//------------------------------//
// Starving Things 
// Story: The Things Tavi Says 
// by shortskirtsandexplosions 
//------------------------------//

	There are fewer and fewer passengers on this train with each stop.

I do not blame them.

I sit, facing west, as layers of landscape morph from green to brown to gray.

Grass is replaced with concrete.

Concrete is replaced with rubble.

Rubble is replaced with dust.

I don't even have my shades on.  What's the point?  The green hum is but a whisper here.  Lights flash with duller and duller emerald between each bent, rusted lamppost.  I watch as a gray sky stretches thick and thicker, pushing the dead clouds higher away—like a corpse protecting a corpse.

A calm sigh escapes my lips.  I'm handling this better than I thought.

Even still, with each layer of filth that the train passes—the abandoned buildings with spray painted walls, the abandoned stagecoaches on the sidewalks, the homes boarded up for miles on end—I can't help but feel like things have stayed the same from when I was here last.

I am a living snapshot that completes this desolation.  All I'm doing is seeking a hole long abandoned, like so many cracks and fissures in the concrete blurring by.  I wonder if I'm the only soul righteous enough—or crazy enough—to return.

I glance at the trees, they scrape the sky threadbare.  It's warm out, and yet this place has been winter for seven years.  Decaying.  Starving.

Waiting for me.

I hope I don't disappoint.

The speakers of the train car crackle to life—or at least they try to.  The conductor's voice ripples across the walls with absurd glee:  "Next Stop.  Detrot Central Train Depot.  Estimated arrival in fifteen minutes."

Biting my lip, I crane my neck, peering out across the dilapidated apartment complexes.  I look for a river.

There's a sliver of glittering blue light—but then it's gone as we descend into a Tartarusian grave of granite and steel.  Lights flicker by.  My ears pop, sending a turquoise ripple through my body.

And there... deep in the city's belly, at last... is the smell.

My next breaths are deep, moist things.  I slip my shades on to avoid drowning in the magenta, and telekinetically reach for my belongings.