Train of Thoughts

I awoke with a shock, like right when you’re about to fall asleep but feel like falling. I felt like there was no ground to reach and grabbed whatever I could. When I opened my eyes clutched an old-fashioned leather seat. I touched the seat again just to confirm it was real. Both of my feet were planted firmly on the ground and I sighed in relief.

I could feel I was on a train before I saw it by the unmistakably shaking back and forth, the rattling sound of the push and pull on the railway, and the screeching of brakes from the sharp turns. There was a lingering scent of perfume in the carriage that seemed familiar and made me open my eyes, trying to place it. It wasn’t from me I found as I sniffed my clothes. Another passenger? Someone I knew or had known?

I looked out the window but saw nothing that I knew. A thick fog had erased all the details around us. It didn’t look like a city, there were no buildings, people, or cars. There was no light except faint daylight that broke through the fog. Where was I? I searched my pockets, but there was nothing. I had to forget the wallet, I found no tickets or clues to tell where I was headed, and also, who I was.

“There's not much to see yet,” a voice said and I jumped. A little boy sat in the seat in front of me, peering from in between the seats with a weary look in those big and round eyes.

Something felt familiar about the little boy. From the little backpack that looked too big for him and the cap hiding his untidy hair, shooting out like weed behind the ears. The familiarity tugged at the back of my mind, danced at the tip of my tongue, but disappeared out from the corner of my eye. It was impossible to grasp and I shook the feeling away.

“Are you alone? Where are your parents?” I asked and turned. There was no one else in the carriage other than me and him.

“You know,” he said and I didn’t deny it. Perhaps I did. What had happened?

“Excuse me, where are we?” I asked the little boy.

“On the train,” He simply stated and looked at me with round eyes. “You don’t remember me?”

“No,” I said and shook my head. “Where are we now? What is the next stop?”

The kid looked out the window where the fog thickened. It was like we were far up in the mountains, long out at sea or in the morning mist above green fields as well as it looked like nothing at all.

“The train is not stopping, mister. It never has.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there is no next stop. It's just the ending stop coming up, and you can’t return from the ending stop.”

“Kid, have you seen some grown-ups around here? I must speak with the ones in charge of this train.”

“You’ve been asleep for a long time. I’ve explored the whole train already. The door to the driver is locked. You shouldn’t go there.”

“Can you show me? I must speak with the driver of the train.”

The kid jumped off his seat as I stood up and reached his hand out to me. I hesitated but took it and we walked from the desolated and lonely carriage to the next where thankfully a couple of people sat. I walked up to a woman staring out the window and called out for her attention. There was no reaction and no one in the carriage looked up.

“Excuse me.”

No response to my words or the fact that my face was so close to them. I waved my hand across their faces. Nothing.

“They won’t answer you,'' the kid said, not even giving them a glance. I asked him why.

“Because it is too late now.”

A faint flute from the train sounded and the kid whispered: ‘Choo choo’.

If you lay down on the railway tracks you can hear the train through the iron before you can hear it through the air. That was the feeling that started to creep up on me and I felt the realization of dread before I knew why. There was something wrong, this was no ordinary train. The outside was not the landscape I knew.

We crossed the carriage and came into the little hallway with shelves for luggage, toilets, and the exit doors. A teenage boy stood by the window and somehow he looked different from the people we had seen in the previous carriage that I couldn’t even remember the shapes and features on. He reminded me more of the little boy. He turned and looked at us with utter suspicion, but no surprise.

“What are you looking at?” the little child asked like they already knew each other and jumped to get a better look. The teenager rolled his eyes and told him it was none of his business as he moved away from the little boy to create a greater distance between them.

“Hey,” I almost said immediately in anger and a memory flashed in front of me. I stopped myself from saying more, surprised I had said anything at all. I just didn’t want anyone to speak like that to the child. Somehow I think that my father used to sound exactly like it, and I think I hated the fact I sounded like him and I tried to remember why.

The teenager looked as disgusted by me as I would have been at that age. Outside the thick fog started to move and shapes vaguely came into focus.

“What is that?” I asked and the kid wowed beside me. A house came forth from the fog. It floated like its foundation was in the clouds themselves. The house wasn’t transparent by any means and I could clearly see the fresh coat of red paint and the texture of the grass in front of it. But somehow I knew that if I reached out to touch it, I would grasp nothingness.

“What is this? How is it possible?”

I knew this house, I had seen it many times. I somehow also knew that this was not real and I had never been inside. The teenager sighed and looked longingly at the house.

“It’s called the dreamhouse.”

“Is it real?”

He didn’t answer but looked down at his hands not yet weathered by a hard life.

There was a universe in the train you couldn’t find outside. Even if the train moved at the speed of light, you were standing still on the train's own ground with its own gravity. There was nothing you noticed from the outside world except for the occasional sharp turn where the train world's own tectonic plates shook and made you lose balance.

“I wish I could live in it when I am grown,” the little kid said dreamingly.

“Idiot, you know you can’t,” the teenager said and the kid looked like he remembered something.

“No need to be rude. Why can’t he live in a house like that when he grows up?” I asked and the teenager opened up his mouth, but the kid walked in front of him and it seemed like he changed his mind.

“You tell me,” he said and raised his shoulders.

I asked the child and teenager about the people on the train, those not noticing me even if I had slapped them in the face. They told me they were like dream people. They were maybe looking like strangers in the form they presented themselves in, but they were all people that I had met, seen somewhere, or even known. Nothing on this train was new. Everything that would happen had already happened and all I saw were things I had already seen. I wondered why it was all so foggy.

“That is your choice though,” the teenager said and he seemed to blame me for something. I tried to place him but had nowhere to put him in my memories. Perhaps he also was like one of the dream people.

“Have we met?” I asked and the teenager turned to walk away as he showed me his middle finger as he went. I followed and grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around.

“Hey, answer when I’m talking to you,” I said and the teenager took a deep breath. He was ready to fight. He opened his mouth again to spew more sarcasm when his eyes became round and his face pale and he looked at something behind me.

“You should run and hide,” he said like a frightened child, pulling his hood up and backing away.

“Why?”

I followed his gaze and saw someone walking towards us between the seat aisles. It was a train conductor, clicking in his passengers he passed, calling out for a ticket inspection.

I asked why I would run from them as they were someone I was looking for

“You don’t have a ticket, they will throw you out if you don’t have one,” he said before running away.

“He’s right, there’s no train after this. If we don’t stay on this train, we will never get there,” the child said, now a sheer terror on his face, clutching the straps on his backpack. So we ran, although I wanted to ask: get where? as I thought We should get off this train. But I chose to believe in the little kid and we went from one carriage to the next one. We reached a storage room packed with boxes, stacked from floor to roof. Some were labeled, and some had no name. We hid behind a stack of boxes and at my side, I noticed a scooter. It had a layer of dust on it when I touched it.

“I used to have one just like this,” I said, but the kid hushed me. We sat completely still, not even daring to breathe when we heard the door to the carriage open. Footsteps came in and lights in the darkened room from a flashlight hit the wall above us. The kid closed his eyes and put a hand over his mouth. I instinctively put a hand on his shoulder and we held our frozen positions until we heard the footsteps from the conductors fade away and the door to the storage closed. For a couple of moments, we sat there, finally being able to breathe. I wondered if the teenager had managed to escape.

“What's his story?” I asked the kid as they seemed to know each other. The child was hesitant to answer.

“He’s sort of lost. He left home.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really understand it yet. But he said it had something to do with not repeating the same mistakes and becoming them. That’s what he said.”

My initial hate for that young punk mellowed as I understood that sentiment. I had felt like that once as well I told the kid.

“Well did you?”

I took a moment to answer. I couldn't remember exactly, I felt like it might be a whole lifetime of memories to answer that question in detail.

“I think I failed.”

“Shame,” the little kid said and peered around the corner. “I think they’re gone now,” he said and stood up, slinging the big backpack over his shoulders. When I asked what he carried in it as it seemed heavy, he just said important stuff.

We continued our search for the drivers in front of the train and each carriage we passed tugged at my memories, the train whistle bringing back a piece of memory, whistle by whistle.

“I think I’ve been on this train before,” I said and touched the worn and faded seat covers. The little boy looked up at me and asked me where. I said I might have used to ride it before.

“When I was going… home,” I said when he asked where and sharp pain at the side of my head came from nowhere and a picture of a brick house at the end of the pebbled path passed my memories like the vague stuff from the train windows.

In the next carriage, a sound of raised voices hit us and we saw the teenage boy again arguing with another passenger. The grown man had his back to us and his voice raised, pointing his finger in the teenager's face as he at the same time talked loudly on the phone to someone between the insults to the teenager. I noticed a little sign marked with ‘silent carriage’ next to every seat. Even when we came in he didn’t turn away from his fight with the teenage boy. The teenager looked pretty smug about something, and I could only guess who the instigator of the argument was. Still, it somehow didn’t sit right with me to look at the grown-up man threatening the rude, but still, young boy.

“Excuse me,” I announced as the door closed behind us. When the man finally turned, I almost screamed out in shock. He looked like I had once done in my earlier days. No, more correctly, he looked exactly like me, and I looked like a complete ass.

“What’s going on here?” I said and walked up to them like one of the nosy people I hated, still in equal awe and fright of the look of the man. The teenager rolled his eyes at me, not believing me to be a savior of any sort.

“Thank you, but leave it will you? I got this,” the man said and I hated his sly and condescending voice.

“What did you do?” I asked the teenager.

“It’s a silent carriage, he was noisy,” he said and the man raged closer to his face, gripping his jacket. I was surprised it was still in one piece because of how much it had been held in anger today.

“Come on, it’s just a kid, take it easy on him, will you?”

“Fuck off,” the man said and turned away like I wasn’t even worth the time to listen to, and to breathe the same air made him nauseous. I reached for his shoulder and as soon as I touched it, the man saw it as an invitation to plant his fist in my face. I stumbled backward and both the little kid and the teenager motioned to grab me as I swayed on my weak feet. I shook my hand to tell them I was fine. The man had both his hands raised, ready for a fight. I jumped at him, head first in and we got into a scuffle and I could feel myself being the weaker one. Both of us were too old to make any impressive moves and we ended up dragging each other around in the aisles until we ran out of breath.

The kid and teenager managed to get a hold of me and tore us apart. The man stood up and laughed.

“You’ll regret this,” the man said and walked off. I almost had to laugh at how deluded that man was. Even the phone he had left on the floor didn’t have a signal and he had talked with no one. Regret what? The satisfying feeling was to watch him walk off, backward to the carriages in the back. I hoped he would run into the conductor and be thrown off the train. No one would miss him.

When I turned to look at the kids however I was surprised to see how both looked disappointed. Like they had expected another outcome and more from the man, but he had ended up like just another disappointment.

“What an asshole,” I said, fuming with rage over that man. The teenage boy chuckled and tried to shake that disheartened face away.

“It takes one to know one,” he said very diplomatically. Even the little boy couldn’t help but smile at it.

“I think he is me,” I said with an internal disdain. “I think I hate that guy.”

“Everyone hates that guy,” the teenager chimed in, ruthless as well as right.

“I think I lost something important as him,” I said and my head was aching.

“More accurately, you threw it away.”

“What is the difference? the kid asked and the teenager bent down and patted his head.

“It means he deserved all the hurt because sometimes there’s no one but yourself to blame.”

“What place is this?” I asked and both looked around in the empty carriage to deter the teenager from speaking any more uncomfortable truths.

“It’s the silent train. A place for thought and contemplation. Not much used on this train.”

I nodded and only looked ahead. I told the kid we should continue.

“Are you still going to the driver?”

“Of course,” I said.

“You won’t find what you are looking for there,” the teenager said and I shook my head. We had to get off the train, it's just how it was. A train is nothing more than a means of transportation from one place to another. It’s the station we get off that matters, people are not supposed to end their days on the train.

“You still don’t realize what this is yet, do you?” the teenager asked and I had to say it out loud. I thought I finally did. The teenager was confused as to why then I still wanted to get off.

“What do you recommend then? Where are the things I am looking for? What am I even looking for?”

The teenager said and waved towards the misty outside. Looking out the window I started to see more and they all reminded me of things from before. They were for me, they were by me and they only made sense to me. There was the building of my old school where I used to always run late and sneak off too early. There was a traffic light outside my apartment that took ages to change color. I saw the person behind the counter of the shop I bought cigarettes and late-night beers as well as my secretary, whom I realized I had never paid too much attention to. It was the obscure details that really made me remember and feel, like the parasol I sat under the whole vacation in Spain when I was ten, the little attic window I used to have in my childhood bedroom with apple blossoms swaying right outside. They were all from me.

The one thing that shook me to the core though, was the fragments of stuff I saw of her. The flick of long dark hair that just turned a corner or disappeared between the carriage doors, or the sound of familiar laughter that was close enough to hear, but too far to pinpoint where it came from.

The stuff floating outside the window was all stuff I knew and perhaps even cherished. But they were all stuff of the past I didn’t need or think about anymore. But with her it was different.

“Let’s go,” I said and rushed out. A place for thought and contemplation was not for me. The teenage boy surprisingly followed us, albeit with a sullen face. We reached the front carriage, I could feel it. The driver was within my reach and I would be able to stop the train and get off. To hell with the ending stop, I wasn’t interested. My fast pace came to a halt when I felt again, a familiar floral scent of perfume that lingered in the carriage, telling me that I just missed her by a couple of moments, like a misty handprint on the mirror that faded. The scent of her came with a set of memories. A garden filled with lilacs in the air and laughter around a table. Yellow rubber gloves as she washed, and I dried. It was always me who dried.

“Her name was Lily,” I said out loud to hear it myself. Just to feel my tongue from the word and to hear my voice utter the sound. The teenager suddenly stopped speechless, finally at a loss of words. The child nodded.

“That’s what he calls her also,” he said, motioning to the teenager.

“I must have loved her.”

“I don’t understand that yet.”

I told the kid he would as even I had learned how. When I first met her I stole her rubber ball. It was clouded and layered, it looked like a planet or a whole universe on its own. I didn’t know then why I took it. It was first later I realized that I just wanted a piece of her by my side.

I braved myself to look outside the window again and saw her clearly now, standing at a distance, too far to reach but close enough to recognize. The train must have slowed down because she was lingering outside of the window, or the landscape didn’t match the speed of the train.

“She was just here,” I exclaimed to the little kid. How had she escaped the train? I could still smell her scent in the carriage like she had just left the room.

“No, it isn’t her, not really. She will take another one.”

I refused to believe him when he told me about the dream versions of people. I couldn’t accept that. She had to be more tangible than a dream.

“I must see her now.”

They told me that the only place I could was at the end station. Maybe. I looked at the last carriage. I was right outside the door. I would be able to stop the train, I was sure if I only reached the last carriage. The teenager noticed my looks at the door.

“I think she wants to see you too. She used to,” the kid said and the sincerity in his voice made me believe him, even if it didn’t make sense at all.

“Well go on! Leave then!” the teenager said, angry. But hidden deep down behind his words, I heard the hurt child that he really was. I looked at them both now with a confirming suspicion I had felt since I awoke on the train.

“Do you know her?”

“We always knew her.”

To my surprise, they were both teary-eyed. When the teenager noticed my stare he brushed the tears away in an angry motion and walked off.

“How does he know her?”

“He was the last to keep her. The grown man left her for some reason. As he left us.”

The little child turned to me again and I could see a deep sorrow in his eyes.

“Why did you end up hating us so much?” he asked and tears ran down his face. I almost could feel the child's tears as if it was my own. I told him I didn’t but somehow I felt like I lied. I wasn’t innocent in this matter, I was just repentant.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get him,” I said and ran away from the child as much as I followed the teenager. I reached him by the door and he had put his hand on the handle. There was no carriage behind this one, he was about to leave the train.

“Hey, you!” I said and he turned, he looked almost surprised that I had bothered to follow him. His face was pale, his eyes disappointed. He looked defeated like he had played out his last hand and lost it all in one go.

“Fuck off,” he said very on brand.

“Not like you,” I said and felt like we were already derailing the purpose. The teenager laughed. Not like he found it funny, but like he found it all very unsurprising and didn’t care anymore.

“You did though,” he muttered under his breath and I had to ignore him. I couldn't give into his teenage sarcasm with anger. He wanted that, that self-destructing power of turning everything into an argument. I had been so myself once, perhaps even still

“Look… The child is crying, we should go back. No matter how you feel about me right now, we should deal with this together.”

“I hate you,” the rude teenager said honestly and I had to bite my lip not to answer back. No matter how much it irked me, the teenager had every right to.

“You are always like this. You always pushed us to the side.”

“What do you mean ‘us’?”

“Our versions.

I couldn’t breathe even before he answered you when I asked what he meant. I knew it though. His face almost changed in front of me. He wasn’t an old picture in the album, he was an old friend in the mirror. I pushed away the realization that this dream logic was forcing me to accept. The way the teenager blinked with my eyes, wrinkled the nose that had always run in my family.

I turned away from him as I had done when I was younger. Like shedding my own skin I had left my past self behind and never looked back because taking care of your young child when growing up is too hard. Locked in a deep vault inside of me they had been left forgotten and starved. Just looking at the pair of them made me ill.

I got to the toilets and locked myself inside. My breath was uneven, my headache hammering as it never had been to make it all clear. There was no more fog in my memories and forgotten corners in my mind. And it hurt, it really hurt.

As I looked into the mirror, an unfamiliar face stared back. The skin was dry and wrinkly, damaged by the sun, the weather, and time. It was an old man staring back at me that I didn’t recognize. Now, even the little child or the teenage boy seemed more like me than my own reflection.

I blew on the mirror and it fogged up the reflection, I was leaving him behind in the toilet as the shit he was. As I came out of the toilet the little boy was standing outside waiting for me, as he had always been. I looked at him, really looked at him this time.

He put down his backpack and opened it. Out of it he took out a small rubber ball, deep midnight blue like the sky and clouded. It looked like a planet or even a whole universe on its own.

“We should give it back to her,” he said and I went down on my knees and put my hands on his shoulders, looking at him properly for the first time. His big and round eyes peered up at me, a small hope growing.

“We should, we should reach the ending station soon, shouldn’t we?” I said, my eyes teary and

“Do you remember us now?” He asked and I smiled.

“I’m sorry for forgetting you,” I said and hugged him tightly. The teenager lurked behind the door and didn’t come in before I gave him a wave. He reluctantly came over, or as I now understood, seemingly reluctant. I hugged him and felt the remains of myself come together. He carried the childhood on his shoulders as well as the young man he was growing into. He was an inbetweener I now felt sorry to bury in forgetness and shame.

Outside the window where the landscape now passed by faster and faster as if we were picking up speed and something was changing about the scenery. It was like the fog was lifting bit by bit, cloud by cloud, gray turning into color and the vague objects sharpening. The dreamhouse, the dream people, they all came into focus, the colors turning from gray to technicolor. A sound of pure awe came from the child and I agreed. Even the teenager had to smile in wonder at it as it truly was beautiful. We gathered in front of the window and watched as the landscape opened up and we saw it all so clear now.