almost off the rails

Devin’s head knocking against the window jarred him from his recent unconsciousness. The sudden awake-ness was less disorienting than the realization of not knowing where he was. The occasional experience of waking up and not immediately knowing which city or country or bed he was in was not uncommon as he travelled a lot, but he had no present context for noticing he was on a train. The initial self-query of why, how and when he got on board a train was tabled by the experience that the train was going too fast around the corner it was traveling. The reason for his head hitting the window and jarring him thus.

His physiology was spiking with anxiety as the other passengers sharing the car spoke or gasped in concerned intonations. One woman stood and nearly fell in a wide-eyed expression of fear. Another man cursed the not present train conductor with a ‘god damn maniac driver!’ but no staff were in the car to ease or answer anyone’s distress. Directly across the aisle from him a man held onto the seat in front of him with a white knuckled intensity. Devin had to raise his voice to question the man as the wheels screamed loudly along the track with an intermittent grinding of the brakes which seemed to be failing at slowing down the out-of-control vehicle.

“Do you know what’s happening?” Devin shouted to the man above the chaos. The man tried to mouth a response and though his lips moved, no sound came out and he shook his head in a slow motioned ‘no ‘during this attempted communication which was enough for our confused protagonist to confirm that something was truly and unexpectedly amiss.

Between the fight or flight of these moments the nagging question of ‘how did I get on this train?’ kept pushing its way to the surface only to be pushed back again with each harrowing curve or passenger scream. It occurred to him that to find out what was going on he should brace himself to stand and change cars until he found someone to elucidate the gravity of whatever was going on. As he stood up holding onto the seat and widening his stance in order to not be thrown, he suddenly began to think about something he read about Edgar Allen Poe who on an occasional alcohol bender, much to his professional and personal detriment, would come to, three days later and two states from where he last remembered himself to be with no memory of travelling. ‘Lord have mercy’ he spoke inwardly to himself as he pushed these thoughts from his mind and staggered to the front of the car to move forward on the train to the next section. He opened the door and the membrane that usually masked the transition between cars from the elements was partially torn from its anchors and the sounds of the distressed train became deafening. The daytime scenery flew by uncontrollably in his periphery in the short window of time it took him to enter the next car. Although it didn’t register immediately, the fact that he was in a desert environment became apparent and the anxieties of being on a runaway train coupled with the fact that none of the places he usually travelled were a desert environ almost paralyzed him with confusion.

What forced him from his momentary lapse in movement was that the dining car steward in the new car was shouting to the passengers to move back toward the car Devin had come from. The steward and the frantic passengers stood out against the backdrop of a fire that was flaring behind them consuming the forward most end of the car. In a moment outside of thought, driven by pure instinct, to avoid being trampled by the motley congregation in front of him, he went back the way he came to the previous car before they reached him.

The only being in the midst of this scene that wasn’t in a complete panic, though out of his field of vision, was a desert hawk gliding on high above this tense human scene. From the hawk’s perspective, one would gather the imagery of a passenger train near running off the rails. The front third of it engulfed in flame like a comet burning between earth and sky on an unlikely course through the desert. Unmoved by the trials of men the hawk spiraled slowly above it all and found more interest in a desert hare who had ventured from its burrow for its daily sustenance. In a slow but calculated descent the hawk transformed from a nonchalant glide into a quiet diving and silent arrow, throwing its wings out to buffer its speed stalling momentarily at the last moment before its kill. A precise contraction of claws and a last futile shriek of a desert hare, as the two come to rest in a simultaneous moment of life and death.

Meanwhile the runaway train burned uncontrollably forward and the uncertain lives of men took a backseat to the nature that would outlive us all if we don’t destroy it all in our passion to hurriedly get where we think we need to go.