[Option A It's New York. He walked through a door while trying to get a better feel of the city and suddenly he's in New York. He stands on a rooftop looking out over the city and can even seek Brooklyn Bridge from here. The Empire State Building stands out in the dawn sunlight at the tallest pillar in the sky, light glittering off the windows and the tall antenna. Somehow he's come home. He comes to stand at the end of the roof just as a figure covered in flames shoots across the sky and he almost can't breathe.
Pappy?
Option B He's standing on a train and it moves along the track easily, but Toro is more confused by how he got there. It doesn't look like anything special, but Toro is cautious because the change in scenery was so sudden.
"Ah criminy, Mom. I just want to take a walk around. I wasn't gonna go off nowhere, honest. What are ya worried about?"
And then his heart stops in his chest.
"Watch that tone, Tommy. Your mother doesn't want you straying too far when we're about to go through the mountain."
He turns around and there they are, staring right at him--not at him, at the dumb kid who once stood in this same place--his mother's ever so slightly disapprove downturn of her mouth on her washed out pale skin. She sat in the set with a long afghan covering her shoulders and her feet brought up to rest in his chest. She was looking better now than she had all that week and Toro had thought maybe she was getting better at the time, but he knows better now. He knows this was a final trip, it was why they couldn't bring Elaine and had left her with their neighbors.
Fred Raymond was staring at him and Toro didn't know what to do. They were here and they were on a train and this was--
Outside the plains faded into the sparse trees and then a thick forest as the train speeded along towards the mountain the track had been carved right out of. He knows they'll be going around the bend soon and he knows what that means.
cw: death
It's New York. He walked through a door while trying to get a better feel of the city and suddenly he's in New York. He stands on a rooftop looking out over the city and can even seek Brooklyn Bridge from here. The Empire State Building stands out in the dawn sunlight at the tallest pillar in the sky, light glittering off the windows and the tall antenna. Somehow he's come home. He comes to stand at the end of the roof just as a figure covered in flames shoots across the sky and he almost can't breathe.
Pappy?
Option B
He's standing on a train and it moves along the track easily, but Toro is more confused by how he got there. It doesn't look like anything special, but Toro is cautious because the change in scenery was so sudden.
"Ah criminy, Mom. I just want to take a walk around. I wasn't gonna go off nowhere, honest. What are ya worried about?"
And then his heart stops in his chest.
"Watch that tone, Tommy. Your mother doesn't want you straying too far when we're about to go through the mountain."
He turns around and there they are, staring right at him--not at him, at the dumb kid who once stood in this same place--his mother's ever so slightly disapprove downturn of her mouth on her washed out pale skin. She sat in the set with a long afghan covering her shoulders and her feet brought up to rest in his chest. She was looking better now than she had all that week and Toro had thought maybe she was getting better at the time, but he knows better now. He knows this was a final trip, it was why they couldn't bring Elaine and had left her with their neighbors.
Fred Raymond was staring at him and Toro didn't know what to do. They were here and they were on a train and this was--
Outside the plains faded into the sparse trees and then a thick forest as the train speeded along towards the mountain the track had been carved right out of. He knows they'll be going around the bend soon and he knows what that means.
And he can't stop it.]