Anatomy of a dead cat by René Kramer (distant reading TXT) 📕

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

-Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven-

He sat in a train, right on his way home. It was one of those dirty, poorly enlightened trains which should have been set out of order years ago. The walls were painted over and over with graffiti, nothing artistic, more like those “Fuck the system”-things, bored teenagers draw when they got too much energy. Outside the landscape passed along, trees, houses, street lamps, everything seemed to be moving except of him.
He had a rough time these days. His whole life seemed like one of the old Leonard Cohen songs, slow, melancholic and accompanied by a voice which sounded like it came out of his own grave.
It had been a while since the train had stopped at the last station and the next one was still a couple of minutes away.
His eyes began to feel heavy, but he wasn't really tired. It felt more like something was overwhelming him. Maybe he had eaten too less the past days. He did not live very healthy, he ate only small meals, drank too much coffee, smoked too much cigarettes. Not really a wholesome lifestyle, but rather “pedal to the metal on the highway to hell”.
He slept very bad that night and so he was in an even worse condition. His view was getting blurry more and more and finally his mind passed out.

When he slowly regained consciousness, the train had already arrived at a station he did not know.
He felt weakened, his head was humming and his whole body felt a little numb. The doors of the train were already wide opened so that neonlight of the station fell into the wagon.
Slowly he began to stand up, grabbed his bagpack and exited the train.
The station appeared to be totally unacquainted to him. He had no idea how long he had passed out nor what time it was, so he took a look at the big clock assembled to the roof of the underground station. That clock looked strange, something seemed to be wrong with it, it was very dirty, covered with light grey dust, the dial was yellowed and the hands moved faster as usual, too fast to be showing the right time.
That whole thing was creepy, it looked like it came out of one of these old horrormovies, silent pictures from the twenties or thirties.
He wasn't able to avert his eyes from the fast moving hands. The long one took nearly two minutes to surruound the whole dial, time flew with speed of light.
It made him feel claustrophobic, stressed, like he would not have enough time for whatever he was about to do.
Things were about to get ugly, he could sense it in some way. It seemed best to leave the underground station to go upwards, where he might be able to figure out where he was and how to get home, so he took the escalator which led to the upper station.

While standing on the escalator, he felt stressed even more. He thought he had wasted to much time by staring at that clock. Due to that, he started climbing the stairs, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
As he nearly reached the top of the escalator, he could already see the train hall of the upper station.
It was a very huge hall. The whole building was made of cold light gray concrete which appeared light blue in some spots, according to the incidence of light.
On the left side, close to the walls of the building, stood some stores which seemed a little bit out of place in a train station. The two biggest ones, a stationery shop and a record store, stood out of the others, mostly junk selling shops.
On the right wall, close to the platforms where the trains should arrive, stood some abandoned fast food booths.

The station was totally overcrowded, it must have been millions of people in there, which made him feel very uncomfortable, because he hated it to be so close to so many people.

Everyone in the hall was moving very fast, the people nearly ran from one point to another without any sense behind the act.
Nobody looked at him. It seemed like they could not see him, like he wasn't even there, but it did not bother him, he was not in the mood to gain too much public attention.
No, no attention, the only thing he needed now was a cigarette. It had been hours ago that he had the last one, so he pulled one out and headed for the big exit doors at the rear of the hall.
As he nearly had reached the exit, he saw that the doors were blocked by big rusty chains and old locks. He stepped towards one of the chains, grabbed it and pulled it very strongly, but nothing happened. The doors were locked and there seemed to be no way to get outside.
That made him feel really uncomfortable. The whole situation seemed to run out of his hands and he was quite over strained in fact of knowing this.
He felt the nervousness overwhelm him and hands started to clench, so the cigarette broke in his fist.
The loose tobacco gushed onto the ground and he angrily kicked it out of his sight. Something really weird was going on in this place, but he could not figure out what it was nor what it had to do with him. It seemed like the entire world had stopped to exist, except of this place and everyone and everything in it had gone nuts. Was this just a dream? Was he still in the train, sleeping on his way home? No, everything seemed quite real, he could feel the hard concrete under his feet, grab the cold iron chain and smell the stench of the dirty station. Too realistic to be a dream, too fucked up to be real. He turned around and let his view roam through the hall.
It appeared a little bit brighter now. The sun shone right through the big windows. But even the increased brightness could not make that place look friendlier.
He spotted another one of those big dirty clocks, which hung right below the exit sign.
That clock's hands were also moving much faster than usual, but he slowly got used to that so he did not take further notice.
The only thing he was caring about now, was how to get out of that damned building, or even better, how to get home.
He walked towards one of the pedestrians in the hall and tipped her on her shoulder.
The woman seemed not to feel his tipping, she seemed like she did not even feel or recognize anything. She just continued her aimless walking around.
OK, that was weird. That was really weird. He picked up a bottle which was laying on the ground and threw it right into the nameless purposelessly moving crowd. It hit three or four persons, one directly into the face, but no one of them even looked at him.
Now he felt really lost, or better, abandoned, like someone who has been left behind on an uninhabited island, somewhere in the middle of the big, wide ocean.
He felt the panic rising inside of his mind.
What if he was captured inside of this hall? What if he never could get out? What if he had to be imprisoned in this building forever, trapped in a box, only with his mind to talk to?
Now he definitely needed a cigarette. He felt so stressed, he could eat it instead of smoking.
His trembling hands felt their way towards the cigarettes inside of his pocket.
He picked one out, lit it and took a deep puff.
The smoke crept into his lungs, made it's way through the veins into his brain.
He could feel it, feel the nicotine burning in his lungs, flowing through the chest into the whole body.
God, that was what he had needed now, that cigarette felt better than a blow job, better than winning in the lottery, better than riding a Ferrari pedal to the metal on a desert highway.
He closed his eyes to be alone with that feeling, so he could feel it a little longer and more intense.
Pure catharsis. Sublime calmness. Spiritual. He held his breath for a moment to keep the smoke inside, then blew it out, slowly, like the act was some kind of meditation.
Now he felt better, not much, but the situation improved, gained from “hell on earth” to “Folsom prison”.
Yeah, Folsom prison...Mr Cash's got the point...”I hear the train a comin' it's rollin' 'round the bend, and I ain't seen the sunshine, since, I don't know when, I'm stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin' on. But that train keeps a-rollin' on down to San Antone...”

. His mind played the song like a record player. Cash's words characterized the circumstances perfectly...this place really was a prison for him. His own prison, where he had been sent to without committing any crime or anything else he knew about.
How did he deserve this? There was no explanation for his situation, no one sued him, no one judged him, so why he had been punished like that?
A million thoughts and fears ran through his shattered mind, but they were all useless. He started again to walk around in the hall.

His steps echoed from off the walls, which gave the scene a very dramatic appearance.
One foot after another, step by step, he made his way through the crowd, his view roaming around, analyzing the ambiance.
Everyone kept walking while he tried to avoid any collision. It felt strange to wiggle through the masses like a snake.

He stopped at the window belonging to one of the sores he saw when he entered the hall for the first time.
It was one of those record stores with long lines of racks which contained a huge amount of records, stored in alphabetical order. The door was opened wide and so he entered the shop.
It was much bigger than it appeared from the outside. He could smell the old paper of the old record's covers very intense, it must have been thousands of them in the racks.
The air was very dry and the radiators were operating at full capacity. He took of his jacket, the heat in there made him sweat, and threw it on a chair next to the entrance. One of the racks, standing only a few steps apart from the chair, looked like some kind of rummage table. The records in it weren't in a clear order and some of them appeared to be second hand.
He stepped towards the rack to have a closer look at it's contents.
Definitely used goods, some covers had big cracks or scratches, others were yellowed or dirty.
The genres were also strongly admixed. Nearly every kind of music was available.
Dylan, Waits, Hendrix, Beethoven, everything. Nice offer, but no one there to buy it. Not even a salesman or shop owner in sight. The store was abandoned, like