The Sleeper

Somewhere between agony and ecstasy, your consciousness tries to seep its way back to you. You swat at it, a fly in your bittersweet reverie, buzzing around the lullaby of sleep that holds you so tenderly within its cradle.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

You are young again, and you are where you belong, wrapped in John's arms. Music is playing; its delicate and ethereal notes charm the air. You breathe their light into your lungs, glowing as their warmth soaks your soul in possibility. Like liquid silk, the pair of you are moving across the dance floor, unsure where one ends and the other begins. Around you, the room fizzes in conversation, a thousand eyes watching as the two of you seamlessly dance the night away without a care in the world.

You try to reach out and into the ephemeral, to capture its essence, to hold it close to your heart.

Your arm will not move.

The whole limb refuses to twitch one muscle. You can't even lift your little finger. It is as though your arm is completely disconnected from your body.

Your heart forgets to beat as consciousness swarms at you, chasing away your dream, screaming at you to open your eyes.

But you can’t.

It is not just your arm; you cannot move any part of your body.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

The lullaby tries to reclaim you.

What is happening?

Where are you?

Your thoughts burst around you like bubbles colliding in the air, simultaneously growing and losing themselves as they come together... until none of them exist at all.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Like a siren at sea, the lullaby pulls you away.

You and John are children, sitting on top of the Crags, looking out over the dark, glassy waters of the old copper quarry. You are setting fire to cigarette papers with John's zippo lighter. On each golden-edged fragment of paper, you make a wish, and before they die in your hands, you release them into the night air, watching as they float away, like tiny, blazing trails of hopefulness filling up the universe one spark at a time.

Your cradle jolts.

You shift sideways, cracking your head against a wall.

Something falls against your shoulder with a thud. You groan, your awareness returning to you in punches.

What is going on?

You pry open a gluey eye.

Daylight stings.

There is a head leaning against you, a mane of thick, brown hair masking its face. Its adjoining body is splayed out from it in a heap of limp limbs.

You stare at it.

It isn’t John.

You pivot your eyes and see the slumped shapes of five other people in the chairs around you.

All of them appear to be unconscious, lolloping against one another, their limbs dangling over the edges of armrests and trailing on the floor, their heads rocking in the judder of the train.

You are on a train.

Why the hell are you on a train?

Your chest tightens as consciousness grips you.

Focus.

Focus.

Why are you on a train?

The back of your head rubs up and down against the beige, plastic-coated wall. Your eyes fight to remain awake as the lullaby clamours for your senses, pulling at gravity to help it smother you.

Breathless, you fight to stay in the light.

Focus.

For the love of God.

Focus.

Why can't you focus?

You look down and see your dress. The beautiful fuchsia dress that was made just for you by an Italian designer. You had been thrilled at how the season's colour had looked so fresh, so perfect against your olive skin. John had been delighted when he had seen you wearing it. He had not been able to keep his hands off you at the party.

The party.

There was a party.

The train banks.

You fall forward, smacking your face on the table in front of you.

You feel no pain.

What the hell is going on?

You look over to the other side of the carriage and see more people. All unconscious and incapacitated, their bodies shaking defencelessly in the rumble from the rails racing beneath you.

Who are these people?

What happened to you all?

Had they been at the party with you?

You try to remember.

There had been incredible music playing. John had hired the most wonderful rhythm and blues band. You remember how the musicians were exceptional, the sound they shaped together had risen from the earth's core in search of kindred spirits to weave into its beat. As one inside the music, you and John had danced together all night, lost in each other's movement.

Your face repeatedly bangs against the formica table as the train squeals against its tracks, and you lose the thread of the memory.

You look up and out through the window opposite. A steely sky, streaked with rain, is rushing past you, offering no marker to where you are or where you are heading.

You blink, trying to steady your gaze as your face bounces against the table. Slowly, you bring your shoulder up to your cheek and attempt to steady your head; but it rolls backward, flaccid along your neck. You drag a dead-weight hand to your face and wedge your palm against your cheek.

In the pit of your stomach, fear and memory scramble together in a slurry of confusion and panic, searching for an escape. It doesn't take long. The train jerks on its tracks, and you wretch, spraying the remains of last night's canapes into the hair of the woman next to you.

You choke in shock, gagging in gasps as reality rips through your guts.

You wretch again.

The train jolts. With your reflexes returning, you reach out a hand to stop yourself from slamming forwards. You grip the table like it is the only thing of certainty in the whole world.

Where is John?

You examine the faces of the unconscious passengers near you. One of them will be John. He never leaves you on your own. Never. He knows you can't cope without him. You have never been able to cope without him.

Not since...

The pain of the memory comes at you like a dagger in your ribs.

Not now.

Dear God.

Not now.

Your tears rise, ready for their hourly shedding.

You beat them back.

You must find John.

He will know what to do.

He always knows what to do.

You push yourself up, bringing your numb legs onto your seat. You look over the headrests down the carriage and see rows of people littered across the chairs. You search their vacant faces. One of them has to be John's. You would not be here without him. Throughout your thirty years of marriage, he had never left you for long. He had even built his offices within the grounds of your house so that he could always be there for you whenever you needed him.

He is always there for you.

Always.

You stare at every face. All of them seem familiar, but none of them are John.

You climb over the person next to you. They do not move a muscle as you step on them. Are they dead? You look down the carriage. Are all these people dead?

You get hold of a foot and pull at it.

Nothing.

No sign of life.

You turn and put your fingers against the throat of a woman sprawled out on the other side of the aisle. John is a doctor; you have picked up a thing or two about life and death over the years. You find a pulse. Thank God. You check another a little further along. They, too, have a pulse. Your breath steadies a little.

If you find John, he will know how to help these people.

You stagger down the carriage; your legs are clumsy, your gait ungainly as you step over stray arms and legs and wind between nodding heads. You pause to search for a pulse wherever you see an accessible neck.

Thankfully, everyone you check is alive.

You look for signs to tell you what has gone on.

You note that some are in party clothes. That must be why so many faces feel familiar. From the party. How have you all ended up incapacitated on a train together?

With a pounding heart, you follow the central aisle through the carriage into the next.

This second carriage is not as full as the last, but its passengers are similarly unconscious. You pause and look at their faces. They are all so young. Teenagers. Would they have been at the party?

You stop and hold onto the headrest of the seat nearest to you and look back at the carriage you have come from. There must be about fifty people through there—all of them far younger than you. The average age in the last carriage is what? Twenty-five? What is the average age here? Sixteen?

You must be the oldest person on the train.

Outside, the grey day drizzles against the window in diagonal rivers. Behind it, a blanket of patchwork countryside rolls into a blurry horizon of pastoral nothingness. The bland, oblique landscape creates a bizarre frame of normalcy around your hurtling madness.

For a moment, you wonder if you are there.

Your mind has played tricks on you many times before. Could this be a hallucination? Could you still be dreaming?

You rub your hands against the stiff brush of the headrest's mauve fabric and your feet against the black mat of the aisle carpet. You lay your palm against the cold plastic of a table.

The tempo of your heart settling a little in the definiteness of it all.

You breathe in and out deeply. Each calming lungful reassures you that, as insane as all this is, at least you have not lost your mind.

You look at the empty, sleeping faces slumped around the table. They are so young, still children. Only a little older than Stephanie was when she died.

Stephanie.

Her memory smashes into your heart like a traffic accident, and images of her beautiful face shoot into your head like bullets from a belt-fed mortar. Her ruddy, rosy cheeks; her sparkling blue eyes twinkling with light; the innocence of her smile as it beams at you, all fissures through your darkness that swirl together, dissolving you within their luminescence.

You are not strong enough for any of this.

Your knees crumble, and you press your body flat to the floor, desperate for the lullaby to take you.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

An arm dangles by your face. A child's arm, swaying in the train's rhythm. You watch it like the pendulum of a clock.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Your gaze travels along the arm up to the face of a young girl with short dark hair. You stare at her. How alone she is. How abandoned. How vulnerable.

What sort of mother are you?

You are pathetic!

Tears roll from you, fat with shame. These people, these children, need you. You are the only person who can help them, and you are losing yourself in a pool of self-pity.

You drag your sorry body onto its knees, hitch your skirts up, hooking them into the belt of your dress to stop them trailing on the floor around you. You wipe your face on the backs of your hands and crawl on.

John will be here somewhere.

You must find him.

He will sort this out for you all.

The next carriage is empty. It carries only a smell— a mustiness laced with whiffs of stale crisps and wet dog. For the first time, you realise how old this train is. Its empty seats are worn; some still have old, discoloured napkins on the headrests, thin dishevelled curtains swing untidily at the windows, and patches of mildew bloom in the corners.

This train could not be in current service.

Whose train is this?

The train pitches to the right, you slide, and a moment later, you are surging along, alone, on all fours, in relative darkness. You have entered a tunnel. The noise of its walls compresses against your ears in a deadening vacuum.

Crawling on, your palms and knees feel their way along the matted carpet, held together by decades of worn, chewed gum. At the end of the carriage, you kneel up, drag open the sliding door, and move forward into the next.

It is colder here and fresher; an odour of furniture polish lingers in the air. The carpets are thicker. The chairs are spaced further apart; some are reclined. Even in the limited light, you know precisely what carriage this is; you are in first class. You look under the seats, searching for legs, for feet—for signs of life.

If John is on the train, he will be here.

You desperately want to find a pair of black Oxfords under the sharp hem of a suit trouser leg. John is always so beautifully turned out. Creaseless in every way. Perfection does not happen; he would say, you create it. According to John: hard work, dedication, and attention to detail are the traits of every successful and worthy person.

You try to be creaseless, to be disciplined. You battle daily to keep John's adoration for you alight in his eyes. Fortunes had been spent on surgeries to keep up with expectations, wellness clinics had been routinely attended, gurus had been commissioned, and convalescences had been served. Still, the drink, the drugs, and the weight gain always seemed to catch up with you. It was agony to watch his disappointment incrementally replace his appreciation.

You reach the end of the carriage and stand.

Before you is a different kind of door, with two handles on it. You twist them both and slide the door open a snatch.

You can hear voices.

You stop.

You listen.

A man's voice speaks, low and gravely in tone.

"Your turn to go and check on the cargo. Make sure they are all still out of it."

There is a grunt and a shuffling of feet. You see the shape of a man through the window in front of you. You duck into the shadows at the side of the door and squeeze under the seat.

A pair of feet stride past you.

They are not in Oxfords.

They wear sturdy boots laced up to the ankle with soles as thick as a tabletop.

Your heart thumps so hard you have to hold your chest for fear it may leap out of it.

Would John be through there?

You wriggle out and crouch by the door listening. What had they meant by cargo? You hear the other man move about. He walks towards you before stopping and opening a side door. You watch as the light flashes on, and he enters the toilet.

The door closes.

You make no hesitation and crawl past the cubicle into the engine room. Nobody is there. The train is racing ahead, through the tunnel, on automatic pilot. You look around, searching for something to tell you what is happening. On the back of the chair, you find a clipboard with a manifest attached to it. You grab it and start to read.

At the top you see the words: Final Destination: Scottish Hebrides. You read on, and at the bottom stamped in red, you read: Scheduled for Termination.

"It would seem that one of them has gotten free."

You whirl around and see one of the drivers leaning against the doorway's frame.

He laughs and shakes his head.

"Plucky things, you clones, ain't you?"

You stare at him. Confused.

"Where is John?"

He laughs again.

"Bloody hell. With his wife, love."

"I am his wife."

"Good God. Were you really? Well, not anymore you ain't."

He grins at you, takes out a gun, and shoots you in the face.

***

Author's Note:

Thank you to @Call Me Les for all your encouragement to get this story done.