Monday morning

Monday morning, grim faces line the sitting area even grimmer faces are to be seen on the people standing.

A metal tin can of a square, holding to many people, makes its rattling way through the stations. The stench of a shattered bear bottle fills the small enclose, the breathing´s heavily restricted through the masks, the overhead light gives of a green tint, which spreads a dampened glow inside the train, dousing the seats and passengers in a sickish tint. The walls of said metal container are lined with graffiti smears, someone going by identity of RAZKING finds its necessary to let everyone know of his previous location and his apparent awesomeness.

 A child is wailing its father frantically trying to calm it, the mother is too busy gossiping over the phone, to be of any particular help to said father. The whining grows louder more and more passengers are glancing up from their phones in annoyance, fixating the cause of the insistent noise some even take to glaring at the poor flustered father.

The train stops, said train´s conductor calls out the current stations name in an unceremoniously tone, with a horrid, incomprehensible pronunciation.

Maria, slowly lifts her eyes of her phone, momentarily straightens up, looks out the window before slouching back down into position strongly resembling a crippled C.  Eyes glued once again to her phone. All the while trying to her hardest to avoid any physical contact with the other three passengers sitting in the squire of seats.

The man standing right next to her seat is clearly in her personal space, Maria gives him a begrudging look as he moves even closer due to the onslaught of new passengers filing into the train. Smelling a mixture of perfumes and sweat even through the thick black mask, she crinkles her nose and tries to block out her surroundings by engulfing herself into the world of social media.

Through all this madness, Maria just prays for the next five stops to pass quickly, for the overly full train will stop at a station where, graciously, most passengers will get off to transfer.

The young collage student is annoyed, Monday morning and she already wants the week to be over with.

Scrolling through Instagram, she desperately wishes for a breath of fresh air and some natural light. The next post on her feed speaks of a cuddly blanket that will optimize sleep experience. Perhaps she could be at home in her warm bed with her cuddly blanket, brewing some calming chamomile tea, enjoying the dampness of the warm water as she drinks it. Wistfully Listening her cat purr and preen under her gentle caress, while watching a funny Romcom and giggling at the actors embarrassingly hilarious antics. She would look out the window at the cloudy cold sky and thank the heavens, for not having to be out and about on this day. Yet sadly… she is.

Maria´s brow scrunches up and a frown forms on her face as her daydreaming is cut short by her reality, which in this case is a conflict between a passenger who refuses to wear a mask and a couple others who are adamant about their safety being at risk and are pressuring get said passenger to leave the train or put on a goddamn mask.

Looking out the window she glowers at the grayish clouds blocking the sunshine making the outside as bleak as the train´s inside. Deciding that she has had abundantly enough of the child’s punctuating wailing and the escalating argument, in alliance with teenager cliché ,she plugs in her headphones, closes her eyes and tries to tune out her current distasteful surroundings.

The next time she flutters her eyes open, she is greeted by blinding sunlight. Dousing her Irises and making them sparkle an even brighter blue. Blinking she tries to get used to the tickling feeling of warmth engulfing her face, sitting up she begins to look around in confusion.

First thing she notices is the sweet smell of Levendale. Maria feels a small pulsating in the back of her head and tries to remember how she got here, but everything seems a confounding blur of colors and noises. Vaguely,  a memory of something wailing and some shouting resurfaces.

Glancing around, she cannot discern why, but sitting here seems anything but particular, far from it seems almost disturbingly natural.

Standing up, Maria takes of her mask and admires the fields stretching on to the horizon, the clear blue sky forming a luring contrast to the deep lilac Levendale fields.  

The Levendale crops themselves, are planted in columns, earthy brown paths lead into the far. Maria now, really focusing on the smells surrounding her, takes in an array of settling smells. From lavender to the musky smell of the earth beneath her. She continuous by taking a freeing breath, enjoying the fresh air sanctioned by the nature around her. The impressive view tempts Maria to stay put, and admire the scenery infinitely.

The peaceful silence, surrounding her is broken by small shrieks imitating from somewhere underneath her.

Looking down in confusion she tries to pin-point the origin of said shrieks. Eyes going wide, Maria´s former expression of confusion morphs to shocked disbelief, as she lifts her right foot and from underneath a row of ants crawl out. After second guessing her sanity, Maria bends down to inspect the screeching row of ants.

When she is almost eye to eye, or rather ant to eye, she sees that most of the ants seem to actually have been crushed under her foot. The few ants left alive were, much to maria´s disbelief, angrily shaking their front leg´s at her, vocally making their displeasure at her blatant rudeness known. Now this, she concluded felt far from natural, in fact speaking ants felt very wrong. While she was contemplating this some of the ants had started insult her, with words such as boofon or trampler, some even calling her as blind as a mole.

Usually, Maria having heard much worse would have found insults such as Trampler quite amusing, seeing as it came from ants, who were angered due their fallen comrades. She found it not really suitable to laugh and instead took to apologizing, as one did when ones mannerisms were called rude.

Seemingly being done with berating the young woman the ants purposely turned away with a “harrumph” and made about their original path.

 Maria could only look after them flabbergasted, when suddenly, a bird landed Infront of her, making her stand back up fast and quickly move away.

Where she noticed what a truly big bird it was, why it reached about 3 feet. Blue and green feathers decorated its massive body, a ginormous yellow beak took up most of it´s disproportionally small head and it looked at her through small beady eyes, that seemed far too intelligent for a mere bird. The bird coked its head to one side watching as maria stood there opening and closing her mouth, in a similar fish like fashion.

 When the bird started to talk to her, she had to wonder if perhaps she had taken some kind of drugs which would explain this lucid world, she found herself in.

As she was lost staring at the speaking bird in wonder, she failed to register a word being said. The brightly colored bird noticing this, snaped it´s beak back shut, narrowed it´s eyes and puffed it´s wings in frustration.

“Don’t you know it´s rude to stare? One would think I had put my feathers on inside out?”

Maria hearing this was thrown back into the present and had just opened her mouth to begin apologizing a second time that day.

When she was, in her opinion, very rudely, interrupted by the Bird who impatiently repeated its formerly asked question “Are you going to eat that?”.

To which Maria could only look at it in obvious confusion.

 The bird huffed in annoyance before starting a series of hand, or as Maria figured, in this case wing gestures pointing to the dead ants on the ground then to Maria and lastly to his beak, imitating a chewing movement.

Finally getting what bird desired for she shook her head, before squeaking out an “n-no thanks”.

The bird in exasperation stated,” So you can speak! well why didn’t you just say so?”

It´s not my speaking which is the surprising component in this situation thought Maria. Though she refrained from saying, seeing as the bird was already agitated. Instead, she just let out a huff.

The bird asked once again, “May I take the dead ants?”

Maria, having given up on reality by accepting the fact that she was having a conversation with a bird, asked what she had been wondering about “Don´t animals just take the food?”

The Bird once again puffed it´s feathers and crooked its head, while exclaiming “why, that would be incredibly rude would it not? No, no its natural order of things to ask”.

Maria had to let out a snort, thinking back to all the documentary series on discovery channel in which animals were seen tearing into each other for a bit of food.

“To plainly take someone else’s meal? “the bird continued in a haughty tone “No, No I was raised better than that.” He then framed himself up to his full Hight and proudly exclaimed” I come from a better flock of feathers; we are not barbarians”

Maria actually thought she saw a little crinkle of the Bird´s beak as he said barbarians in obvious contempt. Making her think if the creatures she had met today where the better of their sort, she would rather not meet the, as the bird would state, “ barbarous” kind.

 The Bird, having seemingly had enough of the conversation started to gobble up the ants off the ground.

Maria would have looked upon it in disgust if she wasn’t hearing noises in her head the formerly subtle pounding resonating louder and louder, the world becoming blurry. She closed her eyes trying to stop the swirling world around her.

Opening her eyes, she was greeted once more by a sickish green light. Just as she begun to regain control of her surroundings, she glanced to the left out the window to see the train was at her stop. Panicking she boxed her way through the people to get outside, earning apprehensive looks along the way.

It wasn’t until she sat at her desk in school that her mind had the time to catch up with her eventful day.

Once again looking out the window at the dreary sky, she let out a defeated sigh, wishing she had had more time in the wonderous landscape of her dream. And with a chuckle she thought, although talking humans are more than enough animals do not have to be mixed in.

Written by Rebekka Blank