The Streets of Vanagoor

Through the open car window the once pure, fresh air of the countryside was replaced by the miasma of the city. The old sugar factory next to the dock pelted the air with droplets of saccharine that made one’s skin feel bitter. Denizen husks drifted aimlessly, lay aimlessly, stood hunched over aimlessly. Walter Lorraine directed the taxi Sherpa to turn off Powell Street and hang a left up Commercial Drive. What should have been scenic was filled with the same, only now it was mixed with the stench of food processing, putrid and rotting. He rolled up the window and sat back, focusing on keeping his lunch down.
 The moments passed and the skeevs reached critical mass at the Terminal Station. Walter flagged the Sherpa to pull over and let him off around there. He spent a minute watching the people listlessly wander back and forth. Tents were set up along the side of the road, goods displayed out front. Walter turned to the taxi Sherpa:
 “Tell me, Sherpa, are all these people here pilgrims?”
 “Pilgrims, beggars, skeevs, junkies, thieves, murders; all the refuse the city has to offer,” said the Sherpa.
 “Why doesn’t the city do anything about them? Surely it would have acted by now.”
 “It’s a city within a city. I let you out here and you won’t be the same. Either you are let into Terminal Station or you become like them—a cocoon waiting to hatch on day that’ll never arrive.”
 “I’m sure I can come back, I really only need to cover this ‘tent city’ for an exposé,” Walter felt to add, “do you know what goes on inside the station?”
 “One can’t be certain, it’s a place of mystery. Most suspect it is a dispenser of Nirvana.”
 “Has anyone ever entered the station?”
 “One man did. Eleven times,” the Sherpa said.
 “Eleven times? How is that possible?”
 “He was a junkie from the boroughs, arrested for larceny and possession. He wandered into the area late at night and banged on the doors for help. Some kind of meth-induced fevered hallucination by the sounds of it.”
 “And that’s how he got in? What about the others waiting around? Surely someone would have followed him in if the doors were open,” Walter said.
 “He entered through a side door, hidden away down the alley behind the loading docks. He had no particular reason to be here, he wasn’t particularly interested in the station. And what do you know? 72 hours later they let him out through the main gates.”
 “Through the main gates?”
 “Indeed,” said the Sherpa.
 “So how did he get back in ten more times?”
 “I don’t have answer for that, Mr. Lorraine.”
 “But you do seem to know a lot about this junkie,” Walter pressed.
 “A kind soul or an attendant from the station calls me up and asks me to drive him back to the boroughs once a year. And I do. The person calls and the next moment the fare is deposited into my account,” the Sherpa explains.
 “Well, I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Walter said.
 He paid the taxi fare and joined the throng of people that milled around Terminal Station. But nobody seemed to know anything about the man who had entered and exited eleven times. They had heard of the story but they didn’t care much for it. Who would want to leave after 3 days anyway, they would say. And so Walter waited, and waited. Eleven years passed and not once did he see anyone enter the station. His journalistic piece long overdue. Now, on the twelfth year Walter Lorraine decided to leave. He called for a taxi and the same taxi driver from twelve years ago picked him up.
 “Tired of waiting? You are too hasty, you should have some patience,” he said. “What’s another twelve years?”