train tracks and is now walking through a patch of high grass. Over in the distance is the road leading into a small village. She won’t find much there. A few houses. Not many cars passing through this road at this hour. Maybe if she calls a cab? Maybe if she asks for a lift, knocks on the door of one of the houses? For some reason I can’t let that happen, the young man thinks to himself, without realizing why he couldn’t.

He follows through the wet grass, feels the dampness through his pants legs, but only doesn’t lose track of the woman. Her dark-brown and thick and wavy hair he can still see, although barely in the darkness. He would like to touch it. He would like to touch her.

Jennifer is close to the road now. She is about to cross it when the young man speaks from behind her.

“Hi.” It comes out like a croak. He is nervous, but deep inside knows that this is what he has to do.

The latin woman jolts and emits a high-pitched sound and turns around. She is wide-eyed, breathes loudly, she probably thinks he is a nutcase.

“I saw you leaving the train and I thought…”

“You scared me! You fucking scared me. Why would you do something like that.”

“Sorry.” The young man looks down on his feet. He knows this pose well – the apologetic one. He has practised it all his life.

“I can’t wait for that train. I need to go home to my son, so if you excuse me I am going to find a lift.”

Jennifer has turned around and is just about to cross the road when the young man grabs her arm from behind.

“Can I come with you? I want to go home too.”

She shrugs his arm away. “Don’t touch me, you freak!”

That stings him. Being called a freak is nothing new to him, but the anger and the frustration he feels when hearing it is worse than before. Without thinking he brings out the gun and points it at her.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch. Take another step and I’ll kill you.”

The words and the gun feel foreign to him. He can’t believe he is doing this, he is threatening to take someone’s life.

Jennifer Delgado stops in her tracks. Her head is spinning, but only one image is in rotation, the one of her son Ramón. If she dies he will grow up without a parent. Without a father and without a mother.

Jennifer is frozen in her tracks. The wind is howling around her. The young man’s arm is shaking as he holds out the gun that he bought that same day from a guy he found online. He thought it would be harder to get a hold of weapons but it wasn’t. Problem is, he has never really used one before. He tried this one, out in the woods, and he wasn’t prepared for it. The way the gun jumped in his hand. Shooting a gun required strength and he was not a strong man.

But he didn’t want to use it. He didn’t want to shoot this beautiful and frightened woman. He didn’t know what he wanted. Did things change when the train stopped?

“Please don’t shoot me. You don’t want to do this. Don’t throw away your life. You are not a bad guy. You are not a murderer. I have a son. He only has me. He is five years old. Please, oh please.”

He never had a woman beg to him before. The gun was power. He knew he held her life in his hands now. All it required was to pull the trigger. But then the power would be gone. The power was in the gun, not in the bullet. In the threat, not in death. He understood that now.

A force took a hold of his body. This was not him acting. He couldn’t do this.

“Follow me. Don’t try to run or get away. Then I will kill you. If you just do as I say I am not going to hurt you.”

Then the young man pushed Jennifer Delgado forwards. They were walking across the empty road. He concealed the gun. He knew that she might get a crazy idea and run for it and he didn’t know what he would do then. If he would be ready to die as a murderer or if he would chicken out.

Jennifer Delgado’s head was buzzing as she crossed the road and they walked up a narrow footpath. He is going to rape me, she thought. But as Jennifer was a strong woman and the young man was slightly built she thought she might have a chance to overtake him. To stop that from happening. Just 15 minutes ago she was sitting on the train, thinking about how bad it would be for her to get home late and now she was scrambling for ideas to save her life. Oh the irony.

The young man walked close behind her. They didn’t say anything. The passed a house where the lights were out. Nobody home.

“What are you going to do to me?” she said. “What do you want? You want money? Because then you can take it all, please just don’t hurt me.”

It was intoxicating yet somewhat disturbing for the young man to hear the woman beg and ask him for mercy. He didn’t want her money. Money was nothing to him. He didn’t want to kill her either. In fact he had no idea what he wanted, there was someone else moving his body, pushing words out of his mouth, holding the loaded gun.

He realized he was starving. His stomach almost ached from the void. They should go someplace and eat, but there were no places around here, only a few houses and a drive from everything else. They needed a car…to be continued