The Engineer took a step back, just enough for the grey boy to step aboard.

“Do I need to buy a ticket?” the grey boy asked.

The Engineer only sneered and stomped back into his driver’s bay, each step shuddering the train. The grey boy and Glib watched him go before moving on.

“What got up his butt?” the grey boy asked.

“Tickets?” Glib tried.

The grey boy snorted a laugh. There was a tickle in a nose that wasn’t there.

The train car was familiar in the way that most things are. A place someone has never been before, but have seen a million times. A kitchen, the fish section of a pet store, a dentist’s chair. Places that were wholly unique to their own right, but still the same.

Red bucket seats lined the long benches that hugged the walls, breaking for the empty spaces where the doors filtered in. Vertical poles were installed in neat intervals. Perfectly black windows curved along the shape of the wall. When the grey boy peered through them, he could no longer see the desert.

The door sealed shut with a hiss, then a second. The desert was cut off from the world and the Engineer cut off from them. The whole car jolted, but the grey boy managed to stay upright. He watched handlebars sway from movement that he did not feel under his feet.

“Its a train,” the grey boy said with the final shred of incredulity.

“Of course it is, slim, what’d you think it’d be? A balloon?” Glib said.

“Yeah, but there wasn’t a train now there was.” The grey boy sat down, nestling Glib in his lap. “That's a little weird. I'm allowed to be surprised."

“Happens all the time.” Glib waved him off with a corner of their body.

“In what world?”

“HEY!” another voice yelled, like sludge running through a rusted pipe.

In the shadow of a burnt out light, at the far end of the car, sat a hunched over, formless mass and a pair of neon lights set where eyes ought to have been. It was not the fluid shapeless form that Glib had but something more solid. Bits of it flaked from the top, from the tip of their nose or their sausage like fingers, flopping to the ground where the debris slunk back into their body. It oozed like a garbage heap would.

The second the grey boy had eyes on it, only then did he recognize the stink in the car.

It was shit.

“You need to leave,” it sludged.

“. . . pardon?” the grey boy asked in a very quiet voice.

“You hear me, creature feature?” the trash person asked.

“Creature– that's rich, coming from you, fuck head.” If the grey boy had eyes, he would have rolled them.

“That's quite the mouth you got there,” Glib said as the grey boy set them down on the bucket seat.

“Did I get a mouth?” the grey boy asked.

“You’ve got to go,” the trash person scowled and coiled deeper in on themself. “Git.”

“Uh. Where?” the grey boy asked, drawing out the word and waving his arm over the empty car.

The heap of garbage glowered and growled. Sludge dribbled to the floor with a series of careful plops.

"Yeah, 's what I thought."

The grey boy aimed a long center finger in the heap's direction. Then paused. He inspected his hand and counted the fingers.

"Huh. One, two, three. . . only four? That doesn't seem right."

In the blink of an eye, the trash heap was on their feet and half way down the car. It was fast, faster than the grey boy would have expected. Something of that bulking mass shouldn't have been able to cross that distance with such speed, but soon it was on top of the grey boy, leaving behind a trail of sludge.

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They swung to clothesline the grey boy, but he reeled backwards. More out of surprise than anything, but still it got him out of the line of fire and to the floor. The trash raised their enclosed fists above their head, ready to drop down on top of their victim. The grey boy rolled out of the way and the trash stinking blow splattered as it smashed into the ground. Flotsam hit the grey boy with a wet smack, but he had little time to be disgusted. He scrambled to his feet, his feet and hands slipping as he struggled to gain purchase on the carpet mat.

"Come here," the trash growled.

A thick, viscous hand snagged the grey boy's ankle and his chin hit the ground with a thunk. It scraped across the rubber ribbed floor. A second thick hand got around his thigh and the grey boy decided he just wasn’t going to have that. He managed to roll over, just enough to drive the heel of his free foot into the face of the trash heap.

Into the face of the heap.

“Ah!” the grey boy yelped as his foot sank into surprisingly warm material, but at least his attacker’s grip let up.

“Ah! Ah! Oh fuck, shit, nope!” The grey boy scrambled backwards and this time made it to his feet. “Wow, nope to that.”

“Lemme at ‘em!” Glib said from their bucket seat, wriggling their little globular body. “Lemme at ‘em lemme at ‘em!”

The trash heap recoiled in on themself, sucking in where the grey boy had struck. The sludge slithered up into a pillar, reforming the original hunched over shape, and blocked out the light. Two, beady, neon blue eyes popped out of the orange brown slime. A globule of shit stinking half moist mass dropped from its hooked nose to the floor and got stuck in the divot of the carpet mat.

“What did I do to you, man?” the grey boy asked, his hands up in defense.

“You exist,” the heap said, taking a sinister step forward. “And you’re thinking about me.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to be!”

“Lemme at ‘em!” Glib managed to jump and inch off their chair, turning in the air to follow the stalking trash heap.

“Glib, I don’t think you can take–”

The heap charged again. This time, the grey boy knew to react quicker. He grabbed the stanchion and swung up onto the bench. The heap scuttled by, tackling the empty air, and slammed face first into the Engineer’s door. The whole train seemed to shudder and the heap splattered cartoonishly, squelching like a wet fart. But the second the heap hit tin, their face formed in their back, once again stalking murderously towards the grey boy.

He booked it the other end of the car. The floor shook as the heap chased after him, but he didn’t dare look to find out.

“Ahh!” he screamed.

“Lemme at ‘em!” Glib shouted.

The heap growled and flung a fist. It hit the grey boy on the back of the head and he went down like a moist sack of potatoes.

“Now hold still you little cockroach,” the heap growled.

The grey boy did not obey. He scrambled back to his feet, between the heap’s legs, more detritus dribbling onto his back, and screaming all the way.

“Make it stop! Make it stop!”

“Lemme at ‘em!”

The heap flung their body forward with another blow, collapsing in on themselves, and once again recovering in gelatinous abrupt face. This time, the dangerous neon eyes fixated on the little dancing blob in the bucket seat.

The trash heap charged.

“Glib! No!”

The grey boy tried to skid to a halt, but even with the carpet mat abrasively digging into his feet, he still couldn’t return to his friend’s side. The heap was on Glib in a millisecond. The tiny blob still sang its war cry. The grey boy had to do something. He had to stop the inevitable.

There was a click. A small click. The sound of a tiny key unlatching a quiet little box. For the first time since the grey boy had known Glib, their mouth shut, becoming a tight thin line that ran nearly the expanse of their entire body. A great shadow darkened over Glib and the trash heap reached a flexed palm to grab the vulnerable creature.

And its hand was eaten.

Its arm was eaten.

Glib opened their little mouth into a gaping maw, large enough to house a fully grown human. Or at least, a fully grown trash heap.

Without any fanfare, the heap fell face first into Glib’s mouth, the trap snapped shut, and it was done.

The grey boy leaned forward, one hand out to snatch Glib from the jaws of death, only to be confronted that the little blob might be just that. They scuttled around until they looked up at the grey boy, shivering and shaking, large teeth clacking, and mouth a respectable size for a Glib. Their tongue lolled out.

“Something gone wrong with that cheese,” they said.

The grey boy’s arm flopped down at his side and he leaned his weight against the stanchion.

“Thats quite a mouth you got there,” the grey boy said.

“I got a stomach!”

“You don’t say.”

The operatic song of train brakes heralded the jolt that rippled through the car. The grey boy staggered forward and he gripped onto the bar for dear life. He was acquainted enough with the ground. Glib flopped over and fell onto their head, still smiling and tongue windmilling about. The front of the train stopped first, then the center, and finally the rear.

The Engineer’s cabin door opened with a whoosh and the great hulk plodded out, filling the frame and allowing no light to escape its confines. He pointed to the exit.

“We’re here?” the grey boy asked.

“We’re here,” the Engineer said. “Get. Off. My. Train.”

Without any assistance, the door to the outside world opened. The Engineer glared down at the grey boy with a look that could melt steel. The grey merely gathered up his luggage. He flipped Glib right side over.

“Hi!” it said, remeeting him again.

The Engineer stared down the grey boy, only its deep sunken eyes moving, tracking his path out the door.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” the grey boy mumbled, keeping his head down.

The Engineer’s grumble rolled like an oncoming storm.

The grey boy trotted down the steps and onto the golden colored concrete. Grains of sand wisped over the sidewalk, glimmering white in the pearlescent sunlight, and surprisingly cool underfoot. The train door closed behind them and the steps slid back up, once again leaving a perfectly smooth silver surface. It rushed away behind him, once again disappearing as quickly and as smoothly as it had appeared.

The grey boy wasn’t paying attention anyways.

“I get it,” he said. “Bizarre.”