A Hint of Blue

Impending darkness surrounds my eyes but soon replaced by faint glimpses of color. Brown and… yellow? My back is weighted down as if gravity is twice fold. At least that tells me I’m lying on my back. Barely able to turn my head, I face a wall of green. A deep green with a hint of blue. Such a beautiful color. My favorite color. It feels soft and comforting, like velvet. The burden on my body lightens as I slowly gain mobility and sight. My body shifts as the blobs of color start to draw outlines. The brown covers the wall and ceiling, creating corners and framing windows. The yellow condenses into individual orbs of light. The deep green multiplied into numerous walls, some holding their own silhouettes.

Still hardly able to keep my eyes open, I muster the strength to move my legs. As I move them away from the wall, my legs suddenly drop with a thud, giving me the momentum to sit myself up. I look around as deep green velvet chairs fill the entire room, some holding what were once silhouettes but now people. Not every chair is occupied, but there is a decent amount of people; approximately 20 people give or take. The room is thin, yet long, with rows of deep green chairs on each side divided by an aisle blanketed on the floor with a tacky carpet. A bus? Out the window depicts large fields with occasional trees passing by. I see a corn field fly by. At the same time the window reflects my own field of corn in my hair along with my pale skin. The view passes at high speeds, too fast for a bus. This must be a train.

I look ahead to the people in front of me. Some people are facing forward away from me while others are looking around nervously, yet they seem to be calmer than I am. I look behind me to be right against a wall: the back of the car. As I turn back around, I am met with the face of a middle-aged man looking right back at me. His eyes are wide and his mouth wide open, a look of pure shock on his face.

“How did you get there!?” he said frantically.

“I have no idea!” I replied, puzzled.

His face slightly softened to a puzzled look. He paused for a moment. That gave me enough time to calm my nerves down enough as he did the same. His face scared me.

“I have no clue how I got here either,” he said. “My names Stephen.”

“I’m Kat. Do you know where this train’s going?”

“No idea. I tried asking some other people, but they didn’t know either… What is the last thing you remember?”

I paused. What is the last thing I remember?

Hesitantly I responded, “I… don’t know.”

“Same here. Everyone here seems to only remember their name.”

“Why isn’t anybody else talking though? If everyone ended up here with no recollection or memories at all, I’d expect everybody to try and figure out why,” I said.

“That’s the thing. The woman in front of me was talking to me earlier. Her name is Janelle, and we were trying to figure out what the heck happened but now she won’t talk to me anymore,” Stephen said.

I lean past Stephen's shoulder and see a woman about three rows ahead of him but on the right side of the train. Meanwhile, we are on the left side of the train and Stephen is in the seat directly in front of me. The woman is mindlessly looking out the window, watching the scenery go by.

“Have you even tried to get her attention?” I ask.

Stephen responds, “Yes, I have. I yelled to her a couple times and even yelled to everybody else. Nobody responded.”

“Why didn’t you get up and go talk to her face to face?”

“Nobody gets up. The entire time I’ve been awake, nobody has gotten up or come through the train car.”

So, he refuses to get up out of fear simply because he hasn’t seen anybody else do it. He must be really scared. It’s best I don’t bring this up. If he hasn’t gotten up yet, then I won’t be able to convince him, and talking about it will only defer us from trying to figure out what’s happening.

I say, “Speaking of… you haven’t seen any train staff? Aren’t they supposed to come through and check tickets?”

“Do you think we would have tickets after mysteriously waking up here?”

“I’m just trying to gather as much information as possible,” I say defensively. I glance back over at the woman, who is still gazing out the window. “You said her name is Janelle?”

Stephen responds, “Yea why?”

“I’m going to go talk to her.”

“Are you crazy? We don’t know what will happen if you move!” he says, back in his frantic state.

“I won’t know until I try” I say.

I move to the edge of my seat. What if something bad actually does happen if I get up? The thought lingers in my head as my chest feels heavy, burdened with anxiety. Trying my best to suppress this feeling, I shift my weight to the balls of my feet. Slowly I lean forward, my shins and thighs starting to align. My body begins to straighten, and at the same time the train car’s occupants remain oblivious, resuming their patient waiting. In this brief eternity, Stephen is cautiously looking every which way, on the verge of pure hysteria. He appears to be ten years older than me at a minimum. Perhaps the grey suit he is wearing makes him look older, as I would have thought he was a child without seeing him. Stephen looks back at me with a familiar face with his eyes wide and mouth agape: the first face he had when we met. Only in this moment I realized I was standing upright in the aisle. I carefully lift my right leg and step it in front of me. I shift my weight forward, taking a moment to wait for something to happen. The train remains its course and the occupants continue their solitude.

The burden on my chest dissipates as I take another step. I glance to my left and see Stephen, still with the same look of shock. Why is he so shocked? I understand being confused given our situation, but at moments he is in total fear. Never mind that. I need to focus on what is happening. A few more steps later and I am right next to a young woman, who has not noticed me yet as she is still looking out the window. She appears to be around my age, fresh out of college, wearing oversized sweats. College? Did I go to College?

“Excuse me,” I say.

She whips her head at me startled. I wait for her to answer, but she is silent.

I break the silence by saying “You’re Janelle, right?” She nods.

“Hi, I’m Kat. May I sit and talk with you?” I ask.

“Uh ok,” she responds hesitantly.

I take a seat next to her. Janelle holds her gaze at her hands while she twiddles her thumbs; she must be shy. I am skeptical that I can get any information out of her at all.

Unaware of how long I am staring at her, she says, “I didn’t know we could get up.”

“Me either, but I thought might as well try, so here I am. I’m not gonna ask you about what’s happening or how we got here because I’m assuming you don’t know, but I do want to know why you aren’t talking Stephen anymore.”

I take a glance back at Stephen, who is looking right back at me, contemplating on whether or not he gets up.

“I’m waiting to get out of here, and to be frank, he’s kind of annoying and over the top.”

Tell me about it. Though, there is something that does not add up. I ask her, “Why don’t you talk to anyone else in front of you? You don’t seem to be a talkative person, but anyone appearing in an unfamiliar setting would want to figure out what is happening.”

Janelle sighed and said, “Ya’know this ain’t the movies where everyone works together and sings Kumbaya. I had a talkin’ with the old man a few rows ahead of me. It was the same kind of conversation I had with Stephen and probably the same one he had with you.”

She must have been hiding her accent. I can’t pinpoint exactly where she is from, but Janelle’s accent is very thick and southern in comparison to my Philadelphian northern accent. …Philadelphia? Is that where I am from? I can’t remember a thing, but Philadelphia popped into my head for some reason.

When I didn't say anything, Janelle continued, “Trying to talk to other people is pointless. Nobody here knows nothin’, except for the people who have left already, and we obviously can’t ask em.”

I look at the front of the car. What would have been the door is replaced with a wall.

“But there’s no way out, and people here seem to believe that we can’t get up. Are you sure you saw people leave?” I ask.

What Janelle responded with next puzzled me. She said, “I didn’t see em leave exactly, but the people at the front are there one moment, then gone the next. Everybody has been waitin’ for their turn, includin’ me. I was gonna wait til’ I got to the front but now that I know we can move, I’ll head up there when you finally leave me alone.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You can’t move if you haven’t gotten up,” I state. She must be crazy.

“You’re still at the back so you won’t believe me. Now can you leave me alone so I can move to the front? You’re blocking the exit.”

Janelle seems tired of me, which is fine because she started mentioning things that just can’t happen in this reality. Though, I did find some interesting information, and as much as I may find Stephen to be an unusual character, I should probably let him know.

I get up from Janelle’s seat and she does the same. We walk in opposite directions, but something does not feel right. The back wall seems farther away than it did originally. I sit behind Stephen, who was once in the second seat away from the back but is now in the fourth. Why would he only move two seats? He is so weird.

I tell him, “If you are going to get up, you should have come sit by me and Janelle.”

“I didn’t get up.”

“What do you mean you didn’t get up? You clearly did.”

“People on this train moves up towards the front without actually moving.”

So maybe Janelle isn’t crazy.

Stephen continued: “When I woke up, I was originally in the back seat against the wall, but after a while, I turn around and see that I somehow moved up a seat and then you appeared in the back seat.”

This can’t be possible. Though, thinking about it further, that would explain why Stephen was so shocked when I first woke up.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I asked.

“I didn’t believe Janelle until I saw it, so I assumed you wouldn’t believe me unless you saw it too.”

That is a valid point. I thought Janelle was crazy when she first told me about people moving up without physically moving themselves.

I tell Stephen, “Janelle did tell me that the people in the front leave, as in they vanish. Janelle ended up moving to the front and I think we should too.”

Stephen looked worried. “But what if people vanishing is actually a bad thing?”

I’m getting tired of this man-child.

I reply, “We have already been here a while, and there appears to be only two options. Option one is we wait here for what is going to seem like forever where the train magically moves up to the front and makes us disappear. Meanwhile option two is we skip past the part where we wait an eternity and then get to the front and whatever happens, good or bad, will happen. Either way we are going to disappear regardless.”

Stephen thought a moment, then nodded and said, “Ok, let’s got.”

In unison, we stand from our seats, but as Stephen starts walking away, what appears to be a bright blue ribbon falls from his pocket.

I go to pick it up, and say “Stephen, wait you dropped this.” The silky fabric of the satin is rather smooth and comfortable.

He turns around and glances at the ribbon, his eyes softening before I ask him, “Why did you have a ribbon in your pocket?”

“It’s my daughter’s,” he replies.

His daughter’s?

My eyes widen with subtle excitement as I say, “You remember!”

“I guess I do,” Stephen responds with a puzzling look.

I say, “Wait. Do you remember how you got here?”

Stephen replies, “I’m afraid not. All I remember is that I have a daughter, but I can’t even remember her name.” He seems bothered that he can’t remember more. I assume he is feeling guilty that he can’t even remember his own daughter’s name.

“That’s ok. Let’s go head towards the front.”

He nods and we continue. Getting to the front, I see everyone clustered at the front with Janelle being in the very front on the right. What must have happened while Stephen and I were talking was everyone saw Janelle move to the front, causing everyone to realize they can move and follow suit. Though, because of this, everyone took the front few rows, so Stephen took the seventh seat from the front on the right side, and I took the same row but on the left side. We are at the back, but that is okay because now we are significantly closer to the front and ending this unending wait.

Janelle was the first to go. We were waiting a while, but I didn’t realize she was gone until I noticed Stephen had moved to the sixth seat from the front, but I was still in the seventh. Most of the train’s occupants spent their wait in solitude. Occasionally, I would talk to Stephen to break the perpetual silence. There wasn’t much to talk about since we could not tell each other about ourselves, but we did talk about what we hoped would happen once we leave the train. A few times we played games like "I Spy" to pass the time. While we were playing a small voice calls out from the back of the train. What is left of the passenger all popped their heads, looking for the source of the voice.

All the sudden, a small head pops from the left backmost seat. My old seat. The source of the voice is a young boy, probably no older than ten. He is the youngest person I have seen in here. I decide to go over to him and usher him towards the front. He had a lot of questions, as did all of us when we first got here, but I decide I’m not going to tell him everything because he is just a kid. What I do tell him is that the train is magic and is going to transport of somewhere, but he must be patient. His eye light up with anticipation and excitement. I glance over at Stephen, who is looking at the child with a remorseful look.

For a while Stephen, the boy, and I play "I Spy" along with this game the boy taught us called “Sticks.” I was never the greatest at math, but the game was certainly fun. I'm terrible at math? It appears the closer to the front I get, the more random information about myself pops in my head. After playing for a while, we sit in solitude. I spend a lot of time looking at the deep green seats. Why is it my favorite color? It honestly feels sort of familiar.

More people gradually show up and fill what was once my seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, and third seats from the front. I am one seat away from disappearing. I start to worry if Stephen really was right and disappearing leads to something terrible. I don’t want to disappear from existence. I’m scared. All I can think about is how much I want to see my mom. My mom? I don’t know who she is, but I just want to see her.

I look up and am faced with a wall. So, this is it. I look over to my right and Stephen is over there. He flashes a sincere smile then looks down at his hand, holding the bright blue ribbon. I am glad I got to spend this time with Stephen. I originally thought Stephen was immature and strange, but he is actually a gentle and kind person. I just wish I could have known him outside of this train car.

In a breathy whisper, Stephen says, “Sophia.”

“What?” I ask, but as I look up at him, he is no longer there.

I guess it is my turn now. I am no longer afraid. I am ready to face what is beyond this train. I look down at my hands. They are slightly shaking in both fear and anticipation. My hands then start to lighten, as do the rest of my seat.

What was once a wall, the entire front of the train is open, revealing a large vintage ballroom light ever so brightly and with gold trims and large marble columns. I look over to the rest of the people on the train, who don’t seem to notice what lies ahead. So, this is what I have been waiting for. All worry and doubt washes away as I get up and enter the ballroom. There are chairs everywhere, filled with people of all types and ages. They all seem so lively and happy. I walk through the ballroom and see Janelle. She is by herself, so I go over to her.

“Hey,” I say. “Do you want some company?”

“Thank you for offerin’, but I’m actually waitin’ for someone.”

I say, “Of course. You take care.”

I walk further into the ballroom. A bright blue ribbon catches the corner of my eye, only this time it resides in a young girl’s chocolate hair. Standing in front of her is Stephen, who glances in my direction and gives me a wave. I was tempted to walk over but something else catches my attention. Against the furthest wall of the ballroom, stands two chairs facing each other. One is empty while the other holds a woman with hair resembling a field of corn. The woman sees me and gets up from her lonely throne as she walks over to me.

"Kat?" she asks.

Now Standing in front of me, I glance at her face. She looks so beautiful and warm. Her eyes glisten with a deep green. In the green, there is a hint of blue. My favorite color.