The Message in the Metal Box

A sharp pain echoes through my right leg, sending spikes throughout my body.

What is this?

A foggy haze encompasses my memory as my mind trudges through murky water.

What happened?

A high pitched ring traverses from ear to ear.

A metal tang saturates my tongue and throat.

The universe spins as my eyes open.

Where am I?

Against the throbbing pain rushing through my veins, I sit up, and the world does a somersault, turning one, two, three times before flipping itself upright.

The first thing I notice is my shoes: untied. I reach forward for the strings and begin lacing the boots when I feel a presence next to me. I slowly twist my head to the side. So close I can feel his breath as my own, a man sits beside me in the same position of tying his boots, looking right at me. As I cautiously return my body upright, his expression mirrors the look of confusion I have on my own face. Finally, I pull my eyes from his. Around us sit dozens of others, dazed and apprehensive, some searching their pockets, some muttering jumbled “where is this?” and “who am I?”s, some attempting to stand, some tying their boots.

A whooshing sound passes overhead before landing with a ting in a small metal box by a door. The only door. No one moves. I stand, once again ignoring the seering ache, and make my way past the herd of bodies. I open the metal box in the wall and find a note inside. When I pull it out, I realize it’s more the size of a novel than a nice card. Pages and pages of handwritten messages weigh down my hands. The lettering floats before me, waltzing in the air before my vision settles. I once again note the sheer weight of the thing. This would take days to read. I turn back to the room where every eye is on me. I look down to a frightened woman on the ground. “Here.” I say and hand the pages to her with a reassuring smile.

I turn back to the beautifully intricate wooden door and leave the others to wonder alone.

The atmosphere changes as I enter the new room. About a dozen people are scattered around the place. My boots tap against the wooden floorboards as I make my way to a woman sitting on a cushioned bench. She looks about middle age, hair bright red and a tangled mess, her long sapphire skirt reaching the floorboards and her embroidered blouse crowding her neck. I look down at my own forest green vest and khaki trousers. I remember nothing about where they came from. Where I came from. I turn back to the woman whose head is turned away from me and she mumbles something under her breath, incoherently repeating phrases. Finally, I reach out and tap her shoulder. “Excuse m-”

“We’re on a train.” She whips around to face me and her eyes are ablaze with a mixture of fear, confusion, and madness. “How did we get on a train?”

I look past her to see the small window she had been gazing out of. The world moves by so fast I can’t seem to make out a single figure - trees and sky and earth blend together like colors melting on a canvas with no rhyme or reason. We’re on a train.

The word travels through the air, whispers rising and stomachs dropping as the news reaches the other passengers. We’re on a train.

The woman still looks at me expectantly. “Why are we here?” The others mutter similar questions and turn to each other for support in their frustration. “Who brought us here?” The woman’s voice raises as she demands my answer. Once again, her words resonate with the group as the question who? echoes through the crowd. I slowly stand from my seat and look toward another door.

“Why have they brought us here?”

“How do we get off?”

“They can’t do this!”

The curiosity turns to anger as the room fills with the pulsation of a dozen rapid hearts beating and the thick musk of fury and hatred. Voices become louder and louder as passengers begin pacing. Some turn to each other for answers, becoming violent when they receive none. Before long, the room is bombarded with ear bursting shouts. A man kneels by the wall, screaming into a vent demanding freedom, an old woman rips the sleeves off her Victorian style clothing, shrieking in confusion. Someone else has torn up a floorboard or a bit of a bench and attacks the window with it. Soon others join and the glass shatters. A little girl huddles in a corner by the door I came from, crying. I move to go to her when the woman with red hair and crazed eyes blocks my path. Faintly, I hear the same whoosh and ting as before. My eyes lock on a new metal box behind me, beside a door. When I turn back to the woman, her lip quivers and her eyes dilate. From the waistline of her skirt she pulls a knife and charges at me, hurling questions as I sprint toward the door beside the box. The chaos unfolds around me in slow motion: hurled objects, screams and condemnations, spit and sweat flying through the air, benches swerving and sliding, all enveloping me in an atmosphere of riotous turmoil as I reach for the door. All else quiets as I hear the creak of the door opening to let me slip through and SLAM.

The room I am in is silent. I breathe heavily as I let go of the door. Through the wood glints the edge of a knife. Why did she have a knife? A sharp pain spikes through my right leg. I remember the same feeling when I first woke up. I reach in my pocket and fold my hand around something inside. As I pull the item out, I can feel the heat from the chase leave my body. In my hand is a beautifully crafted, ornately decorated, meticulously formed…knife.

“We all have them.”

I turn on my heel at the unfamiliar voice and find myself face to face with a society of passengers posed around one long table, cigars in their mouths, smoke in the air, smug grins on their faces.

“We each have a knife.”

My eyes scan to the far end of the room where the speaker leans back in his chair, legs propped up on the table. He retracts this position and stands, pulling a large rolled paper out from under his arm, extending it and placing it before him, resting his hands on each end, leaning onto the table. After a long silence, he sharply looks up at me.

“Well, are you going to join us or not?” The annoyed gentleman gestures to the seat nearest to me: the other head of the table.

“Sorry.” I meekly reply. As I pull the chair out, the scrape of it against the floor accentuates the uncomfortability in the air. I realize every man is wearing a suit…I realize they’re all men. The dim lighting gives a surreptitious ambience and the smoke encircling each head fills my own with conspiratorial cloudedness. I sit and give a timidly forced smile, taking in the silence of the eyes burning into me.

Finally, the silence is broken and the men all turn inward toward each other, and conduct their meeting. The same man as before begins.

“Before me I have the sketches we’ve made of the train. They’re not perfect but they should suffice. I know we each have questions but the most pertinent of them all is why are we here and how. In a moment I will open the floor to…”

My attention wavers and my eyes wander as the gentleman drones on in his pragmatic tone. I notice the curtains are drawn over the windows and the walls are covered in ink. Questions of “Who did this?” join noted scribbles of “boots - always begin untied,” all decorating the room with jumbled thoughts. A few scraps of paper depict sketches of various faces, what seems to be train fragments, and structures I can only assume the men saw out the window. Each paper is nailed to the wall and many have bits of string connecting them to each other - creating a chaotic web of questions and theories. They’re trying to answer our questions. Suddenly, I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of respect and hope.

My attention returns to the conversation.

“The answer to all this is simple.” A member is saying. “The man who put us here wants something from us. We figure out what it is and give it to him.”

“Give him whatever he wants with no precautions?” Another interjects. “How can we be sure he’s trustworthy?”

“He obviously has the power in this situation so it doesn’t really matter if he’s trustworthy.”

“So we just cater to this person who put us here against our will?” This speaker stands and begins pacing.

“Well we don’t know if it's against our will.”

“Did you buy a ticket?”

“No.”

“Then it’s against our will.”

“Well that’s not -”

“I say we can’t trust him.”

I raise my hand. “Or her.”

All eyes look to me as the conversation comes to a screeching halt.

“Sorry it’s just… we don’t know if this person is a man.” The members stare agape with slightly bemused expressions on their faces. “Or that there’s just one person.” They shift uncomfortably. “Just thought that was important to note.” With that, I’m silent.

“Our new friend brings up an interesting point.” The original gentleman grins at me from the other head of the table. “It could be a group of people working together.”

“Or not working together.” Another man mutters as he puffs on his cigar.

“Right.” Another chips in. “There could be sides at battle, angles to consider -”

“Are we even sure we’re on a train?”

The gentlemen all reply to this with agreeing grunts and head nods. They can’t even come to a conclusion on the most fundamental detail? My original optimism begins to falter as I grow heavy with the questions no one seems to be able to answer.

As I look around the room, I notice the dust on each man’s suit. Looking up, the chandelier giving the humble glow to the egocentric men is covered in cobwebs. Even the walls indicate these men have been here longer than I first expected. The messages written in ink I had originally noted are only a fraction of those which had come before them. Faded writings cover every fragment, questions intertwining and words written on top of each other. How long have they spent discussing this? I slowly stand as the men continue babbling. Their eyes show signs of restlessness and exhaustion and their cigars are growing shorter by the second. The men don’t notice as I move toward the door. They continue discussing their important theories and concepts with dead eyes and pursed lips as the whoosh and ting sounds. None look toward the metal box. None look toward me. As I walk out of the room, they continue talking in circles, following the pattern of their all-encompassing and never-ending smoke trails.

“Another bottle!” Cheers erupt all around and a jazzy melody threatens to burst my eardrums. As I turn, I see a huge room crowded with people. Tables line the corners where couples and groups dine, filling the room with boisterous laughter. The center has been cleared for dancing, where beautiful people jolt and writhe to the music, throwing their bodies about without a care. Sunlight pours in from overhead, where the roof of the train has been replaced with a dazzling crystalline ceiling. Champagne flows through the room like a river carried on silver platters by well-kempt servers. A smile creeps across my face. For the first time since I woke up, I feel alive. I’m not thinking of why I’m here or who I am, only of champagne and dancing.

My eyes scan the crowd before landing on a woman in a sparkling dress covered in fringe that shimmers back and forth with every movement. She stands atop a table with a few others, absorbed in the music as she moves her body, tangling her fingers in her hair with one hand, downing her glass of champagne with the other. Suddenly, the heel of her shoe snaps and I watch as she bends down to take the things off, laughing at the inconvenience. She scans the crowd and her eyes land on me. My eyes go wide and my cheeks turn red. She grins in response. She holds up the broken heel and mouths something incoherent to me.

“WHAT?” I try to shout over the voices but before I know what’s happening her shoe is hurling towards me, and I’m catching it. I stare shocked at the thing in my hand before breaking into laughter. I turn my eyes back to the lady to celebrate but she’s posed and ready with her arm cocked to throw her other shoe. I catch this one as well and she jumps up and down in congratulatory excitement. She returns to dancing, now barefoot, and I find a seat at an empty table.

After a long while of listening to the music and drinking champagne, I see the woman approaching my table. She places one hand on the table and grabs the champagne bottle with the other, wearing an out of breath smile as she addresses me inattentively. “Thanks for holding my shoes for me.” She winks as she takes a swig from the bottle and sits on the table to face me.

“You didn’t get the boots?” I ask her, dumbfounded.

“Oh, I did but I threw those out ages ago. A girl only has so much time on this train and I personally would not like my corpse to be trapped for all eternity in such devastating footwear!” She smiles down at me and I can’t help but laugh.

“Your corpse?”

“Yes, my corpse! What are you laughing at?” She teases as she asks the question.

“I’m just not sure why you’re in such a hurry to change shoes now. Why not wait till we get off the train?” Now it’s her turn to laugh. “What are you laughing at?” I mock.

“Get off the train?”

“Yes, You have a long life ahead of you, this train is just part of it. Your corpse can wait until we reach the destination!” Her laughter grows. “You know, buy some better heels in whatever city we’re going to, I’m sure they’re better than train shoes.” Her laughter fades into a confused smile.

“You really don’t know.” She mutters under her breath.

I tilt my head in response, urging her to go on.

She leans forward and smiles gently, as if speaking to a clueless child. “There is no destination.”

My smile falters. “What do you mean?”

“This train?” She leans back and extends her arms, gesturing all around. “It’s not slowing down.”

“I don’t understand. We’re not stopping?”

“Oh, there have been countless rumors of it stopping but it never will.”

“But - the rest of… everything! You don’t mean this train is our life?”

“Oh for others, I’m sure there’s more out there. But for you and me? This is it.” She speaks with an easy certainty. As if completely unphased by the disorder. As if excited by it. Jealousy bubbles up inside of me. “Look. This train has been running long before us and will keep going long after we’re gone. And it’ll keep carrying new passengers to equally nonexistent destinations! It’s not a part of our life, we’re a part of its.”

My world should be crumbling right about now. I sit stoically and wait for the panic to hit… but it never does. I should want to hurl. I should want to scream. I should want to jump off this jail cell of a train. But all I want to do is drink champagne and dance.

“Who are you?” I look deep into her pale blue eyes as I ask the question and watch the smirk crawl across her cheek.

“Who cares?” And she kisses me. And she’s right. And who cares? Who cares if we never stop, who cares if we die on this train, who cares what’s going on, who cares who cares who cares? Champagne is a beautiful remedy for the contemplative mind and I can taste the residue of that glorious concoction still lingering on her tongue.

I dance until my body goes numb, eat until my belly is a gluttonous mass weighing me down, and drink until my mind is a helium filled cavity lifting me up. I live like this for hours, days, weeks, who knows and who cares? With each minute I forget more and more about the countless questions, the neverending confusion, and the aching uncertainty.

I’m finally living.

After clumsily kayaking through this blur of time, I’m busy gambling with a few others. “Another bottle!” I shout out, dizzily throwing up my arm into the air to extend my empty champagne glass. A passing servant hears my demand and waltzes over to the table. He fills my glass first then moves onto the blue eyed woman at my side whose name I still haven’t learned. Granted, I haven’t asked more than once.

“Leave the bottle when you’re done.” She says dismissively. As I watch him take the glass from her hand, I catch a glimmer sliding from her wrist. Although my head is foggy, I can clearly see that the woman’s bracelet is gone.

“Heeey!” I slur as I shout after the man, stumbling as I rise from my seat. I give the woman whose attention is solely on the game at hand a kiss on the cheek, lazily spilling the words “I’ll be back, dear.” before trudging off after the man.

I stumble through dancing couples and over spilled champagne, becoming more intoxicated by each clamor of uproarious laughter as I pass each giddy passenger.

“Comebackhereyouuu…” I try to reach for the man with my uncooperative words. “Thief!” Up ahead, the servant dips into the kitchen where all the workers reside, making endless trips to and fro at the others’ beck and call. I grin as I shove past the last obstacles and push through the door.

“Aha!” I shout, drunkenly triumphant as I waveringly point at the servant in front of me. But when I catch sight of my surroundings, all joy vanishes.

The whole room is filthy with soot and dirt. The air fills my lungs with more dust than oxygen. The place is contaminated with the fragrance of smoke and urine. As if the unfiltered atmosphere has somehow scrubbed my eyes clean and purified my vision, I can now see the waiters in a new light. Each displays dark purple rings under their eyes, wrinkles so numerous they form long steady trails mapping around overworn faces, waists thin enough that their bones can be seen through clothing, and blank stares consumed with miles and miles of less than nothing behind the eyes.

Each of these shadows of men stands hunched over a gourmet dish, cooking, or slaved over an endless mass of dishes, scrubbing. Behind them walks a round, short man, wearing a stern expression and a blue and white striped hat. All at once, the questions I’ve been drowning in champagne come rushing back along with a new wave of guilt for the cost of my avoidant indulgence. The man parades around the room shouting orders and forcing the fatigued to keep working.

This man has power and influence. If anyone knows the conductor, the person who brought us here, or answers to any of my questions, it’s him.

“Sir!” I walk directly at him, and grab ahold of his sleeve. “Please, just a minute of your time.” The man looks up at me with a disgusted expression.

“What are you doing here? You can’t touch me!” He snaps his fingers at a few nearby servants. “Take this stray passenger away.” In an instant, I’m being ripped away from the man.

“No! Please, please, you can help me!” But the moment has passed. The man is out of my sight and I’m being led to a door in the back. I turn my attention to the servants dragging me. “Don’t you want to know how we got here? He must have answers!” They ignore me. As I pass layers and layers of starving workers, I wonder why they’re taking his orders anyway. They could easily overpower him, but they’re too busy keeping the ungrateful fed on a never-ending train ride, simply because that’s the way it is. What a sorry explanation.

I hear the same whoosh and ting and am thrown through a door. I rush back toward the servants who were handling me and SLAM. The door is closed. I try to open it, to no avail. “No. No, please!” I resort to banging on the door, frantically trying to get back in.

“Didn’t you know?” A voice sounds from behind me. “You can’t go back the way you came. Only forward.” My heart rate rises and my temperature boils. Why does nothing make sense? I turn from the door I came from and see the next metal box. Forward. I sprint toward the new door and fling it open, entering a new room. I look around, but nothing catches my eye. There has to be answers forward. I run again and enter another space. Nothing. This time, I don’t even stop, but keep moving. Keep advancing. Keep running. Room after room after room I find nothing. I pass through blurs of everything imaginable from sleeping chambers to circus shows, gathering nothing but more confusion along the way. The whole world is spinning out of control as each new surrounding flies by, replaced by another equally incomprehensible environment. Colors and sounds and feelings all blend together so that I hardly realize my own screams and tears. Suddenly, I feel a hand on my chest. My whole body halts and I find myself in a timid, quiet room with a few sitting at scattered tables. I look to the hand which stopped me, then to its owner. An elderly woman stands beside me.

“You don’t want to go through that door just yet.” She removes her hand and looks me sternly in the eye. The door in front of me is bordered with golden trim and the whole surface displays intricate carvings of everything from wildlife to portraits. I try to slow my breathing.

“Why not.” The woman smiles and leads me to a table in the corner of the room.

“Have you checked your other pocket yet?” She asks.

“What do you-”

“Have you checked your other pocket.” She repeats. This time an order. I first reach into my right pocket where I pull out the knife I first discovered. The woman warily watches me set the weapon on the table. I then turn to my next pocket. I reach inside, and wrap my fingers around something cold and smooth. I draw the thing out and in my hand lies a pen. The woman smiles.

“Now, I suggest you put it to use before going through that door.” I notice there’s paper set out before me. I then pull my gaze around the room to see that each of the others is scribbling on their own sheets. At the opposite side of the room, an elderly man places a bundle of his work into a metal box and closes it. A whoosh sounds overhead and a moment later when he reopens the box, it’s empty.

“The messages. They were from you?” The woman nods. In all the rooms I’d passed, no one had bothered to read a single word. I look down at the pen in my hand and back to the gold framed door. “This is the last room, isn’t it?” The expression on her face tells me I’ve guessed correctly. “What’s on the other side?” She laughs.

“Don’t ask me, I’ve never been through it!” The woman senses my discomfort and places her hand over mine. “In all those rooms you’ve been through, you never knew what would be in the next until you were in it.” Her words are warm, embracing me with comfort. “We’re each given many choices during this ride.” She gestures to the knife and pen. “Which tool to use. Which message to read. When to open the door. I suggest you open the next, only once you’ve captured the last.” She closes my hand around the pen. “Write what you wish you’d read. Maybe the next passenger will choose to acknowledge your words.” I then realize that in the time I’ve spent on this train, I haven’t found anything worth writing down.

“All I have are questions.” The woman gives a soft, knowing smile before turning to look out the window. The sun is setting, giving off a glorious view of orange, red, and gold cascading into the sky. She keeps her gaze on the scene as she speaks.

“Do you know what makes the sky’s colors so vibrant?” I realize she’s addressing me. “Or who pulls the Sun across the sky? Or why the same fiery picture is presented each day in a million different ways?” I nod my head no. “These questions are good. And maybe they’d even grant you a little peace should you learn how to answer them.” She redirects her gaze to me and leans in, as if letting me in on the most important secret. “But it will not make the sunset any more beautiful.” I’ve been so wrapped up in my confusion and mad fury to appease my questions either through their answer or their escape, that I never once paused to acknowledge the beauty of the train ride. I turn my focus to the window, taking in each shade of color and memorizing every line and curve across the sky. I notice the dips and curves of the earth and the reflective tint of gold spread out along the whole of it. My anxiety ridden confusion is replaced with awe-struck wonder as I absorb the feeling of serenity and exaltation that pours from the image.

I pick up my pen, and begin to write.

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A note from the author:

Throughout our lives, we each cope with the unanswerable in various ways. Some remain frozen, unable to move forward. Some become hard-hearted and angry. A few will dedicate countless hours to finding an explanation and even fewer will come to a conclusion, handpicked from billions of possibilities. Many will ignore the confusion altogether, living off of others for the sake of momentary gain.

As a passenger traveling through life, feel free to ask the questions of “who am I?” “where am I headed?” “why am I here?” and even “what in the world was this story about?”. Just remember to look out the window, because confusion cannot cloud the indestructible beauty of our enigmatic and extraordinary existence.