'RUNAWAY TRAIN' BY SOUL ASYLUM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT A MAN BEING ABSORBED INTO THE VAGINA OF AN EVIL SHAPESHIFTING ALIEN

Call you up in the middle of the night 1
Like a firefly without a light 2
You were there like a blowtorch burning 3
I was a key that could use a little turning 4
So tired that I couldn't even sleep 5
So many secrets I couldn't keep 6
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep 7

It seems no-one can help me now
I'm in too deep, there's no way out 8
This time I have really led myself astray 9

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way down a one-way track 10
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there, yeah 11

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile 12
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life's mystery seems so faded 13
I can go where no-one else can go
I know what no-one else knows 14
Here I am just drowning in the rain 15
With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything seems cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky 16
Somehow I just don't believe it 17

Runaway train... (chorus)

Got a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughing at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
It's just easier than dealing with the pain 18

Runaway train... (chorus)

Runaway train, never coming back
Runaway train, tearing up the track
Runaway train, burning in my veins 19
I run away but it always seems the same 20

1 The protagonist of the song attempts to invoke a 'booty call' with his prospective partner, at this point unaware that she is a carnivorous chameleonic monster.

2 Here the narrator reveals himself to be an insular nerd who peppers his dialogue with references to obscure sci-fi TV shows. Such an individual would logically be fine prey for a lusty murder bitch.

3 A metaphor for being on the horn. The female creature is in heat, reaching the peak of its reproductive cycle and must immediately absorb a mating partner.

4 Extremely crude metaphor for intercourse. The narrator's penis, or 'key', is in dire need of finding a 'lock' so that it can do some unlocking.

5 The action skips ahead to a point during the sex act when the female injects the narrator with a special venom that paralyses him from the neck down but forces him to remain wide awake and conscious, hence the 'too tired to sleep' dichotomy.

6 The secret that has been revealed to the narrator is, of course, that the woman before him is actually a cannibalistic shapeshifting alien like that thing from Species. She may have made some kind of appeal to him to not tell any government agencies he happens to know, but he concedes that he is a singer-songwriter and therefore incapable of keeping his mouth shut for five minutes.

7 Having one's lower body absorbed into the cavernous birth canal of a monstrosity from beyond the stars is apparently traumatic. The narrator decides that sobbing like a girl couldn't possibly make the experience any more emasculating.

8 Hopefully self-explanatory. The unfortunate protagonist has now been almost totally absorbed beyond the possibility of rescue.

9 He seems to accept some of the blame for the way the evening has turned out. This may be an effect of the mind-numbing poison, or he may have some self-esteem issues.

10 More metaphors. In this case the 'one-way track' is the birth canal, while the 'runaway train' is the narrator himself, who is powerless to resist the powerful contraction muscles that are squeezing him towards the womb, where he will presumably be expected to fertilise the female's eggs.

11 The birth canal is extremely long, hence how he was able to write a song in the time it takes to traverse it. He feels he should have touched bottom by now. All in all he would rather just get it over with but he's still in the transitionary passage, 'neither here nor there'.

12 The narrator is trying to see the good in the situation. He's trying to evoke feelings of happiness in himself by justifying his consumer's actions ('make it seem worthwhile'). But the venom-induced paralysis extends to his face, and he has 'forgotten' how to smile, i.e. his facial muscles no longer work.

13 The narrator feels that all his previous earthly concerns must now fall behind the immediate worry of being hoovered up into an alien vagina. He immediately realises that this is an incredibly selfish point of view when children are dying in the third world.

14 Hopefully self-explanatory. The narrator reflects that the horror of the situation is made up for by the sheer novelty.

15 The 'rain' referred to in this line is a steady 'rain' of digestive fluids that pour onto our hero's body at this point. Having served his purpose, the female, like the female spider, intends to break him down for nutrients to feed her now-fertilised young. This will be a prolonged and painful experience that lasts the rest of the song.

16 The narrator reflects that whatever time it is ('day or night') and wherever the monster goes from here ('earth or sky'), his world will forever be a nightmarish one of pain, pink fleshy walls and pitch blackness.

17 One last outburst of denial before the descent into madness.

18 In this verse, the narrator has descended into delirious fantasy to escape the horrendous reality his life has become. He admits as much in the last line.

19 The digestion fluids have penetrated through the skin and fat to the circulatory system, and may also have leaked into the heart, ensuring that every beat of the organ delivers the corrosive slime to every part of his body and turning a painful experience into an excruciating one. Fortunately he can't possibly live for much longer, which probably explains why this is the penultimate line.

20 I don't know what this line is talking about. It's possible to read too much into this shit.

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