Purgatory

When I awoke, I was alone in the darkness.

I couldn’t recall where I was, or how I got there.

I couldn’t see beyond my own hands for the first minute, trying not to panic as the darkness pressed firmly around me, like a suffocating blanket.

As my vision gradually refocused, and I realized where I was, the panic didn’t cease, but was slowly overshadowed by confusion.

I was on a train.

A moving train.

I was slumped over in one of the seats, my legs stretched across the middle of the aisle. The armrest was digging into my side, and my head was resting against the glass window, the vibrations pounding through my temples.

I sat up, wincing as I shook the stiffness out of my limbs.

How long had I been sitting here?

And how did I get here?

When I tried to cast my mind back to before I woke up on the train, there was nothing but emptiness, like the darkness around me had seeped into my memories too, and they were hiding somewhere amongst the shadows.

I held my head in my hands for a few seconds, trying to scramble back through my mind for an explanation, but there wasn’t one. Just blankness.

Hoping my memories would return to me soon, I lifted my gaze to the train itself. The interior was a very standard, nondescript affair, with plush red seats and a speckled grey floor. It felt familiar, almost, but when I tried to think about where I’d seen it before, I still couldn’t remember. It was one of those moments still trapped behind the wall of shadow encompassing my mind.

I looked around, still adjusting to the darkness of the train’s interior, and gave a soft start.

I was alone.

The carriage was empty apart from myself. Not a single trace of another person.

Had I missed the last stop? Had someone forgotten I was here? But if the train was still moving, that meant the conductor must still be here. Maybe he could help me.

I stood up slowly, holding on the edge of the seat as the train jerked and rattled over the tracks. I tried to glance out through the window, but there was nothing but darkness out there. Maybe we were in some kind of tunnel.

I had no belongings, I realized, when I looked down. No bags stashed away beneath my chair, nor on the luggage rails above me. When I checked the pockets of my jeans, I had nothing either. No phone, no purse. Not even a train ticket.

For a moment, I found myself wondering if this was a dream. Just a strange illusion trapped inside my mind, a nightmare of loneliness and confusion.

I rolled up my sleeve and pinched myself just to be sure, but I didn’t wake up. The dream didn’t crumble around me and reveal the truth.

Whatever was happening, it was real.

“Hello?” I called out, my voice distorting as it echoed down the carriage. “Anyone here?”

I heard nothing above the grinding of the wheels against the tracks, and my own steady breathing.

Thinking perhaps there was a train line route on the wall, I turned and looked up, but the walls were bare, metal, shadows clinging to the corners.

Swallowing back my surfacing feeling of unease, I walked down the carriage, making sure there was nobody else sitting in the darkness where I couldn’t see. No abandoned luggage, no forgotten coats draped over the seats, not even a piece of trash littering the floor. There was no sign of another human being.

Hoping I’d find some answers in the other carriages, I walked up to the frosted door and hit the button. The door slid open with a hiss, and the sound of the grumbling engine and screeching tracks grew louder as I stepped into the partition between the carriages. A chill wind blew across my neck, then I was through the door and into the next carriage.

I threw a glance down the aisle, but it didn’t look like there was anyone here either. It was identical to the carriage I had just left. The same bare metal walls and speckled grey floor and plush red seats. The same emptiness.

“Hello?” I called again, hoping for a reply I knew I wouldn’t get.

With a sigh, I began walking down the aisle, meticulously checking the seats and luggage racks, and expectantly finding nothing.

As I reached the other end of the carriage, I noticed a faint patch of damp growing in one of the corners, discoloring the area with a grimy sheen. A dark brown stain marked the last seat, but there was no indication what it could have been.

I hit the button to open the frosted glass door, and stepped into the next carriage.

A shadow caught the corner of my eye as I stepped inside, hovering in the corner of the aisle, but when I looked, there was nothing there. The third carriage was as empty as the last two.

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered to myself, my voice sounding discordant against the vibrations of the train. “Where is everyone?”

Maybe I was right, and I had missed the last stop. It would explain why the train was empty. But I still didn’t understand what I was doing here. Without a ticket, without any belongings, without a single clue as to what was going on. I didn’t even have any memories before waking up on the train. Which meant something must have happened. There must be a reason why I was here.

I quickened my pace as I walked down the aisle, scanning my eyes fervently over the empty seats. Still nothing.

As I was nearing the end of the third carriage, something caught my attention. An anomaly that disrupted the mirror image of the aisle.

The red plush fabric on one of the seats had been torn, spilling out grimy-colored foam. The walls were discolored too, cobwebs strung for the corners of the ceiling, billowing on an invisible draught.

The door in front of me had a small crack in the glass, spiderwebbing into layers of thin fissures. Probably the result of some disorderly drunkard on the late-night line.

I touched the button to open the door, then recoiled in disgust as something soft and damp touched my skin. A cobweb, freshly spun, fluttered away from my fingers. The spider – small, with a rotund black body and spindly legs – scuttled back into the corner. I shuddered, hurrying through the door before it automatically closed on me.

A gust of wind blew my hair into knots, and the clunking of the train seemed to grow louder, like the train was speeding up. Judging by the dampness of the breeze, we must have been going through some kind of tunnel, but not even the walls were visible beyond the darkness that bled around the edges of my vision.

Shivering in the breeze, I hurried into the next carriage, hoping I was almost at the conductor’s office at the front of the train. It was there I was hoping to get some answers, or at least figure out where I was heading to.

As soon as I stepped into the next carriage, I felt a cold dread settle over me.

This coach had a completely different vibe to the previous ones, like the chill from outside followed me in. At the end of the aisle, a red light hovered over the door. It was a startling splash of color against the monochrome dimness of the rest of the train, but somehow, it didn’t make me feel any better. It was the red of emergencies and danger, not the red of safety or answers.

I took a step further into the carriage, and the light ahead of me flickered for half a second, shadows undulating around me. The seats were in more disrepair than before, the fabric torn and scratched, the metal frames scuffed at the edges. The walls were grimy too, worn down with rust the color of dried blood. I shuddered.

Something was wrong here. It was an instinctive feeling, driven by the undulating red lights and the increasing decay of my surroundings. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

I stopped walking, letting the thoughts settle around me.

Should I keep going further? There was no indication of what waited for me beyond the door, flooded with that grotesque red light. More decay? More darkness? Or perhaps some answers for the mystery haunting the emptiness of my mind?

If I turned back, there would be nothing for me but empty carriages. No answers there. Only silence and loneliness and the conviction that this was still just a dream.

I subconsciously pinched my arm again.

The red light flashed me back awake.

I had to keep going.

The floor was stained with puddles of darkness, and somewhere ahead of me, I could hear the sound of dripping, like a leaky faucet, a broken gutter.

But there was no water here. Just those dark, rusty stains that gleamed in the darkness.

I stopped in front of the door, standing beneath the red light. Dust particles floated amidst the illumination, dancing in front of my eyes.

The light flashed off.

And didn’t come back on.

For a second, I held my breath, stranded in the abrupt darkness, waiting for the red light to return. But it didn’t. The bulb had gone dark. Shadows rested inside, small and wingless.

I hit the button and passed through to the next carriage, hoping the conductor’s office was close. There had to be someone driving the train. I couldn’t be here completely alone.

When I stepped into the next coach, I felt a sickening wrench to my stomach.

The walls were completely covered in rust and grime. Bugs scuttled across the floor, some of them larger than my pinkie finger, their legs tip-tapping as they disappeared into the shadows beneath the seats. There was a horribly bitter smell emanating from somewhere, like some kind of animal had crawled into a corner and rotted away. Part of the ceiling had been torn away, exposing the train’s metal skeleton.

The whole place was in a complete state of decay and abandon. Gruesome red and brown stains covered the walls and seats, and I was finding it harder to convince myself it was only rusted metal.

What was going on here? What had happened at this side of the train? Why was everything here so decayed and horrible compared to the other areas?

Perhaps that red light had been a warning. Only danger lay ahead.

Without thinking, I turned around and tried the door, wanting to go back. But it wouldn’t open. I hit the button, again and again, but it seemed to be broken from this side. Instead, I slipped my fingers between the gaps in the door and tried to manually heave it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

I was trapped here. No way back. Only forward.

Pulling my arms up to my chest so that I didn’t touch anything, I began to move down the aisle.

My foot touched something wet and sticky on the floor, and I almost slipped, barely managing to catch myself against the handrail of one of the seats. Something immediately skittered over the back of my hand, and I screamed, flinging the tiny black carapace off my skin. The beetle landed on its back, its legs flailing momentarily in the air, before curling up and falling still.

I shuddered, moving away from it. The rest of the floor was sticky, sucking down my shoes with every step, but I managed to avoid slipping in anything else.

Through the frosted glass door at the end, I could see red, and somehow, I knew this was the last carriage. The last stop before the conductor’s room. The last coach of the train, before I found out the truth.

The door opened with a metallic hiss, and I stepped into the red room on the other side.

Everything inside the carriage was doused in a sickly red glow, emanating from three lights in the ceiling. Between the darkness of the tunnel outside, and the gruesome interior, I felt a crippling wave of claustrophobia tighten my gut.

My legs almost gave way, but I managed to hold onto one of the broken chairs, keeping myself upright. The air in the carriage was warm and humid, nothing like the chill wind that had blown through the carriages before. Sweat immediately beaded my skin, making me feel more uncomfortable and suffocated.

I staggered forward, fixing my gaze on the door ahead of me. Unlike the others, this one was completely made of metal. This had to be it. Where I would find the train’s driver.

I wrapped my hands around the metal handle, held my breath, and pushed the door open.

My heart plummeted straight into my stomach, my legs wobbling unsteadily.

The room was empty. There was nobody here. Nobody driving the train.

Above the grating screech of the wheels and the gust of wind outside the train, I let out a heavy sob.

There was nobody here. I was alone. Completely alone, with no idea who I was or where I was going.

I dragged my hands through my hair, feeling an overwhelming sense of defeat.

What was I supposed to do now?

I couldn’t go back. There was nothing for me back there.

Then I saw it. Something fluttering in front of me, like the wings of a moth.

I stared at the piece of yellowed paper stuck onto the control panel, struggling to comprehend the words scrawled across it in bright red ink.

LAST STOP: PURGATORY

Was this some kind of joke? Or just an incredibly vivid dream that I was struggling to wake up from?

I tore the note off the panel and tossed it away, watching it flutter away into the darkness. Then I stared at the panel, looking for the emergency brakes, for some way to stop the train or call for help. But all the lights were off. None of the buttons worked when I pressed them. Not even the lever did anything when I pushed it down.

The train had no way to stop. It was just going to continue hurtling on into the darkness, with no driver and only a single passenger.

When I finally screamed, it seemed to echo on forever.