The Train Below

The humming was a steady thing. Calming in a sense that let her mind exist on a plane of utopia. The sound was continuous and reliable, a music to her ears free of unexpected bumps or crashes. It got louder the more aware she became of consciousness.

Her senses slowly hardened, and she registered what of her surroundings she could with closed eyes: an antique smell, light hitting the left side of her face, and planks of uncomfortableness beneath her. It quickly dawned on her that this couldn’t be her bedroom.

She shot to sit up, and was immediately regretful as she smashed her head into the ceiling above her, and toppled off of what she had previously been lying on to fall a considerable amount of feet to the floor.

Now her head felt murky and throbbing. She helped herself up with a bench next to her, and was caught by the vision of her reflection in the mirror. She felt like she’d never actually known what she looked like before. She had half a shaved head, and half a head of auburn hair that ran choppily to her shoulder. Her face was slim, and her pale cheeks were slightly concave. She was wearing a white t-shirt, beige cargo pants, black running shoes, and a red plaid shirt tied around her waist. Short grey eyes looked back at her through the mirror, then wandered to the side as she tried to glimpse at the reflection of her surroundings. The rest of the mirror was empty.

Turning around, her foot slid on a card lying on the floor. She picked it up and saw a picture of the face that had just been staring at her in the mirror. Next to it was all but a name: Timbreigh.

Timbreigh looked around what appeared to be a bare and slightly dated train compartment. The seat cushions were wrapped in mahogany leather, and the rest of the compartment was made of oak wood with a touch of glass on the sliding door, but unusually no window. Everything felt box-y and a few decades too old.

She rolled open the door, and was greeted by a person walking right past her so abruptly it made her jump. The person didn’t seem to notice she was there. Timbreigh walked along the narrow hall, determined to find someone who would tell her who she was or where she was going.

Every single person she came across would not tell her a thing. They all ignored her- didn’t even acknowledge her. Now completely miffed, Timbreigh focused on finding her way to the locomotive car.

She didn’t pay the other passengers any mind anymore, they wouldn’t notice her anyways. She pushed her way to the front of the train, and no one tried to stop her when she walked into the locomotive car.

Through the wide front window, Timbreigh could see a barren and desolate landscape, and a thinning stretch of track in front of the train. A stretch of track that didn’t seem to be stretching on much further. Timbreigh was in the middle of nowhere, on a train that wasn’t slowing down, on tracks that seemed they were about to run the train right through the ground.

She began switching all the switches and bashing any buttons she could find, all while the conductor stood calmly and gazed out the window. To Timbreigh, it seemed all the controls on this train were fake- an imitation of something real that you would get for a baby to play with so it wouldn’t ruin anything. There was nothing she could do to stop the train, and she knew exactly how many doors to the outside she’d seen throughout the train: exactly zero.

As Timbreigh waited for the tracks to run dry beneath her, she noticed just how much trouble this train was in; The tracks broke off over top of what seemed like a rather lovely abyss.

She closed her eyes. Held her breath. And felt the fall.

Timbreigh let out a small gasp as her body got used to the sensation of weightlessness. It was like being underwater, but you didn’t have enough air in you to float, nor lacking enough to make you sink. Outside the window, the new surroundings looked like a galaxy zooming by; the lights from the train reflecting off of anything metallic on the rocky walls and dancing like stars, then out of sight the next second from travelling down at light speed.

She could see the bottom of the pit fast approaching. This was it. As far as Timbreigh knew, her life had just begun, and here was the end. A tear welled up in her left eye, and as impact caught the train, it rolled down a cheek covered in unwilling acceptance.

But she wasn’t dead. The train was slowly sliding through a miracle- a miracle made of slime. It was as if someone had sneezed a giant sneeze, and their mucus had formed a web that stretched across the chasm.

As the train fell like glooping honey from the slime-web, Timbreigh could see another world on the flip-side of the miracle. The true bottom of the pit was approaching this time, about an electrical tower’s distance between her and the ground. There seemed to be a bioluminescent algae spattered across the cavern’s walls, giving a glow to the area. There were rounded wooden doors peaking out from between boulders, and well-worn footpaths littering the floor like a system of veins.

Now there was much less space spanning the gap from the train to the ground. It finally hit bottom, and the rest of the cars trailing Timbreigh’s dripped down after her.

While the landing wasn’t harsh enough to hurt anything else, it had shattered the front window upon contact. Timbreigh waited until she heard the end of the train come down with a crash somewhere to her side, and crawled out the deceased window. She backed away through a clearing of black dirt with her eyes on the train, seeing it laying like a dead snake, some places piled up and flipped over. She saw the shapes of the other passengers vanish through the new holes and shattered window of the train, like they had been holograms all along and their battery had finally run out.

When she turned around, she stared at a crowd newly gathered in a ring around her and the wreckage. Nobody said anything. She gaped her mouth at them, and they looked wide-eyed back at her. Then someone burst through the horde, marched up to her with a scowl, grabbed her arm and dragged her away.

She watched the crowd begin to disperse as some went back to what they were doing and some began to remove anything useful from the train wreckage, as she was pulled away from the open area and behind one of the doors.

Rough hands pushed her down onto a stool, and a short boy sat on a stool across from her. They were in a small room, lit by glowing plant life on the walls and a single yellow lantern hanging from the center of the ceiling. Next to them was a table, behind that was a stack of bowls, and next to that was a door that showed the shadow of a hallway that Timbreigh presumed led to a bedroom and bathroom.

"Listen,” said the boy, with a light voice and slight lisp, hitting his syllables hard.

He was sitting on his stool with his feet planted on the ground, his elbows on his knees, and his hands clasped together. The angles on his pale face were soft, shadowed by the overhang of his sepia brown bangs. The sides and back of his head were shaved, and he was wearing desaturated shorts and a t-shirt.

“No! No. You don’t get to kidnap me, drag me into some cave-house, and tell me to listen.”

“…They’re all cave-houses around here. If you haven’t noticed.” He stared at her for a few seconds in deadpan. “As I was saying, my name Rico, and you have to hear me out. Down here, the People Brats have control, and if you ever want to get back to where you came from, they can’t know you’re here.”

“People Brats?”

“For the People. It’s this stupid organization that brainwashes people into forgetting their past and thinking they’re the heroes. In reality all they do is nab control from the unexpecting and act like their biggest concern is what happens next.”

She sorted out the information in her head. How was someone supposed to act after being told they were likely about to get brainwashed?

“Nope. Nuh-uh,” Timbreigh said in disbelief. “That’s not a thing. People don’t just fall into pits and get their minds wiped.” As she said this she pulled herself up off the stool and headed for the door. “It’s been nice chatting with you, but I think I’ve overstayed my visit.” With that she shut the door behind her and started walking back to where she had arrived earlier. She didn’t get far.

What she found was a strange sight. The wreckage had completely disappeared, and there was now a new passage in the cave system in its place. The tunnel had a growing light in it. Others seemed to have noticed the light as well, and a tall woman with stringy blonde hair strolled over to the edge of a sandy bank at the mouth of the tunnel.

The light morphed into a boat, and a small person spilled out onto the shore. The tall lady collected them in her arms, and said, “Hi! I’m Connie, I work with For the People, and we’re going to get you all sorted out, okay?” How about we go inside and have a cup of tea?”

Timbreigh was pretty sure she had just witnessed the beginning of the ‘People Brat’ process. Maybe hanging out with that strange boy wasn’t such an awful idea after all.

Rico had been watching from his door.

“That person’s about to get brainwashed, aren’t they?” Timbreigh asked rhetorically, with a sense of realization and dread.

“You catch on quick,” Rico shot back.

“You want me to what!?” Timbreigh exclaimed.

“You said you wanted to go back to the surface,” Rico replied coldly.

They had been conversing for hours at Rico’s table. Timbreigh had expressed her desire to get back to where she could see daylight, and Rico had conjured a ‘master plan’ for such a thing. It involved finding the cause of the brainwashing, making sure they didn’t get brainwashed, brainwashing the brainwashers, and using their resources to find a way back to the surface.

“What about you? Don’t you ever feel like going back?” She asked him

“Absolutely not. I don’t talk about returning, and I don’t think about returning. Besides, Tim, they’re already skeptical enough of me as it is.”

“I know, I know, you play along with the brainwashed and they keep their eyes on you from afar,” Timbreigh restated.

So Timbreigh agreed to Rico’s ridiculous plan, and Rico showed Timbreigh where she could sleep tonight.

The next morning, they headed out of Rico’s house, and Timbreigh walked over to sit in the clearing while Rico positioned himself undercover nearby.

A lady with the same smile as Connie came up to Timbreigh.

“Hi! I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before! You must be new?” the lady said with a clearly taken aback tone.

“Yeah. My name’s… Tim.”

“Well, Tim, let’s get you inside and have a cup of tea, shall we?”

Timbreigh followed the lady to a set of double doors framed by vines and an abundance of algae in the rocky wall. Strangely, Timbreigh could not tell what the lady looked like. When she had been approaching Timbreigh, Tim thought she saw bobbed chestnut hair, tan skin, striking blue eyes, and a wide pearly smile. Now all the features were swimming together like Timbreigh could see her in the corner of her vision, but when she looked straight at the lady, there always seemed to be something in her eye.

The lady led her into a room that hurt her eyes. The light in the room was overwhelmingly white, and the rock seemed to have morphed with the light, creating the illusion of a blinding clean room. It was bare but for a long table and chairs, and an intimidating stack of boxes that lined the right wall. The boxes were all identical, and the labels read Dream Tea.

The blurry woman took a teabag from one of the boxes, and another from her pocket. She grabbed two blue and white teacups from a stack of identical ones on the table, and put a teabag in each. She disappeared through a big door at the back of the room Timbreigh had failed to notice before, and returned with a steaming kettle. She poured them both a cup, and passed Timbreigh the dream tea cup across the table.

“Do you have any honey? I like to put it in my tea,” Timbreigh asked.

“I think you’ll find that tea is quite sweet on its own,” The lady replied.

“Oh, but I find teas on their own feel scratchy on my throat. The honey makes it smoother.”

They stared at each other in annoyance and faked innocence for a few seconds. Then the lady begrudgingly set down her teacup and disappeared through the door again. Timbreigh ran through with this as fast she could. She took her teacup and swapped it for the other, and by the time the blurry lady had returned with a stick of honey, Timbreigh was back in her chair.

The lady took a seat, tipped her cup up to Timbreigh, and they both took a drink.

As the lady swallowed the dream tea, her features solidified. She had scraggly shoulder length brown hair, and lines on her face from stretching out forced expressions. The joyless smile faded from her face, and the in-control version of her twisted into someone who just looked lost. Her eyes never fixed on anything, and she sat across from Timbreigh blankly.

The tea Timbreigh had did not show any similar effect. She crept out of her chair slowly, but the lady’s attention was no longer tracking her. Timbreigh went over to the door she had entered from, and cracked it open. Her eye met Rico’s.

“What took so long?” Rico whispered harshly as he pushed the door open enough for him to crawl in.

“Oh, you know, just avoiding getting brainwashed!” Timbreigh replied in the same rough whisper.

Rico’s gaze landed on the newly brainless lady, and his mouthed moved around like he was going to say something about her, then decided better of it and started towards the other door. The door led them through an equally white hall with several doors to each side. Ahead of them, at the end of the hall, was a set of impressive double doors.

“Looks important, right? I say that’s our best bet,” Rico said, nodding to the double doors.

Rico got to the doors first, and checked the room was vacant before he waved her in. The room was definitely important. There was a raised table scattered with notes of all sorts, filing cabinets galore spread wherever throughout the room, and maps, graphs, and scribbles hung all over the walls, with strings of varying colors trailing important details on said walls.

“There!” Rico exclaimed, pointing to one of the maps.

He was pointing to a spot marked with a purple pin. It was a small rectangle on a line than ran and ran through different places uncharted on these maps. There was a scribble next to the rectangle, labelling it: Surface Train.

Timbreigh and Rico turned to each other. They swallowed, and Rico gave Timbreigh an encouraging nod.

“This is your shot, Tim,” he said.

Their heads snapped to the doors as they registered shouts from the entrance room. Suddenly, Two men were standing in front of Timbreigh, blocking the way to a busted down door. She looked to Rico in a panic, only to find he was no longer next to her. The man grabbed her arms and pulled at her.

“NO!” she screamed, as they lifted her off the ground.

Timbreigh kicked and flailed and screamed even more, but nothing could break the men’s iron grip on her arms. Rico was nowhere to be found, and she was pulled away from where she had stood so close to freedom.

“Mmmghphm,” Timbreigh mumbled through tightly shut lips, as she pulled her mouth away from the spoon being forced at it.

The men had hauled her to a new white room, this one completely bare but for a wooden chair in the center. The chair Timbreigh was currently tied to.

“We’re only trying to help you,” said one of the people few people in the room, all of whom were trying to get any amount of dream tea into her system. “We understand your fear, but you have to trust us, and we’ll make sure you’ll be okay,” the person said.

Timbreigh tensed and tried to jump away again, only slightly shuffling the chair.

The one holding the spoon pulled away from Timbreigh, and the People Brats conversed in a tone Timbreigh couldn’t hear. While they were distracted with each other, she worked again at trying to escape her bonds. They were incredibly tight, but if she played with her imagination a bit, they were loosening.

The one with the spoon kneeled down in front of Timbreigh, and reached a hand to her nose while the spoon prodded rather insistently at her mouth again.

Then, “TIM, HOLD YOUR BREATH!” shouted Rico as the door burst open and he appeared, with a new cut on the right of his brow bone, and some sort of super-spray-bottle.

He misted everyone with the contents of the bottle, and the spoon was immediately dropped from Timbreigh’s mouth. The People Brats all dazed into a state of non-reactiveness, and Rico rushed over to free Timbreigh.

“Thanks, man. I owe you,” she told him.

“I was just supposed to let my brilliant plan fail like that? I don’t think so.”

He got her out of the chair, and led her down the hall and out of the People Brat nightmare.

They were standing in the clearing once more, feet over top of the black dirt where, unknown to Timbreigh, Rico had first saved her.

“Everyone! People of the… People of the Below!” Timbreigh shouted, gathering a crowd. “I know this may sound a shock to you, I certainly didn’t believe it at first, but you have been brainwashed! ‘For The People’ are no heroes, they’ve been giving you mind-wiping tea and tricking you out of your true potential!”

Silence. And then, laughter. The crowd was laughing at her, at the truth. They didn’t believe her.

“Please, I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is very, very real! There is more than this,” she gestured around her at the bottom of a pit she’d spent an eventful couple days of her life in, “More than this desolate place I can’t believe everyone here is calling home. I come from the surface, and I believe all of you do too! It is a wonderful place, a place where the sun lights up your days and the moon illuminates your nights, a place with no outside walls and lots of wide open fields, and a place with wonderful people, who play games and bask in the glory of their company and have fun! I have come from this place, and today, I’m going to return!” She waved around the map Rico had stolen from the important room and given to her, “There is a train, one waiting for us, and it will take us back up to the surface! So, people of the Below, who’s going to join me and come back to where we belong?”

Whispers and murmurs came from the crowd. Timbreigh could tell they were skeptical, but if such a place truly did exist, they wanted to be there. Then, a few cheers came, then more than a few, and soon nearly the entire crowd was roaring with excitement for their journey to the surface.

Timbreigh turned to Rico. His eyes were glistening.

“Come with me?” she asked, much quieter than she had spoken to the crowd, only for Rico to hear.

“Heh,” he hesitated. He was looking at the ground now. “I told you, Tim, I don’t do ‘Surface’.

“But- but you’ll be all alone down here? You have to come!”

“Oh, I won’t be alone. I know some of the others feel the same way I do. We’ll manage.”

He looked up at Timbreigh, and a tear ran down his cheek. “It’s blinding and terrifying up there. It burns. I remember. I guess, at the end of the day, I’ve always just been a coward.”

He gave her a sad smile as more tears came down, and she stared at him in despaired disbelief. Her feet unconsciously carried her closer to him, and they clasp their arms in a tight hug around each other. They cried into each other’s shoulders. Timbreigh didn’t want this to be goodbye.

Her body blindly led her and the others to where the train was marked on the map. She couldn’t feel anything right now, it was as if her heart had gone numb.

As Timbreigh settled herself on the train, and it started slowly picking up speed, her eyes picked up two people looking at her from the ground a few feet away, through the window of the train. They both felt uncomfortably familiar, and both wore unmistakable For the People badges. A man and a Woman, each possessing half of Timbreigh’s features. They locked eyes, and the train zoomed away.