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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Chapter 16: Jesi Jesi woke to it, the blast and the rumble, the train was coming right at her, and where was she? She was in the tent. They were finally camping. The train had to be right outside. Did it run through the woods? She'd never escape it.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

The train let loose three quick hollers but didn't slow, maybe couldn't. Charles watched it straight on. His heart beat in his lungs, up in his neck, and down his back, through his bad leg. The engine was maybe 100 yards away, a football field.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

A wave of deja vu splashed over him. The burning calf muscle, the darkness, he had been there and done that, done this. The train yelled once and then twice, and he could never catch it, not like that. He hobbled toward the track. He would not go back, could not go back.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

The train lowed, and he was ready, set to spring, and then a spasm went through his left calf, a muscle cramp, it contracted and burned, and this goddamn body, everything had failed him, he had failed himself. Good god, it hurt, and he hobbled forward. He'd never be able to catch it.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Charles pushed through the trees. A branch cracked up above in the wind but nothing fell. Goodbye to branches raining down on the tent. A train whistle blew out of the dark, and he had to hurry. He scampered through the trees, scratched his arm against a skeletal limb, but that didn't stop him.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

It did not matter. Goodbye, Eighth Street. He headed out through the path that led to the cement plant, where the trains rolled slow because of a zag in the track.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

He wheeled around, tried to take it all in, the tents and the trees, the bite of the wind, the tinge of woodsmoke, a shaftless scythe of bright moon and a smattering of stars.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

He zipped himself out—goodbye for real. Goodbye, smoking fire. Goodbye, piles of trash. Goodbye, and he looked over to Frankie's old tent. The new family had to be asleep inside by now.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

It was the middle of the night, and he was a fucking idiot, he knew, but Charles couldn't spend another minute here, inside this infernal tent. If he could, he'd light the whole damn thing on fire. He'd burn every trace of himself, every yellow-pitted T-shirt.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

He startled himself with it: one way or the other, he should ride a train out of here. If John could do it, Charles could do it, but John probably hadn't done it.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

It might be good for Charles to read his own book to—to brush up. All that dumb shit he forgot and needed to get mad about all over again. It had gone quiet outside, so they must have gone to bed. He turned and burrowed. Come on, sleep, come back.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Ugh. It was hard not to feel like a total piece of shit when you were a total piece of shit. That was a woman and her children out there, little kids, and it was clearly her first rodeo—she was petting the bulls.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Charles turned from his back to his side, breathed in a mouthful of sourness. He squirmed and listened. He turned again to his other side, but he had lost it, the lovely sludge. Sleep would not let him back in.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

"Do you all need any help, I don't know, moving things in?" Charles asked. "We've only got a couple bags," the woman said. Good. He had vanquished an obligation. A foam mattress required his musty return.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you set up." He led the three of them over to Frankie's tent, unzipped the flap, twisted on his pocket flashlight. Frankie's tent smelled only of tent, while Charles' tent smelled only of Charles.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Poor stupid kid, kids, all three of them. "Camping's great all right," he said, the best he could do. "Yeah," the woman said, "there's only one problem with that." "Yeah?" he asked. "No tent," she said. Charles laughed aloud, couldn't help it, and she gave him a look.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

He left his tent, a man bereft of an automobile, of a home, of a partner. He had a molar that bit hot and would never see mending. He exited the slit in the plastic, exhaled out from the warm into the winter.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

When Charles had shown up at the hole, John greeted him, although that was perhaps not the word. John had accepted him, helped Charles find a flattish spot of ground, this same one he lay on top of now, helped him pitch his tent, the same one he huddled in, swaddled in dark.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

He sat, head clamped between his hands as if he could hold the fritz of sleep captive behind his eyes. "Come on," the voice said. "It—it doesn't matter. No one will care."

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Charles wanted nothing but sleep, sleep and nothing, but the voice had dragged him up from his dreams. Who the hell was out there?

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

His grandmother sounded like the wind, but he didn't speak wind. He would not go get it. He was a boy walking the wrong way through the woods. He would never go home. "Hello!" someone shouted.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

He fell into the deep dark, the dark deep, a constant falling, the collapse of the outer world. For hours or minutes, minutes like hours, he embraced nothing, was nothing.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

He rolled over to his side, and that did the magic, his brain turned mushy. He was a body, a collection of meat. He clenched his eyes tighter, stared at his inner dark. Frankie should, but, no, Charles pushed it away. He settled into the fuzz.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

He squeezed his cold hands under his thighs. A rush of wind jiggled his tent. The finger he broke in third grade offered its usual sore-knuckled complaint. Why did Frankie even come around The Hole anymore?

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

He sunk into the memory of his body, inhaled his spicy-sour BO, the smell of giving up, now a permanent tang. He lolled in his own odor, but in a bit, his nose would habituate.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

He eyed the pile of laundry, as large and as fragrant as a Bernese mountain dog. He should shove it all in the duffel and walk to the bus stop and sit in the laundromat, watch his clothes spin. He should. He had the money for it. He had the time. He was a billionaire when it came to seconds.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

"I don't know that," Frankie said. Charles frowned. "But you're right," she said, "at least about the cold. Sorry—you're not even dressed. You go get warm." "Bye, Frankie," Charles said and turned before she could say it back, trudged toward his tent.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

"It doesn't seem like nothing," Frankie said, but Charles was all nothing and owned nothing. He had nothinged himself down, nearly to zero. He rubbed his arms in a theatrical way.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

"Look—I know he's messed up," Charles said. He was pissed all of a sudden. "Everybody's messed up. You're messed up, Frankie! You act like you aren't, but—" "Whoa, whoa," she said softly. He didn't even get to the part about her fancy apartment.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

"John's kind of old to be catching boxcars." Frankie swiped at her eyes, pushed a hank of peroxide blond out of her face. She shrugged, her lips pressed into each other. "Where is he?" she asked.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Chapter 15: Charles Frankie wouldn't let him go. She smelled of shampoo and cigarettes, running water and money to burn.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

They did not stop. Something fiery clapped through him. He couldn't yell, breathed in his own wet. They had kicked his legs off.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

They kicked and kicked, and they did not stop, and they kicked his hand off, it was gone, and he was losing parts, and he tried to speak, raised his head to say what? Why? What?

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Cheers spouted somewhere, and he took a kick to the kidneys, to his neck, again to his eye that couldn't see, and he spun around the old stones, he was graffiti, but no one could read it, no one would read anything about him.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Somewhere out there, headed to a better place, a train made its bassoon call. A different place. Just different.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

They surrounded him again. From the ground, he could see only masks and boots, camoflauge. Blood dripped down John's face. His hand buzzed electric.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

The weight of men pressed him down, and one of them poppped him in the ear, and then they were climbing off. "He's not even here, bro," the tall guy said.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Someone's leg shot out, and John dodged, but a punch grazed his forehead and then they rained down on his back, and the tall one kicked him again, and John was so fucked.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Someone pushed him, and John lurched forward. The tall man shoved him back, and then someone else struck him from the side, then someone else, like they were playing catch with him, hot potato.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

As he ran, John pulled the mace from his pocket, and as he did, as it all twirled and twisted, as everything everythinged, he heard crashes and footsteps behind him, multiple people jumped and sprinted and charged in the alley. A dumpster lid crashed down.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Damn, he was in a stupid tactical position. John dropped to his knees near the end of the wall, and his left knee popped its dull pain. He lowered his head and slowly pushed it past the lip of the wall.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

John turned to the roofs again. He was being watched, he just knew, but he saw nothing, no M16 sited on him. He wasn’t a crack shot, never was, but even he could have pegged himself off easy.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

A kid used to give him free sandwiches there, at Pickleman's, but John didn't remember his name. This last year, he had forgotten all the names and all the faces, all the people, except one, one face, one idea, and even that one didn't have a name.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

He was at the Antique Mall now, the huge barn of a building. It had a fancy pot or teacup something painted on the side—he could see it in the half light, it had the head of a dog, maybe a spout, and and the dog's curled tail was the handle.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

From far behind, John heard another cheer from the crowd back on Mass Street, and he was not part of that, never was. Acid fought up his throat, and he enlisted spit and gravity to wash it back down.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

John couldn't even tell by the sound if it were the veteran. He didn't know. He couldn't tell. Maybe it wasn't him. John could turn here, walk right through the parking lot, right?

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

"Hey!" someone yelled, a man, and John turned again and faced the great wide column of the alley. The sound had traveled down to him. He would follow it out, even if organs had been scooped out of his chest, even if the blood just pooled useless within him.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

From the back screened porch of the Bourgeois Pig, voices floated, but John's ears muffled them to a mumble of syllables, just sounds, same as an animal would make.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

John had lost him. Wooziness shot to his head as acid burped up his throat. He should sit and cry again. He could, he maybe would.

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Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain! @spitfirespoutrain.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

John took another puff, and it woke him up somehow. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked. “A better question,” the man said, “is who the fuck do you think you are?” “Fuck off, buddy,” John said, “but thanks for the smoke.”

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