UnPacked

Red or Blue? She thought to herself. As the land outside of the window flew past her, she struggled to decide between the two cotton bags she held below in her pale hands. Her feet dangled in the air under her seat while a paralleled woman reached over and adjusted the girl’s hair to rest calmly behind her ears. “You have to pick some day, we’re gonna be there soon. Battleship shouldn't take two weeks!” Quietly, the girl pressed her eyes shut and then extended her left arm over a fraction of the table sitting between them. As the woman emptied her small sack she spoke in a low tone, “you picked red, that’s unlike you.” In silence they arranged their pieces on separate sides of the game board which rose and obstructed one another’s vision at its centre. The landscape out of the window was beautiful, however they liked to play games while aboard to speed up their travels. “Okay, I’m ready.” The girl slowly shifted her head to the side of the blockade, revealing her innocent eyes to her opponent as the sun kissed her face from near the horizon. “B-nine” she said in return as her soft voice struggled to echo in the enclosed cabin they sat in. “Hit.” The girl jumped up on top of her seat, “yes!” For the first time since the game started, her eyes were finally above the other pair at the table, yet still too low to see over the barrier. As she began to sit back down, three men in uniform ran past the transparent door shut to separate them from the hallway outside. The middle aged woman stood straight, flattening her brown dress on her stretched legs before making way over to the door in an attempt to satisfy her curiosity. Sliding it to the right and striking one leg into the flustered hallway, she looked back at the small girl sitting in the corner of her seat. “I need you to stay right here, don’t open the door for anyone, okay?” The girl reached up and wrapped her fingers around a silver heart pendant attached to a thin chain clasped to her neck as she nodded back. “You hold onto that and I'll be back in no time, I promise.” Her hand slid the door shut from the opposing side as the little girl watched her single mother’s silhouette disappear into the long hallway.

As she took her first step out of the infinitely locked front door, the world was darker than she remembered. Without the restriction of tightly packed bricks blocking each edge of the yard, she drew attention to the unfamiliar site of publicly interacting humans. Her already dirty dress was enhanced with brown street water as a medium sized bag was thrown out of the door into a neighbouring puddle. “Happy eighteenth to you, kid” someone said from behind before slamming the door shut and turning multiple locks. Tightly gripping the silver hearted charm on her neck, the young girl sighed as she picked up the bag. She began walking below the crying sky until she reached a bench a few feet away from a familiar pair of metal bars along the ground. Her heart began beating exponentially as a large industrial snake blowing smoke from its mouth slowed to a stop in front of her feet. Reaching into her bag, she handed a small piece of styled paper to the moustached man that came out of its door in formal clothes. It wasn’t as she remembered it; she didn’t understand why it looked different. Following the crowd, she continued to flow forwards until there was a vacant cushion beside one of the windows on the right side of the stretched space. Holding the secured chair for balance, she slid the half filled bag under the seat before comfortably adjusting her body within its parameters. An older gentleman with a rounded hat sat in the chair across from her, however unlike before there was no table to separate her from the stranger, just empty space between their flirting knees. Looking around, her eyes came to understand that every other seat in the enclosed metal box was also arranged the same way, implying she most likely wasn't the only uncomfortable one. As her head turned and she tried to digest the running greenery outside of the window, her eyelids undeliberately stretched shut.

Waking to the silence of the quiet cabin, she lifted her head off of the cold glass. She calmly looked out of the window at the grey clouds with a smile on her face; she hadn’t seen storm clouds in a while. Following an aggressive beam of light down from its base, her focus shifted to a distant field outside of the window. Quickly standing up, more startled by her eyes than the prior electrical discharge, she scrubbed the window clear with her forearm as she tried to somehow get a better look out of the transparent pane. In the distance, she noticed a brown object rushing across the empty field that looked too familiar. Igniting her imagination, she ran through the swinging door at the front of the car followed by the distant swinging door at the front of every other consecutive car until she flooded into the maintenance room at the front of the rolling machine. Anxiously swivelling her head, she shoved the cole fetching fireman to the floor and jumped up on a long wooden stick coming from the wall. Without removing the safety pin put in place to prevent accidents, her momentum snapped the handle in half, disconnecting it from its roots. “What have you done!” The young boy screamed from the floor, “that is the stopping break!” Two more men rushed into the room, “what is going on here?” “Stop the train!” She yelled at them. “Stop it!” They looked simultaneously over at the broken handle then back towards her. “You are going to have to come with us, young lady.” “I’m not going anywhere!” She shouted, “not until you stop this train!” The two men made their way swiftly over to her, aware of the cracked piece of hickory wood pointing their direction. Regardless of her best efforts to keep them away, she soon ended up pressed firmly against the wooden floor. “Let me go! Let me go!” She screamed, getting incrementally louder. She continued to slam the floor and attempt to reach for their hands until she felt a poke in her neck and her body stopped responding to her mind's command.

A door opened from behind her and a glowing woman entered the room. The blandness of her white outfit unironically matched the lack of decoration in the girls' empty space. “I’m here to take you on your walk! How are we feeling today?” The question was left both unanswered and unacknowledged. She sighed then walked over to the lone dresser against the wall. “Well, someone left you a gift in your mailbox!” Removing a large blue mailing sticker, she unfolded the brown fabric across the flat surface to reveal a handful of roses, a punnet of strawberries, and cluster of cherries. Cute she thought to herself. Shuffling across the room, she grabbed the handles from behind the silent woman’s head and spun her around. “Red hit heart” she mumbled under her breath as the white dressed woman began rolling her down the hallway. “I know, I know, you love to hit your red heart. Hopefully we can come up with something new to say today.” She shut the door behind them, leaving the lost woman’s most recent gift inside the dark borders of her room.