The Train

Where I come from, the train is the only way to get anywhere.

  Within the towering walls of our great city, the train is our freedom and our captor. Each day, we wait in scattered crowds at the station, our fragile bodies shivering as we bundle ourselves up in the scraps of our coats against the blistering chill that always hangs in the air like a noose. We fix our eyes on the distant tracks, listening with strained ears for the eerie whistle drawing closer and waiting, waiting, waiting for the flash of glistening steel to emerge from the darkness.

The train is a loud beast, and you can always hear it approaching: the screeching of gears constantly churning against each other, the clang of metal on metal as the train drags itself from one station to another, and the hiss of its brakes and the growl of its engine and the shrieking blow of its whistle cutting through the air as it slices its way through the tunnels to reach us.

There is nowhere you can go in this city that it cannot reach you. As long as you remain in the shelter of our walls, in the shadow of our skyscrapers, in the orange glow of our flickering streetlamps, you can always feel it creeping across the earth beneath your feet, the vibrations a constant thrum of life.

Today, I stand silently at the back of the shivering crowd, my fingers curling around the ratted coat draped across my shoulders as I fiddle with the frayed ends of my coffee-stained tie. It’s the last one I own, and I rub the worn-out fabric between my fingers as I repeat a mantra under my breath: I am not here to stay.

You see, when most people arrive at this station – or any other, for that matter – it because they have a particular destination in mind. You can usually tell by the things they have with them – a briefcase for work, an umbrella for the rain, a book for school – and by that frantic, darting look in their eyes that tells you that they are silently repeating those exact words, over and over: they are not here to stay.

But then, always in the middle of the crowd, you can spot those with nothing but the clothes on their backs, their eyes devoid of any emotion except for a profound heaviness that screams just how tired they are. While others around them fidget and check their watches and glance nervously at their neighbors, these creatures – for they barely are human – keep their eyes solely focused on the tunnel ahead, waiting for that glistening steel machine to appear.

  Once it arrives, they will step through those sliding doors and never step out the other side. In the foggy reflection of its tinted windows, they find their places on the seats and in the shadows of the train’s compartments, burying themselves in the cloak of darkness as if they wished it would swallow them whole.

No one knows why it happens – why everyone feels that nagging urge to board the train and never get off, and why some heed that call and fall into a comatose sleep that they can never awaken from again.

When you look around each car, you can see them in various states of decay. Many are old, some are younger, but each one sits slumped over on the faded cushions with their hands quietly folded in their laps, fingers woven together and hanging limp from unclenched palms. Attempts to stir them are futile: their bodies move like cadavers with little resistance to the faintest touch.

They are little more than ghosts who make the train their final destination.

There are many there who have remained on the train for a long time now, and I can recognize them by face, though not by name: an old woman with sunken eyes and brown, leathery skin in a faded floral shawl; a young boy with deep scars along both of his arms and an old football jersey from five years ago; a scraggly man with a crushed bowler hat and only one shoe.

They used to be a rarer sight: ghastly specters only noticeable as faint, unmoving shadows amidst the bustling crowds. Now, it is typical not to find a single seat unoccupied by the hoard of the dead.

I have long since resolved myself to stand. Even on the rare days where a seat was not taken, I could never bring myself to sit beside one of them, no matter how my sore feet ached.

It doesn’t get easier, seeing them all. You’d think it would, and for some maybe it does, but it never got easier for me. I can’t explain it. There’s just something innately unsettling about it all that I’ve never been able to get over: the image of someone that used to be alive, used to smile and cry and do simple things like bake and run and pray with everything they have, reduced to a sagging bundle of flesh and bones, slowly crumbling into dust.

I try not to look at them too much. It feels disrespectful to ignore them like they’re not there, but to acknowledge that they’re standing there, so close, is to acknowledge how easy it would be to join them.

It’s a long wait for the sound of the approaching engine, and the crowd is quiet save for the same nervous whispers on every conscious person’s lips. No lively conversations or arguments or even polite exchanges of greetings – no one likes to gossip in the presence of the dead. Everyone, old and young, knows that unspoken rule to keep silent when the train and its eternal occupants are near.

But sometimes – very rarely, just sometimes – we get visitors.

You can tell who they are by a few easy signs. Their clothes, for one – that’s the first sign. People on the outside seem to really like a lot of colors, whereas we don’t really see the point in it. The florals, the patterns, the neons, the metallics – there’s no use for them here with us, a people so desperately struggling to hang on to their tattered coats that ‘fashion’ is a foreign word.

Besides, what would we use them for? No one goes anywhere else but where they need to be, and then they go home – wherever that may be.

But the outsiders don’t get that. I almost envy them for their frilly dresses and fresh-pressed suits, their shining metal chains and polka-dotted pants. The way their colored fabrics swish so pleasantly as they weave their way through the crowded platform, scraping painted nails along the walls and flashing golden watches on their tanned wrists, is such an exotic display of wealth and shameless ignorance that it almost makes me laugh, sometimes. To watch such flowers so awkwardly out of their natural environments tends to make one feel like little more than a stone.

Then, there’s the obvious.

You can spot one from across the station when they arrive, all mussed hair and embarrassed giggles and “‘scuse me, pardon me’s” as they weave their way through the solemn crowd. It’s always the same look in their eyes as they emerge from the sea of anxious city-dwellers to approach the platform at the front of the crowd: innocent, unaware of those few individuals behind them that will board at their side.

Today, one makes his way over to me: a young man, just in his twenties I think, with long, gangly limbs and pointed joints. He slips through the crowd like water, glancing off each back and shoulder with mist-like touches to squeeze into the small space beside me. The fine material of his black blazer brushes past my hand as he settles himself in with a sigh. He carries with him the strong scent of something earthly, like freshly-cut wood or soil on a dewy morning, and it is almost overwhelming. It’s such a foreign smell – warm, rich, so unlike anything else in this entire city – that I can’t ignore the burning curiosity that suddenly bubbles up within me. As subtly as possible, I tilt my head to the side just so I can study him out of the corner of my eye.

He's an attractive young man, with curly, strawberry-blonde hair and rosy-pink cheeks that color his round face in a broad blush. A thin pair of wiry specs sit crooked on his pipped nose, and as he reaches up to adjust them, I catch a faint blur of color smudged across his nails. Nail polish. A luxury so few of us can afford.

Then he turns and catches my eye with a curious and friendly grin, and before I can whip my head around and pretend I hadn’t been staring at all, he speaks:

“Jaysus, it’s bustlin’ today, isn’t it?”

His accent is thick, his vowels dragging themselves out of his mouth with a laid-back drawl as he swallows his consonants. I stare at him for another moment longer before sheepishly turning away with a shrug, tightly pursing my lips together like I’m biting back some kind of response. In reality, I’m hoping he takes my silence for rudeness and gives up.

No such luck. “Where I come from, the trains aren’t ever this late. Well, the afternoon rush can be a feckin’ bitch, but ay.” He chuckles lightly, and I can tell he expects me to do the same. I don’t, so he continues.

“I’m an artist, ya know, here on a business trip. Gonna try an’ sell one of me works to some big spenders.” He pats his side, and I glance over and notice he’s got a large brown satchel strapped across his shoulder.  He grins at me again, all teeth, with a great deal of pride flashing in his big, brown eyes.

I nod, still pursing my lips.

“I was feckin’ shocked when I got the offer,” he chirps. “Not many folks ‘round here seem like the cultured type, but yer man seemed very interested. Says he, ‘Lad, I’ll give ya the money fer the trip if ya bring the demmed thing here yerself and show it ta me.’ An’ I mean, Jaysus,” he whistles, patting the satchel at his side again as if to check the precious thing is still there. “But I’ll tell ya, this city could use a bit a’ color innit. An’ I thought me own home was a dreary place – but how do ya live here, man?”

In spite of everything, I catch myself almost chuckling at his bluntness as an unsettled murmur ripples through the crowd around us. It’s amusing listening to this bright-eyed outsider talk like we’re all missing something important when he’s so oblivious to the reproachful glares the other passengers are shooting him, or the blank stares of the few unresponsive bodies in the middle of us all.

That last thought sobers me, but I take pity on him, anyway.

Perhaps it’s a mistake.

“Don’t worry about us,” I quietly reassure him. “We’re doing just fine here.”

It’s a lie, and he knows it. The thing about outsiders is they don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.

“That’s shite,” he chortles, and suddenly it’s become a cold, mocking laugh. A weight drops into my stomach at the sound. “Where I’m from,” he continues, “it isn’ ever this feckin’ quiet. Someone’s always wafflin’ on about somethin’.”            

“Yeah?” I ask, swallowing a thick lob of spit. The thought of such constant noise makes me shudder, so used to that baited-breath quiet we all keep.

“Fer sure,” he nods and bites his lip. I notice with sudden clarity how he’s bouncing on his toes, a jiggling ball of energy while the rest of us stand so still. I wonder how one man can find so much energy just within himself that he can’t even stand still when he’s talking, and the thought makes me sick to my stomach.

We stand there in silence for a minute as my gut churns and my mind wanders and he bounces restlessly beside me. His movements make me antsy – he’s like a human firecracker shooting off wild sparks and I’m standing too close. He makes me nervous in a way that I can’t explain, and the longer we stand there together, the more that sinking feeling digs itself further into my skin.

Unable to stand it any longer, I turn to move away, but then he taps my shoulder and points at my tie.

“Oy, man, where could I find me one a’ those?”

I glance down at the raggedy piece of fabric with a bit of surprise. At a loss, I just shrug. “Dunno. There’re a few shops in town, they’ll probably have something.”

“Ay,” he nods, “I’ll have a look, then. It’d be grand goin’ into a big meetin’ like this withou’ a feckin’ tie. Me mam’d be ashamed a’ me.” He chuckles at his own little joke, but I can’t even find it in me to smile.

He seems to notice my sudden quiet, because the next thing he asks is, “Don’t ya ever get bored ‘roun’ here, with it all quiet an’ such?”

I shrug, avoiding his pointed gaze. “No, not really.”

“It’s a feckin’ quiet place, fer sure,” he presses.

“It is.”

“Take yer man over there.” He jerks his head to somewhere behind him where a lone figure stands. For the first time in our conversation, he lowers his voice. “Fucker hasn’ moved since I got ‘ere. Seems a bit plastered, if ya ask me. Standin’ back there all quiet, not even lookin’ at anyone. Feckin’ pissed, I’d bet, the drunkard fuck.”

I follow his lead and turn to stare at the man he’s talking about. He’s standing a few people behind us, slowly swaying in place as his eyes stare unblinking at the tracks ahead of him.

Something hot like acid rises in my throat. I swallow hard, and the taste burns on the way back down.

But then I meet his eyes – his unseeing, empty eyes – and it’s like something clicks in me. Whatever I expected to find there, hidden in the depths of their dead stare, I am left disappointed.

There is nothing in their eyes. No cold, no fear, no sorrow.

Only the dim, flickering lights of the approaching train.

Slowly, my body turns back to face the tracks. I do not look at the visitor. He does not know what he has done.

My skin prickles in the freezing air. My head tilts back and I can hear the world moving around me, shifting and squirming like it’s grown uncomfortable in its own life. And oh, I think, what a miserable life it is – always so quiet, always just holding its breath, always so afraid to make a sound and wake the dead sleeping between the cracks. It does everything it can to ignore them, the ones it desperately doesn’t want to see – a life that would give anything to be blind to us.

I loosen the well-worn tie from around my neck and rub the silk absent-mindedly between my fingers one last time. The silk is smooth, each line of the fabric slipping along my skin.

I hold it out to him, my fingers wrapping loosely around the crumpled bundle.

“Take it,” I mutter, not looking at him. “I don’t need it.”

He hesitates, at first, before gently taking the small weight from my hand. “T’anks,” he says simply, before loosely draping the worn thing around his wiry shoulders and tying it in a crooked knot.

Around me, the crowd shifts. I barely see them anymore.

I grunt at him, my eyes still fixed on the tracks ahead of me. He says something else, but through the thick haze that has suddenly coated my mind, I can’t make out his words.

They don’t matter.

Somewhere, through the fog, I hear the call: a shriek through the silence, tearing jagged edges through the crowd like a razor blade. My bones thrum with exhaustion, and I find myself stumbling forwards as the stranger calls in garbled words from behind me,

“Ya take care, then.”

I suppose it’s a courtesy, where he’s from. Here, it is irrelevant.

Not much longer. The thought delivers itself to me unbidden, less like a promise and more like a yank, a sudden pull against my ribcage until I’m stumbling forward towards the front of the crowd. To the right of me, a woman eyes me wearily, clutching her young son tighter to her side as she whispers, I am not here to stay.  

The words almost stick, but then –

A glimpse of steel in the darkness, the hiss of brakes dragging along the rails as the body of the beast pulls up to meet me, the tendrils of its steam surrounding me with thick, curling fingers. I shuffle forward and feel the sands of my age sink into the gaps of my bones all at once, letting me know with a cold and resolute shot to my chest that Death holds me in its eternal grip. I cannot explain how I know it – only that I have felt it sinking its sharpened nails into the caverns of my eyes and drawing the colors from them until all that is left is the train.

The whistle, the hiss, the rattle of gears. I can hear it, louder than anything else, and it is alive. I can hear its voice beckoning me forward into a sleep that is eternal and sweet.

There is no destination. There is no final stop. There is only an endless journey, rolling across the shining tracks, around and around and around…

With one last triumphant whistle, the train opens its gleaming doors to me, and I shuffle into the car without another word.