Opening my mouth wide, I cocked up my steaming slice of pizza and chomped down on the hot and cheesy triangle of ecstasy.

I had never seen so many mushrooms on a slice, but nevertheless that first bite felt so good.

The second and third were even better, even though the mushrooms tasted a little off.

Once it was finished, I plopped back down on my makeshift bed, a sense of satisfaction filling my mind, body and soul. Forget Cloud 9, I was on Cloud 109.

After not eating for the whole day—with the exception of a few crumbs that I managed to snatch away from a flock of unruly pigeons—my stomach finally felt at peace. Now maybe I could get some shuteye without it feeling as if a Civil War was going on in my inner gut.

Yes, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant would have to take the night off. There would be no muskets lodging themselves in the linings of my organs tonight.

With a calm coming over me, I shut my eyes and wandered off into another plane of existence, one that had always treated me much kinder than the one where I was constantly berated and kicked down—reality some call it.

When I finally came to, I was at the Fordham Road Train Station, standing on the platform with a ticket in my hand and a destination on my mind. It had been a few months since the last time I ventured over for a ride on the steel horse, the last time ended in pain and misery I guess you could say.

But that is behind me now.

Ugly faces attached to ugly people pushed their way through me, fighting for position on the platform. It was as if this was the last train ride to Eden, and only so many riders could come along. I jostled amongst them, pushing my pointy elbows out like Dikembe Mutombo would fighting for a rebound in the paint.

It worked, as I was able to create a small circle around myself, maintaining my position as one of those that would get aboard first. If someone wanted to take my spot, they would have to shove me onto the tracks, and if they even tried that, there would be hell to pay.

“That’s right,” I mumbled to myself. “I am one tough motherfucker.”

With a snarl on my face, I looked down the edge of the platform, onto where I believed the tracks would be, but what I saw shocked and dismayed me.

There was nothing there but a black void with stars in the background. The sight startled me so much that I stumbled backwards, gasping out loud. At that moment I lost my footing and felt myself falling back. There was nothing I could do to stop my descent.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Suddenly I hit what felt like a giant spider web, and stopped for a moment before this “web” brought me back up. On the way back up, my eyes were affixed to the sky, which was no longer blue, but again a black void with stars peppered about, burning with intensity. I was back on my feet when I turned around to see what had propped me up again.

Five faceless men in trench coats stared at me—if you could call it that—and I realized that it was their hands, not a spider web, that had stopped my crashing to the ground.

My head was spinning at this point.

I looked all around and noticed that this black void was everywhere. The only visible object in the entire horizon was the 50-foot long train platform that I was standing on with these faceless creatures.

One wrong step and I would be lost forever in this cruel abyss. A feeling of absolute horror came over me.

Sweat began to bead on my forehead as every single person on the platform pointed to the East. I looked at all of them, the faceless creatures. What were they pointing at? What happened to their faces? Would I survive whatever was coming next?

Suddenly a rainbow came shooting through the black void. It ran across where the train tracks should have been, and everyone’s head snapped to follow the front tip of it as it came through our platform.

My body felt extremely weak. It was as if I could no longer stand, but I maintained my 90-degree angle with the platform, just to see what in Vishnu’s name would be coming next.

And then I heard it, a scream like what you would hear coming from a teapot on the stove, only 50 times louder. For a moment, faces of pain and agony appeared on those who were once faceless, faces that made me more frightened than I had ever been in my life.

The faces disappeared as the shrill sound stopped, and then a chugging could be heard in the distance.

What I saw next made me feel as if I had gone back in time over 100 years. Seeing as how I had no education as a child, 100 years was a good enough guess, for it was an old school locomotive that came chugging down the rainbow track, white, marshmallow-like puffs coming from its smokestack and a coal car attached right behind the lead.

All of the people on the track began to jump for what seemed to be joy, their leaping becoming more furious as the locomotive got closer. While it did seem they were happy, the jumping was so herky jerky that I couldn’t help but feel wary of it.

When it came roaring up to our platform, it slowed down with the front of the train stopping right by where I was standing. Music was emanating from the machine, a song that I could not quite make out, perhaps because I had never heard of it before.

It sounded strangely familiar, but I couldn’t put my dirty finger on it. Nevertheless, everyone including me was entranced by it as we made our way for the passenger cars.

As I headed down the platform towards where everyone was entering, I looked in the window of the locomotive, and was shocked by what I saw.

Dressed in traditional train conductor garb was the character “Dauber” from the old television show Coach. I could tell it was him by has large frame and Hulk Hogan-esque hair. When he saw me looking at him, his eyes pierced into mine as he screamed at the top of his longs, “Alllllllllllllll Aboarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!”

He smiled at me, I did a front flip in mid-air, landed on my feet, and headed to the passenger car.

There was only one seat left as I got inside, and it was about 50 feet down the aisle. As soon as I began to head down, the doors slammed shut and the train began to chug.

The train moved violently as I attempted to make my way down the aisle, and I was having an extremely hard time navigating my way. Every time the train would jerk, I would fall onto someone sitting down. As I bumped into them their face would appear for a split-second, and when it was there it was the most frightening thing I had ever seen. This happened about five times as I made my way down, until finally I reached the seat.

I plopped down next to a morbidly obese faceless woman, and immediately I felt as uncomfortable as I had ever been. Her foul stench was suffocating, and when she shifted, her fat rolls would slide onto my leg, forcing me to lift them up and push them off of me. She grunted and “looked” in my direction when I did that, the only time she would break from smashing food into her face.

It was nauseating. She was constantly smooshing mashed potatoes into her face, because seeing as she had no mouth, there was no hole for it to go into. The potatoes would fall onto her lap, where a quite large pile had already assembled.

Trying to forget about this scene, I stared out the window and into the void.

We seemed to be heading up and up and up, and I could not tell when we would stop. The trip upwards seemed to last forever, and the sweat would not cease dripping from every pour in my body. It was getting hotter and hotter with every inch we moved upwards. I felt faint again.

All of a sudden, we stopped at what seemed to be the peak of the ascent.

Once again, I hear Dauber’s voice as he bellowed “Goiiiiiiiiing Dooooooooowwwwwwn!” into the loudspeakers. This signaled mass hysteria among the other passengers on the car. They began shaking their heads and generally spazzing out in their seats. Their faces would flicker on and off of, and when they were there, the looks were of pure terror.

The mortified looks they displayed were so vile looking that I had to let out a scream of my own.

I let one rip from my vocal chords at the highest possible decibel I could reach, and then the train slowly crept over the peak and began to roll down.

I could feel the wind on my face as we tore down at a furious rate. It felt as if my flesh would be ripped off because of the speeds we were moving at. Screams were coming from all around me. Some of the passengers’ heads were even exploding, leaving blood and brain splattered in the vicinity.

I knew for sure that I would not be surviving this trip.

And then it happened.

I felt the crunch of metal against brick.

The train buckled and passengers went flying from their seats into the air. The screech of the train compacting was deafening. My body flew out of my seat and the next thing I knew I slapped into a hard wall and everything went black.

My eyes shut and it was over.

When I finally came to and opened my eyes, I found myself looking up at five assorted people, among them two cops, an EMT and two seemingly everyday citizens.

And much to my relief, they all had faces. Permanent faces.

As I began to gather my bearings, I noticed a brick wall about five feet ahead of me and a shopping cart that looked as if it someone had smashed it into that very brick wall.

Then I realized I couldn’t feel my appendages and I let out another wail of horror as loud as I could.

Nothing came out.

It felt as if my head was going to explode, here I was lying motionless, and there was nothing I could do about it.

So I decided to listen to the voices that surrounded me. It was all I could do at that moment.

“Disgusting,” said one of the officers. “I can’t believe some slime would do this to a human being.”

“I should have seen it coming,” said the other officer. “I saw the kids go into the pizza shop with a slick look on their faces. I knew they were up to something.”

“What the hell happened?” I thought to myself.

“But I never thought they would load up the pizza with half a pound of ‘Shrooms to give to this poor bum,” the second officer went on.

“Half a pound?” replied the EMT. “That’s enough to kill him on the spot, never mind sending him down the hill in a shopping cart to die.”

“I tried to stop it,” said one of the passersby in a sad voice. “It was just going too fast … t-t-t-too fast.”

“Yeah, we ran as fast as we could down that hill trying to catch him,” said his friend. “We could hear him screaming from the top of the hill, so we tried to intercept it but it was just coming way too rapidly. If we got in front of him we would have been maimed. So as soon as it passed we took off after it, trying to grab the handle … god dammit, he was a bum, but he was always such a kind man.”

“It’s okay boys,” said the first officer again. “You did what you could, now it’s up to us to find the scum that drugged this man and pushed him down the hill in that cart … God damn savages.”

“Oh my God,” were the words that flickered through my mind. “I knew those Mushrooms didn’t taste right.”

And then everything faded to black again.

Questions or comments? E-mail me at y2jimproblem1@yahoo.com