Agoraphobia
When he wakes up each morning, the first thing he does is open each of the windows. They aren't much. They're stiff like the rest of the old vehicle. Breaking down and on its way to the junkyard like every other piece of machinery. They were things not to be trusted over time. This is what he remembers to have been repeated to him since he was young. A little late for it though, for he had already entrusted his whole life to it really, moving into its little cabin upfront with everything he ever owned within its six by six walls.
A bit of air and light comes in, along with the stench of heavy fuel, crude, used out of cheap necessity by the other drivers. They wanted to make a little more- skim a little off the gas money. If he had something on his schedule, he would have got up by then. That day was a quiet one though, maybe a customer late in the afternoon looking to take a cheap leisure ride to the wasteland or visiting a friend in one of the close cities. It was stuff he didn't need to waste time thinking about when instead there was that smell and that air.
It flooded the cabin where he had managed to fit a tiny bed inside. It was appropriately sized for maybe a seuf, but he could sleep in it just fine with his legs half bent and the rest, thrown to the ground. The whole thing was comfier than the trains of others, he knew for sure after sleeping in one after another since he was maybe twenty-five. Late nights with friends, philosophising about their own self-built politics and questionable morals grounded into them by the people they lived around, ideas they ran out to challenge just because it looked at them funny, the burnt-out identity of someone who was homeless.
Those nights, there were floors to sleep on, sleeping bags he carried on his back, looking for jobs with mutual connections, and that was all fine. Cold-sealed noodles imported from half the country away just so some city could sell off their expired reserves. That was every meal for a while.
This was good then, since now he slept on a pillow, and had more than just instant food in the tiny fridge by the steering wheel. There was hot water for a fresh pot of brew and he still made it the way his father liked with the tiniest dash of milk because that was the 'right' way to make it. There was no doubt there, so it must have been right because everyone drank it like that.
He forced himself to get up, to brew a cup of that stuff. To down it without having so much as a wash first because sometimes he'd forget or forget to bother. It was the same thing now, the same taste for the last what, fifteen, twenty years? Cool coffee, cheap enough to taste like chicory and seawater, at least not as bad and ground up to taste like the motor oil moonshine he used to drink with friends. That which made their throats loose, making the hard to talk about things easy and like that, the symposium.
He took another sip and then another breath. In the mornings, he took his time to slowly get used to the smell, taking moments to let the sharp sting turn into what he was used to breathing. Kerosene fumes mixed with cigarettes, a perfect combination for lung cancer and sudden ignition. There would be nothing to save them if it were to happen, if some idiot put out their bud at the wrong place, stubbed it on an oily sole or smoke in the wrong direction upwind. The metal of the trains would get so hot they'd likely die. There were no real fire escapes in the lot and an extinguisher was half a month's pay for him. It would have been the same for the rest of them. The gates of the place were designed only with two ways in and out, not enough for everyone to get out in time that was for sure. Not out of their own trains, not out of the district.
But it wasn't so bad because he chose to open the windows. To let in that pyromaniac air. Anything else was as suffocating as living at home, in the small house by the bodega where the clerks wouldn't shut up. Where no one really listened and there, he could feel someone's hands around his neck like the edge was close, like the snap was coming really near, so that's when he left and he could breathe again. In that smoky sour odour of gasoline and the road. Dust from the wheels kicked up so hard in your eyes you could cry.
He touched his neck, then his shoulders to make sure they weren't still there. Was it still hard to breathe? In a different way, he decided, and poured the rest of the coffee down the sink where it would drain onto the concrete below the train's tracks and become someone else's problem. He hadn't fixed the system yet and the tank was still busted, but he had so many jobs lined up with the vehicles of some other bloke that it seemed tiresome or even selfish to do his own first. They were paying; he wasn't.
There was money there, in the repairs, of course. There was no more of that odd job stuff that almost seemed to be imitating that of a trekker, to save up for shit he really didn't need but really, to get rid of the feeling of asphyxiation. Things were a lot better now. He reached for his skin again, making sure for a second time. He could have sworn he still felt them. Even in a house that was his own, where it was good, it wouldn't quite leave, like a scar you couldn't rub away. He would have done anything to stop feeling that way but it was almost habit at this point to be ungrateful, unsatisfied, unhappy with things. He checked one last time, finally laughing to himself at the idea. A ghost in his own home. At most, he would jump, out of that tiny window. The temporary fire escape.