Cinder Station area

From Candypedia
Cinder Station area
First appearanceConfrontation, page 2
January 15, 2010
Related charactersMike, Lucy, Daisy, Paulo, Sue, Alejandro, Toby

Cinder Station area is a derelict district around a passenger rail stop. The station’s vandalized sign identifies it as Cinder Station.[1] It is the setting of Confrontation, when Alejandro and Toby ambush the stranded group in a dead-end alley at night.

Description

The station itself is a bare platform with a “STAND BEHIND YELLOW” stripe and a sign on a post beside a chain-link fence. Somebody has scrawled “FUCK” across the middle of the sign.[1] The main street beyond it is lined with two- and three-storey brick storefronts, nearly all of them boarded up. There are fly-posted walls, a collapsing awning, and an abandoned car with a shattered windscreen. Sue sums it up on arrival, complaining that “everything’s either closed or boarded up” and calling the place “a wasteland”.[2] Telephone poles line the street,[2] and the city skyline rises behind the buildings.[3]

Most of the chapter takes place in two spots off the street. The bar, “the only place that’s still open this late,” has a pool table under cone lamps, shelves of bottles behind a dog bartender, and cigarette smoke pooled at the ceiling.[4] Nearby is a brick dead-end alley, narrow enough that the sky reads as a thin strip of stars from the ground.[5] It holds a big dumpster stencilled “C585” with a “CAUTION” sign on the wall above it, plus trash bags piled against the back wall.[6]

History

In Cinder Station’s dim late-night bar, patrons play pool under hanging lamps, cues in hand, while cigarette smoke gathers at the ceiling.[7]

In Confrontation, the group misses its bus home and boards the wrong train on Mike’s suggestion,[8] stepping off at Cinder Station late at night with no ride in sight.[1] With everything else shut, they take shelter in the bar. The bartender is a bit skeptical of his new customers (“I hope you brought a pretty convincing ID, sweetie”) but lets them stay, and later lends Sue the phone to call for a ride home.[4][9] The rest of the clientele is less charming. One patron spends the visit leering at Lucy,[4] and Alejandro tricks a hungry Mike into eating a bowl of liqueur chocolates on a bet, leaving him thoroughly drunk.[4][9]

Drunk, Mike wanders after some planted ice-cream-truck music into the dead-end alley,[6] where Alejandro and Toby demand two hundred dollars from the group.[10] When the money isn’t forthcoming, Alejandro beats down Paulo, Sue and Mike.[11] Lucy puts up the hardest fight of anyone, but she never hears Alejandro get back up behind her.[12] He pins her to the ground, and even then she shields Mike, shouting “I don’t care what you do with me! Just leave him ALONE!”[13] Alejandro claws her face open, gropes her, and chokes her unconscious.[14]

Mike comes to just in time, still drunk. He kicks Alejandro into the pavement and away from Lucy,[15] and the two of them drive him away together.[16] When it’s over, Lucy breaks down sobbing “I was so scared!” into Mike’s chest.[16] Sue’s mom drives the battered group home in her minivan. The children tell her that they were practising tae kwon do rather than describing the assault.[17]

Trivia

The Cinder Station sign hangs crooked above cracked, littered pavement. It’s a grim answer to the group’s question about where they’ve ended up.[18]
  • Veronica’s commentary puts a number on the district’s remoteness, joking that Lucy’s housewife mother would “have all the time in the world to take a two-hour drive out” to collect the kids.[2]
  • The version of Confrontation on the site is a full remake of a much older grid-format chapter about half its length, swapped in before Volume One was printed.[6]
  • Lucy never told her mother the full extent of what happened here. Veronica notes that at the time, Lucy brushed it off to herself as “not a big deal”.[19]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 2
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 3
  3. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 7
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 5
  5. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 20
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 8
  7. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 5
  8. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 1
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 6
  10. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 9
  11. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 13
  12. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 18
  13. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 19
  14. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 21
  15. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 22
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 25
  17. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 26
  18. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 2
  19. ↑ “Does Lucy’s mom know the extent of what happened”. Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr. 2026-06-28.
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