Get Me Off This Godforsaken Train

My body jolts awake to the sound of a horn blaring in my ears. I feel like I’m flying, completely unbridled, traveling at warp speed. I can hardly breathe. My heart is thumping in my throat. Wake up. This has to be a terrible dream.

How did I get on a….on a….. Is it a train that I’m on? Yes. I hear the unmistakable chugga-chugga-clicks of the wheels and feel the engine humming. Why is it going so fast? I peer out the window. Everything is familiar, but the places are disconnected. Hugging the curve of the Santa Monica mountains at lightning speed, I am astonished. Am I back here on vacation? I didn’t like this part the last time. Last time, she drove. I couldn’t. I had kept one eye closed and hit the imaginary brakes in the passenger seat while averting my gaze from the rocky, staggering drops. Oh God, the drops. My imaginary brake didn’t work then and it sure as hell isn’t working now. Shit.

It’s snowing outside now. I know this place. This is Stowe, Vermont, where the VonTrapp's have their lodge. How? How is this possible? To be in Vermont already? Oh God, the snow is deep. Just like that time when my snowmobile got stuck in the heavy mountain drifts and I hit the gas to get free, only to hit a tree, flip over, and land flat on my back. God, please DO NOT let this train flip over. It CANNOT. We will all die.

Who are these people? Who is this guy, drooling next to me with black rotten teeth and a Cheshire cat grin? Who is this pale blonde woman across the aisle in a trashy red negligee with milky white stick legs, worn-out shoes, and shimmery white lipstick? They’re all eerily familiar. They’re all my life’s villains, gathered on this reeling train wreck in progress.

I need to wake up. This must be a nightmare. There is no way this is real. The trees are whipping by outside now, brown trunks below and green leaves above, all a blur through the window.

I see a redheaded woman approach with a menacing grin. The meaty insides of her cheeks reveal themselves in the corners of her sinister lips, like gummy unchewed wads of gum. Her insides are exposed and crawling with maggots. She’s carrying a silver tray towards me, with a bottle of beer and a broken red brick sitting beside it. No doubt she’s out to get me. She is the face of evil. I know her and I want so desperately to run. But I am suddenly paralyzed. I cannot budge. My white-knuckled hands are gripped and glued to the curves of the steely frigid armrests. Her approach is quick and unwavering. I am doomed. Torture awaits and it promises to be unrelenting.

I scream. Would somebody please do something with this black feral cat on the headrest in front of me? The rabid beast meets my gaze, hissing and foaming from the mouth, fangs exposed, back arched, ready to pounce. My body seizes. He reminds me of someone I used to think I knew.

Too much here is familiar. Too much is haunting. My heart is pounding. Now I know what it means to have your heart in your mouth. My tongue is swollen and my breath is impossible to catch. It’s coming in quick shallow sips. I can’t open my throat. I try to suck in. Breathe. I have to fucking breathe.

Where is the conductor? I need to find the fucking conductor. Maybe he’s dead. Unless he’s mad. Surely, he’s mad. He’ll fit right in with the rest of these freaky passengers.

There he is, that red-faced-fat-cat bastard. Of course, he’s the conductor. He would be. His black hair is spiked and wet with slimy gel. He reeks of yesterday’s scotch. Perspiration stains the armpits of his shirt. He’s got a harem around him. They’ve got serpents for hair, curling around their faces, caressing the chins of these women of ill intent.

The serpent women claw at the bastard, rubbing his face and thighs and crimson red ears. He is sweating. He’s always sweating. But he is the one in control of all of it. He could do something but chooses not to. He might be the worst of them all.

Right behind him and rambunctious as ever, is the Maiden of Chaos, rotund and all ablaze in her bedazzled sash. She’s juggling a gas can and sparklers up in the air for the expectant crowd assembled. A master of unease, she booms, ‘Who knows that will happen next? Only me.’ She throws her head back and shrieks with horrid laughter. It bounces against the train car windows, more amplified with each echo. When she meets my horrified gaze, she grins, squinching her eyes in delight at my distress. ‘I designed it this way,’ she says. As if I didn't know.

Suddenly, the train heaves to the right, around a sharp corner, along the rocky coast of Downeast Maine. All my villains remain upright and stable, while I remain vulnerable to each spastic twist of this train. I am at once, thrust onto the metal armrest, a sharp jab to my ribs. You’d think it would wake me, but no. I peer out the window to survey the terrain. I liked this place, but it’s very dirty now. It’s forever damaged, unlivable. But at one time, it was clean. It was warm. It was home.

My eyes sting and well with tears. How can this be? How did I get here?

I draw my hands up to my face. My cheeks are boiling, the tears are simmering down, relentlessly now. There is no stopping them. They’re burning my face and rolling deeply, right through the skin of my fingers to my insides, carving bloody red trenches of bubbling acid into the backs of my hands. I am powerless to stop them. Who am I and how did I get here? I begin wiping furiously at my eyes to stop the gushing, piercing tears.

I close my eyes. Wake up, damn it. Fucking, wake up. This is some sick dimension. They’re all assembled here and I’m going to die and it's going to be very painful. They will live. They will live on forever, with no consequences. I’m the one. I’m the one who’s being bashed around and wounded in this relentless Goddamned train.

I take another swipe at my eyes and turn to the window.

But the window is gone.

I am laid out. Flat on my side, my face smashed deeply into my pillow, which is hot and wet with sticky tears. The top sheet of my bed is twisted around my legs and l spy my other pillow sitting far off from me on the center of the floor, pillowcase all askew; no doubt it was strewn out from the bed in all my thrashing. My heart begins to slow. My breath starts to regulate.

I think.....I might be...

I am.

I am home.

I turn over in the bed. A sliver of sunlight beams down through the slats of my Venetian blinds, onto my bare knee. I see the dust particles dancing in my mundane bedroom and realize I am free.