Watch and Listen

The countryside is beautiful and never-ending. It sprints alongside the train as if it were a love unwilling to say goodbye.

Harper watches it cycle through its faces – the stretching fields, the meditating mountains and the silent woods – and concluded that she was just like it. Sure she wasn’t so passionate and wild, or even so beautiful (she thought), but she too cycles through her faces waiting for one of them to please her audience.

Up above, the clouds made way for a vindictive sun that aimed to steal Harper's vision so she turned her head back to the train car that encased her. This was probably a smart move, she realizes, for she must always pay attention to her surroundings.

This carriage held only five other people: an older couple down the other end, clearly on vacation across Europe; a young woman who had yet to stop typing ferociously at her laptop; a man in his mid-to-late thirties who had spent most of the journey reading a crisp self-help book; and a young black man who tapped his fingers along to the music that could just be heard from his headphones. Harper had been the third person to sit in this carriage and had made a mental note of every other person who had made their way through.

That was Harper’s job: to notice things. She was good at it too, until it got her in trouble. Harper worked for the government and had noticed a great many people in her time, most of which with bad intentions. That was why she was on this train in the first place: she had noticed too many people of one particular…anti-government organization and they were quite upset with her so her bosses had temporarily sent her away.

“For your safety,” they claimed,

But, of course, that was not the real reason. Harper was observant and unbiased in her observations. Her new team leader – the same one that Harper had observed making a not-so-legal, secret-spilling phone call – had been the one to insist on her “safety”.

The carriage doors at the far end slid open and let through a tall man in a suit who carried a briefcase – empty from the looks of it. He had already walked through three other times, but this time, he didn’t continue through. Instead, he stopped and took the seat across from Harper.

She didn’t know this man by name or face but she knew who had hired him from context alone and that was enough.

“Will you make it painless?” She asked quietly.

He looked shocked that she spoke at all but regained himself quickly.

“Will you put up much of a fight?” He said and she shook her head gently.

“I’m not much of a fighter, I just observe things,” she nodded over to the nearest passenger – the typing woman. “I will ask that you wait until she steps off, though. She’s been writing about the death of her sister. I do believe she is on her way to care for her godchild. Witnessing my death may be too much for her at this moment, I believe.”

The man gave her an odd, thrown off sort of a look, as if re-evaluating her, and made the comment that a target of his has never made a request like that about a stranger before.

“But about loved ones, I’m sure,” he nodded and she did too. “Well, if you’re indulging me, perhaps there is more to be said. That young man with the headphones over there has run away from home. His bags are overstuffed with things he wants but does not need and he is scared because he is alone and that seems unusual for him. Phone calls from his father – or, at the very least, a contact saved as ‘old man’ – keeps interrupting his music and he won’t pick up the call but he is getting very frustrated.”

The man in the suit leaned back in his chair. Harper took notice of his jaw clenching. If she hadn’t, nothing would have looked different about him.

“The reading man is a divorced father of either three or four – I’ve yet to conclude. His divorce was recent enough that the tan line from his ring has barely begun to fade. His ex-wife has the kids and he’s scared that once it’s all done, he’ll never get to see them again. He’s full of regrets.”

“How do you know all this?” The man was looking at her as if she were an alien.

“And finally,” she ignored him. “the older couple. She is sick. Very sick. Terminally, in fact. He’s ignoring it as if that could solve the problem but he holds onto her physically as if she could leave him at any moment. She is scared too. Not for herself but because she is unsure if he will be alright without her.

“Do them all a favor: spare them from watching this. They don’t need that.”

They were bot silent a long time. They say and they stared at each other. They didn’t move. They barely blinked. Outside, the landscape put on its biggest mask as a small towns’ train station slid by the windows. The old woman coughed loudly and the sound of a keyboard clacking seemed almost deafening.

Then, the train slowed to a stop and doors opened but no one inside the carriage moved. Except the man did, eventually. He lay a syringe of the table full of a cloudy white liquid and slid it across to her. Then, he stood up and exited the train, leaving the empty suitcase behind. The man with the headphones let out an exasperated sigh as his phone began to buzz on his table.

Soon, the train moved again, and Harper slid the syringe carefully into the briefcase and looked back out the window. She wiped her sweaty hands along her trousers.

Outside, the landscape took off its mask and began to cycle through its faces again.