Devil-Powered Death Train of Doom #2
"Yes, there are bones galore. I'm not going to take the time to count all of them, but I'd guess that there are about two hundred bones here, and if you round it up to two hundred and thirteen, that's how many I'd expect to have been part of the homeless man's skeleton.
Obviously the broken pieces of a single bone only count as one. "
"I thought people only had two hundred and six bones," said Davy.
"Depends on your source. Either way, based on a rough estimate the math checks out.
Plus, those are clearly human intestines over there, and the lungs are far too big to belong to a park squirrel, and if you squint, that chunk of face stuck to the tree looks very much like the homeless man's face.
So though we can't rule out the coincidence of him being attacked by a wild animal or his body exploding on its own, I think we can say there's a very good chance that your train worked. "
"Okay," said Davy.
"How did it work?" asked Harold. "Did an invisible force drag him over to the spot where we moved his figure? Did his body just start moving on its own, as he desperately struggled to control his own legs? Did he walk over there unaware, thinking he was doing it of his own free will?"
"I don't know," said Davy.
"Did an actual train materialize out of thin air and smash into him? Was it a transparent ghost train? Was the train on fire? Did the ground split open and the train emerge from the depths of Hell?"
"I really don't know any of this," said Davy.
"So many unanswered questions," said Harold. "Let's go home to tell your mother."
"Was he dead?" asked Patricia, as soon as they walked into the house.
Harold nodded. "It was awful. It was like he was a giant Lego man, and they hadn't assembled him yet.
You know that first stage where you open up the package and pour the Lego bricks out all over the floor, so that it looks nothing at all like the giant Lego man you're about to construct? That's what he looked like."
"How ghastly."
"Anyway, yes, our son's train set is capable of murdering people in real life. I guess it's good that we didn't waste an entire afternoon worrying about something that didn't pan out, but I'm still horrified."
"So what are we going to do?" asked Patricia.
"We're going to get a pickaxe out of the garage and smash that thing to smithereens."
"What if that angers Satan?"
"He'll get over it."
"Shouldn't we think about this? Maybe there's a practical use for it that we haven't considered yet."
Harold frowned. "You're sounding like a raging psychopath right now, and I don't like that one bit."
"I'm not suggesting that we should go on a thrill-killing spree," said Patricia.
"But what if, hypothetically, somebody had the power to use a toy train to kill Hitler, and, hypothetically, instead of killing Hitler they bashed it to smithereens with a pickaxe?
They'd have felt pretty silly watching everything that went down during the Holocaust, don't you think? "
"We can't kill Hitler. This train isn't a time machine, to the best of our knowledge."
"I mean the current equivalent of Hitler."
"Yes, but who are we to judge that? One person's Adolph Hitler is another person's Mahatma Gandhi."
"I feel pretty comfortable trusting my instincts," said Patricia. "We'd make sure that we researched our victim thoroughly before we started the train, just to make sure our opinions weren't unduly influenced by our social media echo chamber."
"Are you actually talking about killing political leaders?"
"Not to start with. I mean, in the hypothetical scenario where a time-traveler went back to kill Hitler, they'd obviously want to practice by killing other people first."
"I beg your pardon?" Harold asked.
"They'd want to—"
"I heard you. 'I beg your pardon?' was my reaction to being flabbergasted.
And I don't even want you to explain the logic.
It doesn't matter and your rationale will just upset me.
Anyway, the model is only of our small town, so unless a deranged dictator shows up here for a visit, we can't really topple any governments. "
"Unless Davy can make models of any location he wants," said Patricia.
"Davy, can you make models of any location you want?" asked Harold.
Davy shook his head.
"See? So we either have to wait for a tyrant to visit our quaint little town, or we have to figure out some other way to make use of the train's nightmarish power."
"What are you thinking?" asked Patricia.
"I don't know. I've never met a real life professional assassin, at least not that I'm aware of—I mean, I guess their whole thing is to blend in, so I could have met dozens of them without knowing it, but I know for certain that I've never had a one-on-one discussion about their career.
Still, it seems only reasonable that they'd kill for a train set like this. Pun intended."
"Was that actually a pun?"
Harold shrugged. "They'd kill for a train set like this. Joke intended. I assume the joke itself was self-explanatory."
"Very much so."
"You got it, right, Davy?"
"Yes," said Davy, without enthusiasm.
"I wouldn't take that material on the stand-up comedy circuit," said Harold, "but for something I composed in my head only a moment before I said it, it was reasonably effective. Anyway, let's move on with the discussion."
"Are you suggesting that we rent the train out to professional assassins?" asked Patricia. "Or are you saying that we could generate revenue by starting our own pay-to-kill-by-train service?"
"Both ideas have merit. I assume that professional assassins are unsavory people that we wouldn't want to welcome into our basement.
On the other hand, people who would hire somebody to commit the act of murder aren't top-notch individuals themselves.
So we'd have to abandon our current lifestyle of only socializing with high-quality people. "
"I like our social circle," said Patricia. "I don't really want to add reprobates to it."
"Then what are we supposed to do? Squander the power of the devil-powered death train?"
"How did we even get to the point where we were talking about using it? I thought we started out being horrified by the whole concept."
"I'm not sure how we got here," Harold admitted.
"Conversations take on their own life sometimes, I guess.
Part of the beauty of human interaction.
If you'll recall, our first conversation was a lengthy discussion about The Amazing Race that ended with us having intercourse.
That's certainly not where we thought it was headed, but there you go. "
"It's not your train!" Davy shouted, making both of his parents flinch.
"Please use your indoor voice," said Patricia.
"It's my train set, not yours. You didn't spend weeks in the basement putting it together. You didn't sell your soul to the Prince of Darkness. Why do you get to use it?"
Harold frowned. "Let's back up to the third of those four sentences. You sold your soul to the devil?"
"Yes. In exchange, Lucifer gave my model train the power to kill people in real life. Why should you get to use it? You still have your souls! I'm the one who's going to Hell, not you!"
"To be fair, I'm probably going to Hell for using your train to murder the homeless man, so don't pretend that your mother and I are headed for an afterlife of harps and cloud pillows. But why would you do this? Why is this train set worth eternal damnation?"
"Because on the last day of school Benjamin tripped me in the cafeteria and everybody laughed, and I told God that I'd go to church every single day for the rest of my life if He'd make Benjamin's head fall off, and God didn't do it like I asked, so I called upon Beelzebub, and he said that if I worked really hard and did a professional job with the train set and signed over my soul he'd grant me the power I craved. So it's my train set!"
"So, Davy," said Patricia, "as you spent your entire summer down in the basement assembling the model train set, did you have any moments of regret?"
"Yes. I regretted it as soon as I signed the contract in blood and it burst into flame. But then it was too late."
"I have a problem with this," said Harold. "Benjamin is a minor. You can't go murdering minors without the police taking a very serious look at the circumstances. We still don't completely understand what happens when the train kills somebody. Did Satan explain it to you?"
"No," said Davy.
"Then we need to gather more information.
What if a giant flaming train manifests itself in our plane of existence to run down the victim?
What if Benjamin's parents are there when it happens?
If Benjamin dies via Hell Train, and the police go door to door to investigate, and they find this eerily accurate model train set in our basement, you'll be headed straight to the poke.
Now, if it's an invisible train, they'd have no way to connect you to the crime.
So I hate to say it, but we'll have to commit another murder. "
"Or we could forbid him to kill Benjamin," said Patricia.
"Davy is going to spend eternity drowning in a pool of hellfire while fanged demons cackle at his misfortune. I'd hate for it to all be for nothing."
"Then who do we kill?"
Harold let out a long sigh. "I like Hot Dog Bob.
I do. He provides a quality product at a reasonable price, and he always has a smile and a witticism for his customers.
But does this town need Hot Dog Bob? Will our economy collapse without him?
Will our children's educations be affected?
Will people be wandering the streets feeling lost and alone? So my vote is to kill Hot Dog Bob."
"I'll bet he doesn't pay his taxes," said Patricia. "All of that cash exchanging hands. No way does he report it all."
"What do you think, Davy?"
"I hope Hot Dog Bob suffers. I hope his final moments are filled with excruciating agony."