Three Car Leap

It was the lilting that woke me. It was possibly the lilting that made me pass out in the first place. But where before it must have lulled me to sleep, now the movement caused an unrest inside that surfaced me from the deep waters of unconsciousness.

Huh? What?

I stared stupidly for a moment at the green fabric on the ceiling of the compartment. The color reminded me of banners of royalty and medieval times. It even had a gold trim traveling around it about an inch from its border.

I sat up and stopped just as suddenly listening to the unease that had awoken me. It wasn’t a sound I was hearing, but a feeling deep in my pelvis, reaching back to the base of my spine. That’s what woke me, that’s what I was listening to. It had nothing more to say apart than it had done its job in waking me so if I would please do mine and see what the hell was going on that it had to rouse me in the first place.

“Yes, yes, I hear you.” I muttered, unconsciously placing my hand over my low belly to comfort whatever voice spoke to me from that deep place of discontent.

No one else was in my compartment and the train’s steady movement revealed nothing in its rhythm either. Except that it was moving…fast. Much faster than seem possible.

I looked out the window to see just how true my senses were being with me and was met with a blur. My mind failed to meet my senses for a moment. The train was moving so fast that everything outside the train was passing in a blur. I couldn’t make out any landscape, any cityscape, any clue as to where the hell I was or where the hell I was going.

What am I doing here anyhow?

I paused, but could recall nothing. A search of my pockets came up with only a tissue and a blank piece of paper with nothing on it. I rose and cautiously made my way out to the hallway and peered into the window in the closed door of the next compartment. Empty. I tried the one after. Empty, door open. The next. Empty as well.

Again, I listened. No voices…no half-audible conversations or tinny phone videos, no kids arguing over toys and snacks, just no…one. I quickened my step in my search. Empty. Empty. Every single compartment, empty. I flew into the next car, the blurred colors of an anonymous landscape swooshing by in the new car, just as they had in mine. There was nobody, no one. The next car the same. The car after…

Wait, am I back in the car I started in??

I whirled around. There was nothing that should give me that indication except a feeling. That same voice of unease that woke me in the first place.

See? I told you so, it said and then went back to whatever mindless soul suck it preferred to be in during this particularly unnerving situation.

I walked to compartment I guessed I had woken in. Hesitating, questioning more than my ingenious idea, I took out the tissue from my pocket and placed it on the bench facing me.

Did I want to know?

I marched out and copied my steps from a few minutes before, a little less frantically now, more nauseated instead. First car…second…third…four-no. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at the bench covered in that same medieval royal green fabric. And my tissue, neatly folded, sitting in the middle.

I stared at the colors whizzing by in puddled lines outside the window. The train continued to rock and I rocked with it, not knowing what else to do. There was no entrance or exit, no on or off, no open window or vent to crawl through. I rocked and stared blankly at the window and colors, every so often my focus shifting and catching my reflection in the glass.

“Ticket please!”

I jumped halfway out of my seat at the voice yelling at me suddenly from the compartment door.

“Oh my god, you don’t have to be violent about it. I don’t have a ticket! And who are you??”

“You didn’t seem to hear me the first two times I asked so it seemed prudent to be a little more forceful to get through to you. I’m the ticket collector.” At this he scrunched his face, spread his hands wide and gave his head a little shake as if to say What else would I be, you dafty?

I scrunched my face back at him in turn. “What the hell kind of train is this? Where am I going?”

“I can’t tell you that. Only you know that. I’m just here to collect your ticket.”

“I don’t have a ticket!”

“Then maybe you’re on the wrong train.”

I stood and shoved my hands into my pockets while staring straight at this strange worker in front of me. “Look…a piece of paper and this damn tissue is all. I. Have.”

I faced him with my pockets turned inside out and hands outstretched with the paper and very smashed and crumpled tissue gripped in my fists.

Not a timid one himself, the ticket collector held my stare while reaching forward and plucking the blank paper from my grip. Only then did he break eye contact to look down at the paper he took from me. His lips puckered in thoughtful repose before quickly folding the paper again and sliding it into his pocket.

“Hmm, okay. Thank you.” He stepped back and began to make his way down the train corridor.

What. The. Fuck?!

I sprang through the compartment door after him. “Hold up! Wait! What the hell is going on??”

My last question got lost in a mix of words and confusion. He had something something at the same time I was yelling.

“What?”

He raised his arm and motioned behind me without even turning around. “Take a look at the window across from the first compartment. That’s where you start.”

I looked back towards the first compartment and then forward at the ticket collector. He was gone. I stared hard at where he had disappeared, but nothing appeared in his place. With nothing else to do, I turned around and made my way towards the first compartment and the window facing it. I could already see even from this angle that the colors in it rushing by were different than the other windows. I grasped the railing underneath and peered through the glass.

It took a moment for my mind to adjust to what my eyes were seeing. A little flip-flopping happened somewhere in my brain and then a settling into place and into some kind of irrational logic.

There were two trains. The first one, the one I was on and another, moving at an angle away from the first, like two legs. Both were moving at high speed away from one another at the point they met…no, at the point they separated from. I was looking at a mirror image of a confused individual peering out the window of a train moving away from me at light speed. The three cars were repeating, again and again and again. The effect was one of constant speed and motion into infinity and yet always there in front of me. Constant repeating of the same pattern. Then other me moved away from myself towards infinity and just as rapidly flashed back in front me. The trains were set against a background of dark grey with random bolts of colors following the same direction as each train. There were many colors, but the medieval green lines stood out the most. Bold, grassy green.

I watched, barely able to grasp what I was seeing. Slowly I started to realize there was water in the other train. Transparent streams of it flowed in between the trains as well, following the same lines into infinity as the colors and the cars themselves.

Wait, if there is water in the other train…?

I jerked back and looked around me. Invisible streams brushed my face as I became aware of the streaming river in my own train and I began to float. It was all happening so fast and panicky gasps grasped at my lungs.

Ah shit! Wtf! Wait, I’m not drowning. I can breathe! I can still breathe in this water!

My arms and legs stopped wildly spinning where I was trying to get my balance in the middle of the stream. It was taking me. And I noticed I felt a strange…kinship with this water. Was that even a word you could use with water?

The door to the next compartment was open and dark beyond. All the water was flowing smoothly and quickly into that the dark rectangle. That dark rectangle that was in the middle of the car wall. My heart pounding, I began kicking my feet against nothing but air and flying water. The water seemed to speed up even faster, the wall and dark doorway shifting below me until the stream was lifting and pouring me down into that tiny opening. I cringed and covered my face screaming as I flew faster downward into the dark.

Wow. It really was dark. I couldn’t see anything. I waved my hand in front of my face and wondered if I was actually doing it or if my mind was playing tricks on me it was so dark. And calm. I realized I could breathe fully again after the panic in the water. I had the strange sense that I might have been floating in slow, small circles but really had no way of knowing in just what direction I was moving or if I was moving at all. Huh. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all once I got used to it. I let myself float and slowly twirl.

I don’t really have any choice in the matter, now do I?

Twirl. Float. Twirl.

I wonder if I still have hands.

I tried grabbing my right hand with my left, and then vice versa, and then switched again but annoyingly again couldn’t tell if it was actually happening.

Float. Float. Twirl? Twirl. Float. Boredom.

I wonder how long this lasts?

A fleck caught my eye as the thought vanished from my mind, which could have also been my body, but was probably most definitely just my mind. Did I have a body anymore? Or was I just my mind in this place?

Whatever. C’mere you speck.

I followed the fleck, which grew into a speck, and then boldened into a pinpoint of light. It seemed to hang there on the horizon languidly showing itself, but making no moves at anything else.

Wait, I think it’s getting bigger. Is it getting bigger?

I squinted my eyes to see. Then wondered if I was only imagining squinting my eyes since I couldn’t really feel anything in all that dark. I went back to the pinpoint of light. It floated too, but suddenly I had the sense it was floating right towards me.

It saw me!

What the hell was I thinking? A point of light saw me and now was coming to me?

Well, why not? Seems anything can happen in this crazy place. What is that??

A growing pressure that was most definitely not twirling or floating was building in the back of my head and neck. Impending doom?

The point was growing in size. The pressure increased as it steadily advanced towards me. Was I moving towards it or was it moving towards me?

Both?

My eyeslids became heavy and dropped in the pressure building around me.

Oh, so I do have a body again.

Vaguely, I thought I might be hearing a drum in the distance that was somehow filling the whole space. The light was becoming brighter through the bottom of my lids. I tried to open them, but only managed to fight a moment before the pressure pushed them back down. The light was strong and big enough now it glowed through them anyhow. The drum was lost in the background or in the brightness of the light and a high-pitched frequency replaced it instead.

Noisy.

That was the last conscious thought I had before slamming through a strange gel-lined air pocket with a resonating whoom! rippling into my whole being.

…noisy…

My eyes fluttered open and I took a deep gulp of air into lungs. The din of people and chatter in a large, echoing place rang against the tiles the place was obviously made of.

“Ah, I see you made it.”

That voice. The ticket collector popped his head into view above me and dangled my piece of paper just in front of my nose.

“This is yours.”

Confused, I took the piece of paper and sat up. On it was scrawled two haphazard words in Sharpie, DESTINATION UNKNOWN.

“Don’t lose it now. It knows where you are going even if you don’t. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”