The Passenger

Warmth, slow and thick as molasses, spread through Helen’s body where moments before the cold lain coiled, slick, and bitter as a snake’s back. The scent of high green pine and cinnamon, deep and old as the hush of a warm kitchen, pulled her through the weight of sleep, and when she opened her eyes, it was with the dull stiffness of limbs left long in a dream. She swallowed, licking the dry roof of her mouth, and moved her fingers as if she could wake them.

A train car.

The words came to her slowly, uncertain, for she did not remember stepping onto a train. But oh—oh, how beautiful it was, how it moved. The soft lurch of it, the quiet rattle, the press of heavy wood and polished brass against the hush of the world outside. She turned, pressed her palm against the glass, and saw how the hills unfurled beneath them like great white elephants, shifting back and back into the distance, the valleys pooling in soft gold, the light spilling through in slants as if it had been waiting all this time just to touch her.

Helen lowered her hands to her lap and let them rest there, light as driftwood, as she looked down at herself. The clothes she wore were plain and soft from use, but there nonetheless. No bag nor ticket pressed against the warmth of her palm. No scrap of paper with her name scrawled upon it. She shifted, pressing her knees together, as if bracing against some invisible current.

She stood.

The train rocked, the breath of the great iron beast that carried them forward. She stepped carefully down the aisle, her hands grazing the curved edges of the seats, her eyes searching the faces of those around her. They sat still as portraits, the hush of the car broken only by the faint whisper of turning pages, the slow click of knitting needles, the murmur of voices speaking words that did not quite reach her.

She stopped beside an old woman whose hair was white and light as the down of milkweed. Her hands, slow, exact, and ceaseless, wove the lavender thread between her fingers, natural and as steady as the tide’s lean against a shore. The woman did not lift her gaze, did not shift, nor broke the rhythm of her hands. She only spoke, as if the words had been waiting long before either of them had arrived. “No one remembers boarding.”

Helen felt her throat close around something small and dry.

"What?"

The hands did not pause. The voice did not rise.

"We all wake up here.”

Helen turned, something unspoken settling deep in the hollow of her stomach, cold and unwelcome. Across the aisle, a boy sat, small and pale, his shoes just shy of the floor, their scuffed leather rocking idly in the air.

He watched her, eyes wide and still, the round and solemn regard of an owl in the dark. "Do you know where you’re getting off?" His voice was soft, without urgency.

She parted her lips, but no answer came. There was nothing to say.

The boy only nodded in a slow, knowing motion and turned his head toward the window. Helen followed, and the world beyond the glass unwound itself in silence, shifting, untethered, unmade.

A city, streets lost to dark water that did not move, buildings sinking slow and soundless as if they had been sinking forever. A field of blackened earth, fire frozen in place, tongues of flame rigid and unconsumed, the air unburnt. And then—nothing. A stretch of sky too vast, too vacant, where no stars had ever been.

Helen pressed her fingers to the windowpane, the glass colder than it should have been, her breath catching.

“Where is this train going?” she asked, but the quiet held its shape, and no one answered.

Helen sat again, hands curled into the fabric of her skirt, her breath still shallow, as if the air around her had thinned. The boy beside her had gone quiet; his face turned to the glass, watching as the last of the sky emptied itself of form. The train shuddered beneath them, a long, rolling movement that felt less like motion and more like a shift in reality itself.

A shadow moved in the aisle. She turned.

The Conductor stood before her, tall, his uniform crisp but strangely colorless, the fabric neither black nor gray, but some impossible shade in between. His face was unreadable, eyes sunk deep beneath the brim of his hat, and in his gloved hand, a small, shining puncher glinted in the dim carriage light.

“Ticket,” he said smooth and toneless.

“I don’t have—” she started, but before she could finish, he reached toward her, the gloved hand making a precise motion in the air, as if pulling something unseen from her lap. Helen felt nothing, saw nothing, but the Conductor pressed his puncher against the emptiness, and with a sharp, metallic snap, the sound of perforation filled space between them.

The boy did not turn his head, but Helen could see a small smile touch the corner of his mouth.

The Conductor straightened, slipping the invisible thing—her ticket? Back into the space where it had never been.

“Your stop will come,” he said.

Helen swallowed. “When?”

The Conductor inclined his head, not in refusal but in something quieter, something like patience. “It always does.”

Then he was gone, moving down the aisle with long, effortless strides, punching other tickets that were not there, his presence swallowed by the soft hush of the train’s passage.

She exhaled slowly, pulse settling back into its cage. The old man across from her, bent with years, wearing a coat too heavy for the warmth of the carriage, leaned forward on his cane.

“Some of us get off too soon,” he murmured, his voice rich. “Some stay too long. Few ever choose.”

Helen turned to him, searching his face for something more, something solid, but he had already leaned back, his eyes closing, retreating into himself. She wanted to ask what he meant, but the question seemed thin, useless in the quiet air of the train. She looked away.

Outside, the landscape had changed again. She could no longer name the things she saw—rolling hills that curved at angles impossible to nature, trees that stretched toward a sky that was neither dawn nor dusk but something caught between. And then the train slowed.

A station rose from the mist, a platform barely visible through the dim light, its edges lined with figures. The first passengers stood. A woman with a face tight with worry, hands clenched around the handle of a small bag. A man, rigid soldier, staring straight ahead. A child, holding its mother’s sleeve with wide, silent eyes. One by one they stepped toward the door.

The woman hesitated. Just for a moment. Then she took a breath and stepped off.

Helen turned to watch through the window. The moment feet touched the platform, something changed in them. Some looked relieved, shoulders unwinding, faces softening into something like peace. Others—others stiffened, their eyes dark with fear, their steps uncertain. But none turned back. The doors shut, the train lurched forward, and the platform slipped away into the mist, swallowed whole.

Helen shivered.

The train carried on, faster now, the windows filling streaks of motion, blurring into a world without shape or place. Then darkness came.

It was unlike anything she had ever known. Not merely the absence of light but something deeper, something vast and swallowing. The train plunged into it, and for a moment, it seemed as if everything had ceased—the motion, sound, even the weight of her own body. The hum of the engine died. The creak of the carriage vanished. The breath in her chest felt thin, unanchored, as if even the air had been stolen away.

She could not see her hands. Could not see the seat, the boy, the window—nothing. It was as though she had been erased.

Helen clenched her fingers, pressing them against the fabric of her skirt, willing the sensation to ground her and remind her that she still existed. The seconds stretched and became unknowable. Were they moving at all? Had the train disappeared entirely, leaving them all adrift in the void?

Then—motion.

A shift. A weight settling back into the world.

The first sound was the low hum of the train, then the soft creak of seats, then the whisper of breath as the passengers returned to themselves. Light seeped through the windows, revealing shapes again—the boy, unmoving, still watching, the old man, expression unreadable. Helen let out a slow breath.

The train carried on.

She did not know what waited at the next stop. She did not know if she would be ready when her own stop came.

But it would.

The air had hardend, or softened, she could not tell which, but it had changed, and she knew it before she saw it, before her mind could place the shift. It was the way breath feels in the throat when the first dream takes hold, the way light slants into a room before dawn. Across from her, the boy no longer watched. The old man, the one who had spoken of choices, had folded himself back into the dark behind his lids, his breathing slow and deep, as if listening to something she could not hear.

Yet something called. Not in a voice, not in sound at all, but in a way that filled her chest like water drawn slow and steady into cupped hands.

She stood. The motion, slight at first, wavered in her limbs as if uncertain whether it belonged to her at all. Then she was walking, each step measured, inevitable, as if it had already been taken before she knew to take it. The train unfurled ahead, longer than it should be, impossibly so, a narrow corridor lined with still figures, their faces turned toward blank mist beyond the glass. She passed the Conductor at the carriage’s end, his shape stark against the dim light, his hands at his sides, his eyes fixed forward. He did not move. He did not speak.

Then, ahead—there. A door, flush against the wall, perfect in its plainness. Seamless, as if it had never been built, only revealed, waiting. No one turned as she reached it. No one stirred as her fingers closed over the handle, its metal cold against her palm, as though untouched for longer than she could imagine.

locked.

Helen exhaled, pressing her forehead lightly against the wood. But as she did, the door clicked softly. It yielded beneath her hand, swinging inward.

She stepped inside.

The compartment was small, bare. No seats, no luggage, no windows. Only a mirror.

Helen’s breath caught. It was her reflection, but it was not.

The woman in the glass was older. Not old—only older, the edges of youth blurred, worn to something finer, something quieter. The bones of her face had softened, not in weakness but in the way stone is shaped by wind, by rain, by time. Lines pressed faintly at the corners of her mouth, her eyes were lines that did not speak of loss, but of knowing. Her hair, dark still, carried its threads of silver, pale as breath against the night. But her eyes.....her eyes were the same. Wide, restless. Expecting. Waiting.

She moved forward. The woman in the glass moved too, a perfect echo, step for step.

“What is this?” Helen breathed. The woman did not answer.

She lifted a hand, hesitated, her fingers hovering just shy of the surface, close enough that the cold of the glass bled through the space between them. The other hand lifted in kind. A moment stretched. Just as they might have met, the train lurched.

The world shifted. The floor tilted beneath her feet. Helen caught herself hard against the wall, her breath breaking sharp in her throat. Somewhere ahead, the whistle sounded, a long, low cry curling through the narrow corridors, winding its way between the sleeping and the waking.

The train was slowing.

She turned from the mirror, breath coming fast, heart pounding in her chest. The compartment door swung open as if pushed by unseen hands. Outside, the passengers remained still, waiting.

Always waiting.

She walked back toward her seat, each step heavier than the last. The boy was watching again. “You saw it,” he said.

She nodded. She did not ask how he knew.

The train shuddered again. The lights flickered. Beyond the windows, the mist began to lift, revealing a station, a platform stretching into unknown darkness. The doors would open soon. Helen’s hands curled into fists.

The words of the old man echoed in her mind. Some get off too soon. Some stay too long. Few ever choose.

She was choosing now.

She rose, weightless for a moment, then stepped forward. The doors sighed apart, their breath warm against her skin, and the platform lay before her—unfamiliar, waiting, a hush of stone and shadow beneath the dim glow of the lamps. Her feet lingered at the edge, toes poised at the seam between what had been and what would be.

She turned. The boy had not moved. The Conductor stood as he had before, his face veiled in the shadow of his hat, his silence heavier than words. The old man sat still, eyes closed, as if seeing something beyond sight.

Helen drew in a breath, slow, even, filling herself with the weight of it. Then she stepped forward.

The cool night air met her, slipping against her skin like water drawn through fingers. Another step. Behind her, the train waited, unmoving, its doors gaping wide, an open mouth that might yet swallow her again. She did not turn.

And then, as if it had only been waiting for the answer, the train gave a long, low whistle, a sound that wound itself into the silence like thread through cloth. The doors slid closed with a hush, final and certain. The great iron body trembled, exhaled, and began to move, slipping into the mist, into the night, into nothing.

She stood alone. The silence deepened, stretched, pressed at her skin like something alive. Before her, a path unspooled into the dark, its shape uncertain, its end unseen.

She did not know where it led, but she stepped forward.