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Collie Parker has been taking public transportation for as long as he can remember.
It was free for kids 18 and under to take SAM and goddamnit, if Collie didn’t take advantage of that. From a simple flash of his school ID, he was able to get anywhere his heart desired; granted he would be home by the set time his Mom gave him that day. He grew up taking the bus with his Mom while running errands and always got a big kick out of pulling on the yellow string right when instructed to. When he hit his teens he was given free reign to take SAM to the mall, park, movies, wherever. He could go to the goddamn Sioux Falls Airport and pay for overpriced airport food if he so desired.
Since moving, however, he has fallen in love with the light-rail system. It is fast, it is reliable, and if you're smart and just don’t scan your card; you don’t have to pay anything. Nobody’s checking to make sure you paid your three dollars before heading into the station. The security guards on the train are not checking for paper tickets like they’re some fucking train conductor. All they do is have chitchat on the clock and wait for a reason to interfere in a situation.
This information lies flat on dead ears, however, since Art is insisting on paying for his paper ticket.
Hank shakes his head, “No, I’m not fuckin’ lendin’ ya a dollar, Art. Buddy, come on, the train’s gonna get here any fuckin’ minute, let’s just go.”
Hank looks a little ridiculous, crossing his arms in defiance and stopping his foot. He decided to dress as a zombie this year and had his girlfriend, Clementine, do his makeup so his face is painted a drained out gray with deep black-red eye bags and moss green bruises on his forehead and right cheek. He tore some rips into a green-shirt, denim jacket, and pair of jeans he thrifted and dosed himself in fake blood. He didn’t need to buy new shoes, his old ass dirty white converse worked just fine apparently. That or he just couldn’t bear to wear another pair of shoes—which Collie is skeptical to believe he even owns another pair of shoes.
“I’m paying for my ticket, Hank, I just only have two dollar bills on my person.” Art rumanages through his wallet, desperately trying to find a hidden dollar bill folded in the creases and crevices. If Hank looks ridiculous then Art looks fucking laughable right now. He refused to stick with Hank and Collie and go as something scary to Ray and Pete’s annual Halloween Party and impulsively bought an astronaut costume online instead. It came in too big for him so he had to get his grandmother’s help to tailor it to his size and add a personalized name tag labeled “Baker” to the front but at least the helmet that came in the mail fits nicely.
“You don’t carry cash on you?” Collie asks. To be fair to Hank and Art, it’s not like Collie looks all prim and proper right in this moment. He decided to do something tried and tested this year and go as a killer clown—not the Joker, he’d rather slit his own throat then be a man who goes as the Joker for Halloween. He’s not being particularly original this year but fuck, that’s a low he will never reach.
He had to do his own makeup and after too much money spent at the grocery store, three separate Youtube tutorials, and an hour long FaceTime call to his sister; he managed to do a pretty decent job in his own humble, unbiased opinion. He has the black diamond-like shapes around his eyes,—which he also smoked out with eyeliner, what a fucking bitch it was to do that—he has the red nose, and he has the curved up smile. He forgoed the white base paint because anything in his budget was only going to make his skin look ashy as hell. He did decide to use some fake blood, placing it around his lips and having it drip down to stain his chin and neck. He didn’t stick with the traditional clown costume because frankly, it looks corny as hell and he would like to keep his dignity, so he’s wearing a bloodied up white-button up with a couple buttons undone, a loose black tie, leather jacket, black jeans, boots, and black leather fingerless gloves. He didn’t need to buy anything and just had to sacrifice a shirt he hasn’t worn in years and has slightly outgrown anyway.
“Why wouldja carry cash when everywhere takes card nowadays?”
“Then use your fuckin’ card! This machine takes card too!” Hank’s starting to talk a lot with his hands in order to emphasize his frustration. A habit Collie assumes he got from growing up in Boston. Or is it New Yorkers who talk with their hands?
Art gasps, “I’m not trustin’ ma card with this thing here,” He lowers his voice into a whisper, “What if it steals my information?”
Before Hank’s eyes bulge out of his sockets Collie pulls out his wallet and pushes a crumpled dollar bill into the slot, “Fuck, fine, here.” The machine deposits one paper ticket and Collie snatches it and pushes it into Art’s hand, “Can we please go now?”
“Oh, thank God, yes, let’s start movin’ people!” Hank starts speed-walking to the escalator and doesn’t stop once he’s on it. By the time Collie and Art make it there, he seems to already be climbing the next one.
“You sure you know where we’re going here, Collie?” Art has turned himself around from the upper steps of the escalator to look at Collie while he talks, “‘Cause Hank likes to act like he knows everything but he’s just as clueless as I am when it comes to this sort of thing.”
“Yes, Art,” Collie makes sure to watch his step and moves across the second floor to the other set of escalators, “I know where we’re going. We just have a few stops to sit through and then we get off the train and then we head out of Exit B.”
Both Art and Collie walk onto the second escalator, “Trust me, I take the light-rail all the time, I know these stations like the back of my mind.”
“Well, if you say so, hermano.”
Once they reach the top of the escalator and on the train level, they find Hank pacing in front of the light-rail route map. “There ya fuckin’ are, what were you dragging your feet, you slowpokes!?”
“Olson, calm down, the train isn’t coming for a few—” Collie gets interrupted by the overhead accouncer, “1-Line arriving in 1 minute. Please stand behind the yellow lines.”
“See! I fuckin’ told you guys!”
“Shove the pole out of your ass and move to the paving, Hank,” Collie orders. The gray textiles on the ground are meant to be used by the visually impaired but the train doors always stop right in front of them so if you snag yourself a spot on them, you’re basically guaranteed to be the first to step inside.
However, as the train comes in, Collie can see that the idea to snag themselves all a seat is basically a fucking pipe dream. Apparently everyone and their mother decided to take the train to wherever they’re heading to in order to celebrate Halloween.
“Oh, that doesn’t look good at all,” Art murmurs from behind Collie.
“It looks like shit, Baker! Man, my feet already hurt from walking over here, now I gotta stand some more?” Hank wails from the other side of Collie’s behind.
“Stop your yappin’ and just find a strap to hang onto,” Collie grunts.
The doors open and Collie moves slightly to the side to let people out before striding into the train and looking for the closest empty straps to hold onto. He grabs onto one and looks behind him to see Art and Hank had managed to get lost in the crowd and are many people behind, struggling to get Hank to properly hang onto the poorly positioned strap for his height. It isn’t until the train starts to move that Collie looks away and faces forward.
He knew there was somebody sitting in front of him. It’s common to have to stand in front of someone sitting down. It’s always a bit awkward to be looming over them, especially with Collie’s tall height, but there’s not much you can do when it comes to packed buses.
What he wasn’t expecting was who was sitting in front of him.
He sees the blond hair first, shoulder-length, and messy with a black bow pinned to the back of the head. Then he looks down to notice the blue knee-length dress with a ruffled white apron sown in and another small black bow near the chest. He takes another look further down and has to clutch harder onto the strap in order to keep his balance. Cute little black Mary Janes placed into white knee length stockings with even more black bows at the top; and if Collie takes a sneak peak above the top of the socks, he can see a sliver of pale thighs in between them and the white ruffled ends of the dress hiked slightly up from sitting down.
“Whaddaya lookin’ at, motherfucker?”
Collie silently mourns having to whip his head up to look at the face that voice just came out of but not for long, “What are you supposed to be?”
“Are you fuckin’ jokin’?” Collie takes this moment to survey the makeup covering their face; the shimmering blue eyelids, perfectly sharp eyeliner, rosy cheeks, and lastly the glossy pink lips words are spilling out of, “What? You’ve never heard of Alice in Wonderland?”
“Oh, Alice,” Collie takes another chance to look over the outfit, “Yeah, I know Alice in Wonderland. You going to a party or something?”
Collie doesn’t know why he’s making small talk,—okay, he does, but—all he really knows is that when the train stopped and the doors opened in order to let out the people whose stop it was, his breathing stopped for just a moment and only continued when he saw that “Alice” wasn’t making any move whatsoever to get up and leave.
“Whatsit matter to you?”
A heat starts to pool in Collie’s stomach as he makes eye contact with…with…, “What’s your name?”
Collie watches “Alice’s” eyebrows unscrunch and his face now covered in confusion, “What?”
Collie uses his hand not clutching onto the strap hanging from above and points to his chest, “I’m Collie, and I am heading to a party,” he points to Hank and Art, “with those assholes over there.”
Hank and Art haven’t been paying the smallest bit of attention to Collie and are engrossed in their own little world with one another.
“The hell are they supposed to be?” the stranger asks. “A spaceman and the alien he brought back from Mars?”
Collie finds himself distracted by the pink shimmer shown across their cheek that is visible now that they have turned their head to look at Hank and Art. “Nah, they’re, uh…separate costumes. An astronaut and a zombie.”
“Oh,” they reply disappointedly, “my idea’s better.” Collie thinks his head blacks out for a second when he sees a lop-sided smile pulled around shiny lips. “I’m Gary. And yeah, I’m headed to a party too. Or at least, I’m tagging along to their invitation to a party.”
Collie looks to where Gary gestures to, finding immediately who he was referring to. A few seats down are two guys, one also blond and a brunet. The blond has a pair of white rabbit ears on his head, a white short-sleeve button up, red bowtie and suspenders, and is fidgeting around with a pocket watch attached to his shirt pocket. The brunet is wearing purple-pink cat ears, a pink and purple striped shirt, has insane face paint on his face creating a cheshire smile and is hunched over scribbling away in some notebook.
“Let me guess,” Collie says, “That's your white rabbit and Cheshire cat?”
Gary lets out a soft giggle, “Oh, so you’re pretty and smart. Don’t see a lot of y’all walking around these days.”
The train comes to another stop, and once again Collie’s breathing stops for a second. He doesn’t know this time if it’s from wondering if this is going to be Gary’s stop or because Gary just called him pretty.
“I’m pretty? Maybe you really do need to go through the looking glass if you can’t see how you look right now.”
Collie’s vision fixates immediately on Gary’s pink lips as his quick tongue dances over them. “Yeah, well,” Gary lets out a nervous chuckle as he looks down to smooth out his skirt, “this costume wasn’t even my idea. I didn’t even want to come to this stupid party but Billy over there said he needed an Alice to his white rabbit or whatever.”
Collie’s heart drops, “Oh. Is Billy your boyfriend or something?”
Gary lets out an unattractive snort that he immediately covers with his mouth—Collie wishes he hadn’t. He lets his hand down to say, “Fuck no! The day Billy Stebbins gets his dick wet is the day I eat ma fuckin’ shoe. Plus,” Gary confesses, “he’s not even my type.”
“Oh,” Collie hesitates, “So, what is your type then?”
Gary mockingly puts his finger to his lips and lets out a low hum. Collie didn’t realize it until now but his fingernails are painted a blue matching to his dress.
“I’m not sure,” Collie swallows around nothing as he looks down to see Gary looking up at him through his long eyelashes, “what are you dressed as? A clown?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Collie replies, “My makeup isn’t as nicely done as yours but it’s something, no?”
“Oh, yeah,” Gary agrees, “it’s something for sure. It suits you, so does your whole,” Gary waves his hand around Collie’s person, “get-up.”
Collie chuckles, “What? You think I suit the killer clown look? I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not,” Collie moves in, just a little, and lowers his voice enough that Gary can still hear him over all the various light-rail noises, “if you think I look nice now, you should see me without all this fake blood on me.”
‘Well, I don’t know,” Gary grins all pretty, “I think the blood can stay. Some other things would havta go, though.”
“And what would those things be?”
In the distance, Collie can hear the announcements of the next station they’re pulling into. The train starts to slow down for another stop and Collie’s breathing keeps steady.
Gary’s expression, however, doesn’t. His smile drops and his eyes widen in surprise and panic.
“Shit, fuck, uh,” Gary suddenly stands up from his seat, causing Collie is instinctively move backwards and bumps into an older man’s back. After he makes sure the man is okay, he turns back to see Gary is no longer in front of him.
Collie whips his head around trying to find where he went and his eyes stop scattering once they land on a familiar mop of dirty blond hair adorned with a black bow at the back.
Collie tries to tune out all the noise of commuters and listen to what Gary’s brunet friend is saying, “No, Gary! You can’t borrow my notebook, this thing here,” the guy pulls the leather-bound notebook closer to his chest, “is sacred.”
“Richie,” Gary shrieks, “you know damn well you spent twenty bucks on the thing at the Barnes and Noble just last week. Do not try to act like it’s a holy book or somethin'.”
Richie scoffs, “What would you need it for anyway?”
The train finally comes to a stop and once again, for a third time, so does Collie’s breathing.
Collie does, however, have it in him to take a quick peak to the back of Gary’s visible thighs shown between the dress and the stockings but does look back up to see Gary snatch the notebook out of Richie’s hands and hurries to flip through the pages and rips one out.
Richie lets out a loud shriek, “Holy shit! What the hell—” Gary digs in Richie’s front pants pocket and pulls out a black ballpoint pen and begins to furiously scribble something down on the paper.
“Guys, come on, the doors gonna close on you guys if you don’t hustle already,” the voice Collie is hearing is coming from Gary’s other friend, the guy in the rabbit ears, “if one of your feet get chopped off trying to get through the train doors, we’re leaving it for the rats.”
Gary shoves the notebook and pen back into Richie’s hands and comes rushing through the people moving in and out of the doors to get to Collie.
“This,” Gary shoves the paper to Collie’s chest, “is for you.”
Without anything more than a wink and a smile, Gary barely squeezes out of the train doors with both of his friends waiting for him on the other side.
Collie watches Gary walk towards the exit with his friends pestering him on either side for as long as possible before they enter another tunnel. He opens up the paper to see poorly written letters and numbers.
BLOODY KILLER CLOWNS ARE 100% MY TYPE
(XXX)-XXX-XXXX
CALL ME ♡
- GARY (A.K.A. ALICE)
Collie feels a heat rush towards his face and a smile he cannot hold down.
This lovely moment is ruined however by Hank’s grating voice in the background yelling, “Wait, Collie, wasn’t that our fuckin’ stop?!”