I developed some sort of weird cyst on my chest real close to center, it began as a bump and hardened and hurt for a while. Eventually it developed a head as if it were a magnificent zit of epic proportion ready to explode. I didn't want to mess with it, unsure what might occur. One day I was running a train, I was a fireman(student engineer) at the time so I had an engineer in the middle seat and a conductor as well. We're just cruising along and all of a sudden I feel a very warm sensation run down my belly. The cyst thing on my chest had burst. Immediately following the sensations I felt upon my skin of warm puss, I smelled the worst odor I've ever smelt in my life. Pretty gnarly considering it came from my own body.
If I had shit my pants, the worst case of mud-butt ever, it wouldn't have even scratched the surface to what this smell did to that 10X10 locomotive cab. I panicked, jumped out of the engineer seat leaving the train running in it's notch I grabbed my backpack and ran out the back door telling the engineer in the middle seat to please take over, I needed my insulin shot immediately and I was going to take it in the second unit. The engineer took over, I jammed down the catwalk and into the second unit and proceeded to strip my clothes off. I used whatever I had in my bag to clean the puss and made effort to expel the rest by pressing on the lump which was softer now than it had been for weeks. I fought vomiting the entire time, put a new shirt on and wrapped my soiled shirt up in a trash bag tightly then headed back to the leading locomotive.
I smelled the putrid stench of my self created bodily fluids still lingering violently within that small confined cab. They had the windows open and both sat in their seats staring uneasily out the window, clearly not choosing to ask any questions, they had no interest in learning anything about what was wrong with me they just wanted out of that cab and I did too. We had a long way to go still and there wasn't much if any conversation between us the rest of the way. Though I never heard anything from any other coworkers ever about that event, I'm pretty fuckin positive there must have been at least a small(if not wide spread, ugh) tale of the experience spread around behind my back.
I mean had I been in their shoes I think I probably would have discussed it with other coworkers when the stinky guy wasn't in earshot. For the record, I'm not diabetic and I wouldn't know the first thing about insulin or giving myself shots. It was the only thing I could think of that would excuse me from the duty of operating the locomotive into an abrupt evacuation with my backpack in hand. It's been well over a decade since that happened and I still have a mark on my chest where it burst open at. It's nearly black, small like someone stabbed me with a pencil led perhaps, just a faint dark mark no bump no cyst no pain. The only smell that comes close to that was the ice chest, and that's an entirely different novel itself that I may write up some time.
