For Whom the Whistle Blows

You awake alone on a train with trees drifting slowly by outside.

You sit in the window seat, in the first row, facing forward. Looking behind yourself, you see that every seat stretching back to the door is empty, light that does not shine glittering in the eyes of people who are not there. It is dark in the car, the attendant hasn’t been seen for hours, and the only light comes from a perfectly full moon in a clear, cloudless sky.

It is cold in the car, though you do not shiver. The cold is from absent things; voices that do not mutter, clothing that does not flutter. There are no coughs nor laughs to warm the air. No tiny voices asking parents questions without answers.

The man sitting next to you breathes slow, heavy breaths. In and out.

You don’t know who he is. His breathing is the only sound in the silent car. There is no rattle from the wheels as they follow the rails that must be there, for it is a train, and trains run on rails. Turning to look at the man, your clothing rustles, breaking the unbroken silence until the sound fades, consumed by the shadows around you.

His face is in shadow, and you cannot see it. His breath is slow and steady though his chest neither rises nor falls. He does not move. You cannot make out the details of his clothes. A jacket, a shirt, a sweater, perhaps. The dark gives you no answers.

Fracturing the hollow silence again, you turn your face to the window and wonder about the train attendant. Surely you have seen them. Surely you must have, at some point, boarded the train. Surely they had checked… Surely…

The shadowed night rushes by outside the window, though the train does not seem to move. It lacks the rocking and rushing of a train in motion. Why then do the trees speed by so? It is late autumn, the thin bare branches – bare of leaves and of snow and of birds – reach for the cloudless sky like twisted, skeletal fingers.

The branches whip in a wind that must be blowing, though you do not hear it, almost a blur of shadows upon darkness as the train hurries past. The train must be moving though you cannot feel it; there is a sense of that, a sense that you are not where you were. But where was that? And where were you going?

Your eyes strain as they gaze into the tangled forest of grasping, skeletal trees. The attendant hasn’t been through your car in hours. Was there ever one? There must have been, you are on a train, and that is the way of things. All trains have attendants. Where is the train going? In your hand, there is a ticket, a ticket that must always have been there, for where else would it have been? It could never have been anywhere else, right?

There are small holes in the ticket, you find them as you run your fingers over the smooth face of the ticket. There in the corner, an intricate series of holes like those left by a hand puncher. In the light of a moon that does not shine in a sky with no clouds, you struggle to read the words that must be on the ticket. For all tickets have writing on them.

The ticket will answer your questions, all but one of them. But you see nothing; the words that must be there cannot be read in the thin radiance of the full moon.

Looking out the window, trying without hope to peer through the grasping trees, you wonder about the attendant. You must have seen them, your ticket has holes that they must have punched with their puncher, and the train is going somewhere so you must have boarded.

The light in the dark car dims, it is a light and a darkness made of things that are lacking. If there was conversation, if there were screens, if there were stars… but there are none of these things. The seats across the aisle fade into the darkness yet they can still be seen, sinking into the gloom like the corpses of ships after a storm.

The man beside you does not move, it is as though he is not there yet he must be for you can see him. There must have been an attendant too, but you do not remember them. Did you sleep, perhaps? You woke up, so you must have slept. But then where are you going, and where are you from?

You cannot see the face of the person beside you; do they wear a hat or a mask? The silence shatters and reforms as you turn in your chair to look again down the length of the car, but it is empty and you are alone. Absent eyes glitter out of the gloom at you, reflecting a light that does not shine.

The attendant has not been seen in hours, if they were ever there at all. What does the man’s face look like? You saw it, you must have seen it, you have been on this train for… since when? The moon is unchanged and the shadows of the skeletal trees are racing by. You must be moving because you are not still.

The train is empty and silent. It is made dark, and cold by absent things. No rustle of cloth from the breathing of the man beside you, no shifting of a dozing passenger in their seat, no glow of a light lit for reading. The attendant has not been by in hours. You are alone. When did the attendant punch your ticket?

Outside your window, it is late autumn, the shadowy naked branches rush past, clawing desperately at a bright moon in a clear, starless sky. It is cold in the train, but you do not shiver, your breath does not fog, yet the cold is in your bones.

Within the silent car rushing from somewhere you were to somewhere you’re going, you question. There must have been a time before you awoke on the train; there must be time after you leave it. To be here, you must have an origin and a destination. But you cannot remember. To be going to, you must be coming from. But there is no answer. You wrack your brain, your own breathing coming louder and faster.

Where are you going, and from where are you coming?

You are alone. You wish the man sitting next to you would wake up, but he is not sleeping. You wish he would speak to you, but as you think of it, you know not what you would say. You must have spoken when you or he boarded the train. The man is still, yet he must have moved. He is on the train, like you and must have gotten there. How had you gotten on the train? How had you come to the station, for all trains stop at stations, and boarded the train? A car, a bus, a smaller train?

The trees are just shadows now, whipping by so fast they cannot be seen against the darkness of the forest. You want to shout but have forgotten how. A question bubbles to the front of your mind, pushed by thoughts that cannot form into words:

What is your name?

A screaming whistle shatters the hollow silence.

You awake alone on a train with trees moving slowly by outside.

You sit in the window seat, in the first row, facing forward…