The Man on the Train

The Man opened his eyes and found himself sitting at a bar. At first, he was slightly confused. As the bartender poured him another drink, he looked down at his cup being filled up.

“Here you go, sir.”

The cold yellowish liquid was almost overflowing the cup, which was also filled with iced all the way to the top.

The man started thinking and realized he didn’t know much. In fact, he didn’t know anything. Instinctively, the man took a sip of the drink in front of him, as he felt a bit of dryness down his throat. The drink was sweet and sour. Not much of his taste, but if he was being served such drink, he probably had asked for it. Right?

The man put down the drink and realized he didn’t even know if had ordered it in the first place.

“Excuse me?” He waved to the bartender. “What is this?” He lifted the cup, now a little emptier after he took out a sip.

“It’s your drink, sir. Between the Sheets.”

The Man understood even less of what was happening, and the bartender noticed the confusion on his face.

“That’s the name of the drink, sir. Between the Sheets.”

“Did I order this?” The man asked.

It was the bartender’s turn to be confused. He looked at the Man with a grim face.

“Your lady did, for you.”

My lady? The Man tried to think hard. Tried to remember of whom the bartender was possibly referring to. There was nothing. Nothing at all, that he could remember. It was as though his life had just started there at the bar.

“Where is she?” The Man asked. The bartender, again with a grim face, answered.

“I am not sure, sir. She went that way.” He pointed at a door by the end of the bar.

“How did she look like?” The Man realized the question was possibly strange, yet genuine on his part.

The bartender now smirked, as though he just realized somebody was playing with him.

“Maybe you should lay the drinks for tonight, sir.” Another smirk.

“I am serious. How did she look like?”

The bartender got a little nervous, apprehensive almost.

“I didn’t get a good look, sir.” There was a moment of silence where the bartender and the man just stared at each other. The Man, waiting for anything, and the bartender, hoping the Man would just leave. “She was wearing a purple dress, sir.” He finally said, with an empty gulp afterwards.

“Anything else? Her was hair like?”

The bartender was clearly getting more uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t be talking about this, sir.”

“Why not?!” The Man’s voice rose uncontrollably. He himself didn’t know where that rage came from. The other people in the bar noticed the commotion and the chattering around him almost ceased, making their conversation the center of attention.

“Her hair was dark and curled. Now, please leave.” The bartender timidly asked.

The Man looked around and saw people dressed in fancy suits and dresses whispering and mumbling things. Things he knew pertained to his lashing out moments ago. He took another sip of his drink again, instinctively, then left.

As he walked down the hallway after the exit door from the bar, the Man noticed something different about the place he was in. It wasn’t stationery. Although smooth and almost unnoticeable, the whole place was moving. Fast. After walking a little more, the Man finally reached a room with large and clear windows. As the landscapes outside, lit by the full moon, vanished from view quicker by the minute, the realization finally came to him.

I am in a train?

That piece of information just made everything more confusing to him. It was as though new words started popping into the existence. Some he knew, some he didn’t. He knew what trains where and had an idea of they worked. With that flash of data running through his mind, a spark flamed. A ticket was needed to get in a train. The Man emptied his pockets on an empty table. He sat down he put everything he had in front of him. He indeed had lots of pockets. Big ones too. He just had stopped for a moment to look at himself. He also was wearing a fancy suit, just like the people back in the bar. A tuxedo, to be more precise. Another word he just realized he knew.

With his pockets emptied, he looked at all the little things in front of him. There was some change, of a currency he had no idea of. A pen, some paperclips, some business cards, a few notes on some scratch paper. Even a hair tie and a necklace, but no ticket. No phone either, which could also have been helpful in that situation. He read through the scratch paper, but there was nothing there that helped him make sense of the situation. There was short recipe for a type of chocolate cake. A love poem and random numbers that didn’t amount to anything to him.

On the back of a business card from a real estate company, however, there was something slightly interesting. It read: Room 17543 – Midnight.

That was the first and only thing he saw that could help him. Although it was stretch. And a big one, the Man thought that maybe there would be someone in that room that knew how he was or why he was there. When that thought crossed his mind, he realized finally that he didn’t know his own name. He tried to think. Think very hard. But nothing came.

Frustrated, the Man put everything back in his pockets. He pondered what to do. Someone in a uniform was walking by the train section he was in. He assumed the woman was an employee, so he waved to her, and she came to his aid promptly.

“How can I help you, sir?”

“When is the next stop?” He asked.

The woman showed signs of confusion. “What do you mean stop, sir?”

The Man stared at her sure that he had been clear enough on his question.

“I mean when is the next stop the train is making?”

The woman seemed even more confused. She looked around as though hoping there was someone else there to help her understand what the Man was asking, but there were no other uniformed people in there, just regular folks going about their business.

“Do you mean the next speed up, sir?”

“The next speed up?”

“Oh yes.” The woman said with a snarky smile. “The next speed up is at midnight. We will be reaching 731 miles per hour.”

The Man looked at her, expecting her to laugh it off as a joke or something. But she didn’t. She kept staring at him and his confused face. He wasn’t sure what to do, so he tried to brush it off his head and remind himself about the room he decided to go.

“What time is it?” He asked.

She quickly looked at her wristwatch and then looked back at him with a wide smile.

“Almost midnight!”

He got up almost instantaneously. “Where is room 17543?”

“Oh, you are going to have to walk a lot.” She spoke. “It is on the end of the locomotive, that way.” She pointed at the door her herself had come from.

The Man thanked her with a nod and started walking in a fast pace in the directions she oriented him to.

“Don’t be late. The woman in purple is waiting for you.” The woman smirked.

The Man stopped at once, with a weird feeling on the back of his neck. He turned back to ask the woman what she meant, but she had vanished. In fact, there was no one else left in that section of the train. For the first time, the Man thought that he could be dreaming. Or maybe on drugs.

He quite literally slapped his own face several times. Each time stronger than the other. There were no signs of waking up. No psychodelia illusion showing up in front of him.

Once again, he tried to brush it off the small, strange events of late, and move forward towards the room 17543. As he walked through the locomotive, the Man noticed each section was stranger the previous.

It started with the fancy bar and the yellowish drink, but he was no in the middle of a party full of skinheads. Banging their heads into each other, pushing everyone around with no hesitation, including the Man himself. He felt cluttered and asked himself if he was suffering from claustrophobia. That section seemed smaller, but it was just because all the people crushing him into nothingness. He was spat on, yelled at. Objects were thrown at him and for his shock, everyone seemed amused by it.

In another section of the car, the opposite took place. A calm and silent environment, with people meditating or practicing some sort of yoga. So deeply in peace, the mere sound of the Man walking disturbed everyone. At once, they all shushed him with angry faces, the opposite of what it seemed they were doing there. He apologized in silence, waving his hand in front of his face, signaling he would be quiet. He tried moving forward, but there was absolutely no sound he could make that wouldn’t disturb the entire room. It seemed that each time he disturbed someone, the tension in the air rose. As though he could feel the hate of everyone in that room towards him. He didn’t realize at first, but those people had a breaking point. It reached when the Man was in the middle of the room. He realized that that was no ordinary yoga retreat. A woman just a few meters from him got up. She had a baseball bat. Without batting an eye, she swung it at full force at the Man’s stomach. The grunt of pain was loud, incredibly loud. Everyone in the room shushed him again, but it was useless. He was in pain, and he couldn’t hide it. One by one, the people in the room were tired of his noises, and one by one each of them hit him with a baseball bat. When he finally was able to silence himself, they all went back to their meditation and yoga. The Man was terrified. It took him what seemed like hours to silently crawl to the other side of the room and finally move forward to the next section of the train.

What is happening? This is madness! He thought to himself.

He knew that midnight was already gone by now. If there was someone indeed waiting for him at the end of that, if the lady in purple was in room 17543 at midnight, she probably wouldn’t be there anymore. He pondered again in one of the breaks he got in between sections of the locomotive. He looked outside and the locomotive didn’t showed signs of slowing down. In fact, it seemed to be moving slightly faster. He thought back at the weird lady in uniform that had told him about speeding up at midnight.

She said over 700 miles an hour, though. We are not going that fast.

The Man kept ongoing, decided that he would find room 17543 no matter what. Even if the lady was not there anymore, maybe she left a note?! He hoped.

The sections of the locomotive kept on surprising him more and more. It got to the point something seemed to be defying physics itself. Which, by the way, was another word he knew but didn’t know much about the meaning behind it.

There was a section of the train so hot, he felt like literally melting before he got to the end. There was fire coming from the windows, but the people in that section were nonchalant about. They were all naked, like in a sauna, laying their backs against the unimaginable hot walls, with their arms extended in what it seemed a very relaxed position.

In another section, the opposite happened. There was snow coming from the open windows this time. The floor was frozen, therefore very slippery. The Man felt countless times, almost breaking his jaw in one of the occasions. Once again, the people present in the section were just going about their days like nothing was really happening. They were heavy winter clothing, surely, but still. Their behavior was completely disconnected from reality. It was as though the farther the Man got from the bar in the very first section he woke up at, the more warped reality seemed to become. The most disturbing section of the train was the next. And after facing it, the one afterwards became the new worst.

When the Man step onto the dark and mysterious section, he noticed right away everything felt lighter. Including him. His feet were not touching the ground anymore. He looked down and noticed he was floating, slowly going up and up, in a very slow pace. He looked around the section and the usual was all he saw. People going about their business, completely ignoring the craziness happening around them. They were all floating as well. There was a man sitting on chair, wearing a fancy suit and a monocle, reading a journal.

It was hard for the Man to cross the section, but for different reasons than the previous ones, as usual. There was no imminent danger from the passengers themselves, nor there was pain and suffering. There was only struggle, to get oneself moving in a place seemingly without gravity. The Man used the walls to propel himself forward awkwardly, bumping in some people along the way.

“Watch where you’re floating.” An old woman yelled.

The bizarre scenario didn’t stop the Man, as he continued to move ahead, almost reaching the exit of that section, which meant the beginning of another. As soon as he crossed the door, the Man fell hard on the floor. He hit his head and was nearly passing out. Suddenly, water was splashed on his face. His first thought was that the section he was now in was water based. Which made him shake vigorously since he was not a good swimmer, not could he hold his breath for too long.

However, the little splash was all the water that came to hit him. It helped him out of the dizziness from hitting his head on the floor. As he looked up, with a still blurry vision, he realized someone holding an empty cup looking down on him. He couldn’t discern the face, but the scenario was starting to get a little clearer as his head recovered from the hit.

“Are you okay?” The child asked.

“I think so.” The Man said. “Thank you.”

The child smiled. There were a few teeth missing in her mouth.

“I am Conrad.” The little kid said, putting the cup back on a table near him. “What is your name?”

The Man got up and looked around. That section was empty, aside from him and the child. Not only empty, but it was normal too. There was nothing defying the laws of physics there. No angry passengers, no fire, no nothing. Just a few tables, chair, silverware. A small dining room.

“What is your name?” The child asked again, more vigorously.

The Man looked down at the boy, squinting his eyes at his forehead, as he realized the little guy had a round scar right in the middle of it. Conrad immediately covered up the scar, realizing where the Man was looking at.

“I… I don’t know.” The Man said.

“You don’t know your name?” The boy asked, surprised. “That’s silly.”

Yeah, it is. The Man thought.

“Well, you can stay here in this section if you want. We can play games. I am really bored.”

“Where are your parents?” The Man asked.

“Oh, I don’t have any.”

“Do you have an adult with you?”

“No, I am by myself.”

“The Man felt responsible for the kid, since the little boy was just too young to be on a train by himself. Especially such an odd train like that one.”

“Well, I will take care of you for a moment. We need to find someone from the staff so you can stop in the next station.”

“There is no next station, sir.”

The Man stared at the boy, remembering the words of the lady back many sections ago. Nonetheless, he stayed there with the boy for a while. He knew he was late for the room 17543 and the woman in purple, so he thought a few minutes there with the boy couldn’t do any harm. After playing a few game of cards with him, the Man got up and said he needed to go.

“I am sorry, but I really need to get to this room by the end of the train.”

“By the end? You mean there?” The boy pointed at the exit of the section.

“Is the next section the last one?”

“Yeah.” Conrad said. “But it is boring. Just a bunch of rooms.”

The Man felt an urge of excitement run down his spine. Without looking back and with no hesitation, he walked towards the exit. Once he finally arrived on the other side, he finally saw the corridor full of rooms he was looking for. However, there was something particular odd about that section. It was long. Extremely long. So long he couldn’t even see the end of it.

I never seen a train section this long! He murmured to himself.

As he started walking, he noticed the room numbers started at 1 (one). Then 2, then 3 and so on. Soon enough, the Man was jogging, and then running, hoping to get to room 17543 as fast as possible.

After what it seemed like hours, the man found himself by the end of that long section. The very last room, on his right, was the number 17543.

“This is it.” He said to no one.

Three knocks and a few seconds later, the most beautiful woman the Man had ever seen opened the door. She wore a magnificent purple dress. Her skin was dark and soft, and her voice, despite firm, was sweet and pleasant to hear.

“You are late.”

“I am sorry.” He said. “I came as quickly as I could.”

“It’s not good enough. You are going to have to start again.”

“Start what again?”

“Your punishment.” The woman said.

Before the Man could try and understand what she was saying, the woman in the purple dress touched his shoulder gently. As her hand landed on him, the Man immediately passed out and fell hard onto the floor.

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The Man opened his eyes and found himself sitting at a bar. At first, he was slightly confused. As the bartender poured him another drink, he looked down at his cup being filled up.

“Here you go, sir.”

The cold yellowish liquid was almost overflowing the cup, which was also filled with iced all the way to the top.

The man started thinking and realized he didn’t know much. In fact, he didn’t know anything. Instinctively, the man took a sip of the drink in front of him, as he felt a bit of dryness down his throat. The drink was sweet and sour. Not much of his taste, but if he was being served such drink, he probably had asked for it. Right?

He searched his pockets instinctively, and after going over all the little things he had, he noticed something. On the back of a business card from a real estate company, there was something slightly interesting. It read: Room 17544 – Midnight.

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Outside the Redemption Machine, the woman in the purple uniform took a break. She got a bite of her sandwich and observed the Man laying down flat, unconscious but clearly in a dream like state.

“This one is a piece of work, isn’t he?” Her coworker said.

“Yeah. Child homicide. It will take a few more good years before he even starts realizing what is happening.”

“Well, until then, make sure to make those train sections as awful as possible.”

They both laughed, and the other woman went back to her station, as the woman in purple continued to eat her sandwich. Her shift was almost over, so she was getting ready to shut down the machine and give the Man a break. There were, after all, many days ahead of him imprisoned there before his sentence was over.