Gig Work

“Ok, but I’m not religious.” I said, out of breath from trying to keep up.

The train platform was quiet at 6AM on a Sunday. It was too early for Church people, so only those commuters unlucky enough to work on weekends were standing on the platform. I covered my ears as the train pulled up to the underground platform and it’s breaks screeched like a dying mechanical beast before coming to a stop.

“What makes you think,” Luke said while hopping on the eastbound train, “religion has anything to do with being an angel?”

Someone’s dropped and spilled coffee cup made a puddle just inside the train’s doors, so I juke a little to the right as I board to avoid getting the sticky drink on my shoes.

Luke sits down on a bench, and I sit in the bench across from him on the mostly mostly empty car.

“We’ve been over this,” he continued, “the energy of the world has been concentrated in you to do this work. No more, no less.”

“See, and what’s that supposed to mean, exactly” I retort and laid back against the hard plastic of the seat, “the energy of the world sounds a lot like religion again.”

We had even over this before, it’s true. One of the very first questions I asked Luke was if there were angels, where was god. He dodged that, the fucker. I’m certainly not what you’d call a ’godly’ man, but that doesn’t seem to have disused him.

“So what’s her name?” He asks me and points to a young lady sitting on the other end of the train, wearing giant headphones with her back to us. Most of her figure was covered with a baggy grey rain jacket.

“Are we Santa now, with a list of who’s naughty or nice?” I mimed checking off an invisible clipboard in my hand.

“Cut the snark, Damien, and focus for a second.”

I look at the back of her head, using the ding ding DING of the trains closing doors to count off seconds in my mind, stopping when she turns to look out the window. “No idea”

“It’s Maria.” As he says in a tone as though he’s reminding me, not informing me.

“It feels like I could have known that,” I say, then pull a water bottle from my jacket pocket and drink.

“It’ll come, don’t worry, took me close to a month to see the names.”

“How do we know the names, anyways?”

“Their souls tell us, it’s transferred along with the energy everyone places out into the world.”

“Oh, great, more woo woo stuff I’m supposed to remember.” I cap my bottle and shove it down my cargo shorts’ pocket.

“Once you’re fully attuned to it you’ll know everyone’s names, and some of their emotions as well, as long as they’re emitting energy.”

That was a new detail, “there are people who don’t emit energy?”

“Some. Some train to, some are… well… not angels but not entirely normal either” his face moves to an automatic frown, and he turns to look out of the train window, watching the droplets of rain streak the windows as the track exits the tunnel and appears back above ground once more.

“So you’re sure I can be an angel?” I stare at my own hands for a second. “I don’t know if you do background checks, but I’m not what anyone is going to put down as angel material.”

“I know you, and know enough about you to think you’ll do fine, especially with training.” Luke sighs and looks at me blankly. “You won’t be the first gay angel.”

I snort, “I’m not going to be a celibate gay or whatever, either.”

He reaches to the bridge of his nose and squeezes like he can with sheer force of will stop a headache from forming. I know that look, I saw it a lot from my mother before she kicked me out.

I feel the train jolt as we roll over a switch in the track, the train now clicking over to the more rural line out of the city.

“You were chosen for who you are; I don’t want to change that. I just want to give you the training and tools you need to be able to to do the job.”

“The job from god?” I ask, we’ve been down this road before, too.

“From the universe,” he looks out the window and smiles, “from the stars, from nature, from the combination of all living things.”

“So we don’t work for anyone?”

“No, no, not at all,” he smiles at me like he’s sharing some big secret, “we work for everyone”.

“Isn’t that sort of the same as working for no one?”

“In a manner, I suppose.” He reached out and picked up a coffee mug that appeared from thin air and took a sip.

I stared at it, then at him, “Most of what you do just looks like magic.”

“Oh this is more like a little pocket universe I can store things in and pull them back out when I need them. I like more own coffee more than than Drippin’s.” He blew a little of the steam off the top, “I make 3 cups every morning, and stash two for later.”

“Seems like a pretty powerful ability to waste on coffee.”

“Don’t offend my coffee like that.” He seems to sit the coffee down in mid-air where it vanishes, “Hold on tight now.”

I’ve been around this guy enough (2 days now, which feels like an eternity) to grip the handholds on the train and brace myself. Sure enough, about two seconds later the entire train lurches and then makes a terrible squeal following the roar of tearing metal.

Our car jumps the tracks and starts to tilt at a wild angle, sliding me against the window, I look back at the woman and she’s on the floor between the seats, handing on to one of the seats, her headphones fallen off and hanging by their cable.

Luke stands the moment the train stops moving and I jump up as well, walking back to help her back to her feet, “you OK?”

“Yeah, just a bit shaken.”

Luke has kicked open on of the doors, and looks back to both of us, “let’s go, the forward cars are smoking and we don’t want to be here.”

She grabs her bag that was still looped over the back of the seat and dashes for the exit. Luke helps he down to the ground and I jump down beside him. We’re only a few dozen feet away from a level crossing, and when I look down the tracks I see large chunks of metal, some smoldering, along the embankment.

“Go to the road, can call a taxi,” he tells her, then looks to me. “Let’s go make sure everyone up front is OK.”

I see her pause, debate if she should help, then decide to follow his advice; I turn on my feet and follow Luke to the front of wreck.

“So you knew that was going to happen?” I ask, picking my steps carefully as we made our way forward.

“Knew as in the crash?”

“Yes, of course the crash!”

“Oh, no; didn’t know what would happen, just knew something would happen that I’d be needed for.”

“You do get that that’s a frustrating answer, right?” I watch him approach the next car, flipped fully on its side, passengers banging against the now skyward facing door trying to get it open.

“Frustrating or no, it’s the answer.”

He walks to the midpoint of the train car, a roof exist there being held shut by a section of the metal train rail that’s detached from the spikes holding it to the ground. He reaches into his magic closet and pulls out a large crow bar.

“Back in the day,” he says shoving the crow bar between the exit and the rail, applying leverage to push the rail a few inches back down so the door can open, “railway track was in sections about 20’ long a stretch, and this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.”

He grunted and pulled more, and I grabbed the bar to help apply more pressure.

“Thanks,” he pulled his weight along with mine and the metal track started to slide down. “These new tracks are all one continuous piece of welded steel. No natural break points.”

With a repositioning of the crow bar, and another yank, the rail moved down far enough for the exit to be opened a little, and then the press of passengers inside the car applied the final leverage to allow the exit to open fully, a small stream of passengers running out and down.

A small crowd was forming now, as people along the road had parked their cars then ran over to stand with those who’d already left the cars. A high pitched, screaming whistle came from the next car up.

“Everyone back!” A transit worker yelled wearing his yellow company vest, thick with his city accent. “Get back as far as you can. That squeal is the battery cells releasing pressure.”

I look around, Luke isn’t there anymore, I search along the side of the embankment to find him and then feel a hand on my shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he says, suddenly there again and looking at me like I’m the crazy one.

“Where’d you go?”

“I didn’t go anywhere, I just went invisible, and now you are too.”

“You’re not breaking the magician allegations.” I follow behind as he walks toward the front of the train, “Are you not concerned about dying when the batteries explode?”

“No, and you shouldn’t be either, angels can’t get hurt that way.”

“Does that include angels with no idea what they’re doing?”

He walks to the forward most car and then, well fuck me, he just walks through the wall inside in. I see if I can follow behind him, but just hit against the side of the car. Then his arm comes back through the metal and pulls me inside along with him.

“Case in point,” I say, “I don’t have my ghost powers yet!”

He looks at me with all the disappointment of a parent watching their baby squish their birthday cake through their little hands. “If I figured it out you’ll figure it out, too.”

He’s moving again, looking between the seats, the ceiling is already starting to fill with a thick white spoke.
“Here we go,” he reaches down and picks up a young boy, looking no older than twelve, with a big ugly gash on his forehead. “Crash must have knocked him out.”

He pulls him up and looks toward the open exit near the front, fire now lapping around the edges of it.

“Let’s run,” he says, and we do. The ground beneath my feet barely registers as I plants both feet down hard as I leap from the door and keep running up the hill of the embankment. Luke is aiming straight for a fire rescue track that’s pulled off on the side of the road, and behind me I hear a large crack, then my back feels hot, then I’m face down in the grass on the side of the road.

I look up and feel warmth down my face, and taste blood from my nose running over my lips. Luke has laid the boy down on a stretcher and one of the fire rescue EMTs is looking him over. I see Luke turn his head toward me and we lock eyes. He smiles and walks back down the embankment toward me.

“Not bad for a first day,” he offers a hand and lifts me to my feet.

“What happened to the bit about angels not getting hurt? I ask and cradle my nose.”

“I guess angels who don’t know what they’re doing can be after all. Thankfully, we can fix that.”