By NATHANIEL BROWN

Published February 8th, 2016

A retainer set on an apple as if eating it.

A bottle of budweiser, still tipping full against a window.

Shoes stuck to the ceiling in mid step.

A ghost, or was it a kid in a sheet?

A map of Romania, plastered to a window.

A woman with swastikas tattooed on her fingers and fire painted onto her shoes.

A sheet of paper on fire.

A couple fucking in the back room.

The conductor singing, “Rolling, rolling, rolling into Rosemont” in the warm grumble of Louis Armstrong.

A cat, just sitting.

A skateboarder gliding back and forth across the floor.

A woman performing tea ceremony with exquisite balance.

Santa Claus.

A hundred teenagers all wearing purple.

And food fight: the event I added today to my list of things I never expected to see on a cta train.

If you don’t remember, this story began with myself and an older man sitting on one side of a row of seats, when a creature resembling a muddy boulder from the green lagoon entered the train, sat across from us, and started spilling liquid on the floor while smoking a cigar. The story now continues as the old man stood, one hand on the bar attached to the wall of seats for support, his wrinkled face fierce and ready for battle.

“If you don’t put out that cigar,” he said, “I will call for assistance.”

The creature let out a hacking cough, or perhaps it was trying to spit out its appendix. After a moment of this, it reached once more into one of its bags and drew out the last thing I’d expected to see -- a tub of black stuffed olives, fresh and glistening. Then it took a final swig of orange-juice vodka, rested the bottle on the floor and started throwing olives at the man across the aisle. One after another they flew through the air, small green bullets, each one hitting its target with a level of accuracy that impressed me. The old man didn’t move as three olives bounced off his chest. His hands started to shake while six olives hit his chin. His skin turned so pale, I thought he was going to faint. But when the tenth olive pinged off his nose, he erupted.

“ARRGGG,” he roared. Now every occupant of the train car was watching. I noticed one young woman in a business suit talking briskly into her phone as she studied the scene and I hoped that she was calling for help. I looked back at the old man in time to see him throw one of his tomatoes straight into the hood of the creature. I expected to hear a splat, a squish, a something. But the tomato just landed in silence then fell to the floor.

That’s when I decided to intervene. There are few things I really care about in life. Timeliness, first edition copies of the encyclopedia, and finches, to name a few. The passion that called to me at this moment was food. It’s not that I’m a food justice activist, the type who pickets in front of the foul gates of factory farms and screams for change outside the White House. And as much as my dear mother would like to believe it, I also cannot claim to be a foodie who is trying to return our society to the ways of eating that were celebrated by Puritans and early humans. It’s just that I hate to see food wasted. Anything being wasted at all upsets me. That’s probably why I recycle and do my dishes and save leftovers. But I masquerade under the guise of “food justice fanatic” to conform to the norm.

I imagined myself in the next moment of my life as being one of those heroic characters in adventure movies who leaps in front of a friend to save them from a bullet. The only differences were that I lack the physique of most Hollywood actors, I was jumping between two strangers to save a piece of fruit that most people think is a vegetable, and I looked more like a squirrel falling off a tree as I dove through the air. But at the instant I thought I would rescue an innocent tomato by catching it in my outstretched hands, all I saw was the old man shouting at me. But what was he saying? Everything went silent and slowed down as I tried to read his lips.

Socks lout? Mock bout? Watch out?

Watch out.

I had no time to escape it. The orange juice hit my back, splattering up to the tips of my hair and down to my thighs. I landed hard on the floor, sticky, and drenched in a liquid I had just witnessed being poured into the most disgusting person this planet has ever spat out. I lay still for a moment, not wanting to accept that some day, I would have to stand and deal with my bruised side and sodden clothing.

“This is Jackson. Doors open on the left at Jackson.” I opened my eyes to see the old man bending over me, his brow crinkled in concern. I dragged myself up on my elbow and turned to glimpse the black shape exiting the train, oozing a line of vodka behind itself. But at that moment, I was more concerned with the name of the stop, now disappearing into the darkness as we slid out of the station.

A crowd of people were now chattering over me, their iphones out, probably taking snapchats or updating their instagrams with pictures of me defeated backside. I cta personal in a neon yellow jacket was conversing with the old man, who was trying to speak to me. But I wasn’t listening. I regretted my moment of fau-heroism because I had missed my stop. Now I would be at least fifteen minutes late for being early.