Train of Thought (Part 2)
Alex watched the last little boy gallop up the golden stairs with a rock in his heart. The train whistled impatiently and opened her doors to the last car. Throughout the ride, she had seemed more and more intolerant of small cliché slip-ups and he was getting more and more nervous the more cars he visited. She seemed to dislike that he had traveled so far into the game and now that he was almost done, irritably impatient. The last car was dusty except for one seat where a tall adolescent sat with a little girl on his lap. The girl’s breathing was labored and stuffy as she slept cuddled next to the boy’s body. The boy holding her looked no older than sixteen and he gently cradled her back and forth. Noticing Alex, he started to stand up, but Alex stopped him with a short raise of his hand and sat down in the seat adjacent.
“It was December,” Alex started gazing at the girl, “when Frederik’s sister fell ill.” The lights started to flicker, but Alex ignored them. “Frederik lived alone with his sister in a small cottage next to the church. He was a stubborn boy and insisted that he have his own house. His parents had left them alone at least seven winters ago and Frederik was just getting used to living on their own. The pastor and his wife watched over them, but mostly, they were self-sufficient. So when she became ill, he didn’t know what to do for her and asked the pastor’s wife for help. She ended up taking away his sister into the church leaving Frederik utterly alone.”
The second boy cocked his head at Alex with a tint of anger. “What sort of story is this?” he asked.
Alex shook his head. “I’ve to keep going wherever it leads.”
The boy set his jaw and brushed a bit of hair from the little girl’s face. From the look of her sweaty locks, she had a fever, but was still sleeping soundly. The train started to speed up in warning, but the lights remained constant.
“In search for a friend, Frederik traveled the lands alone. A few people he met let him stay the night and gave him food, but their kindness seemed plastic and forced. He traveled on until he came to a ladder going up into the boughs of a tree. He couldn’t see any end to the ladder or where he would end up if he climbed it, but upward and onward he went. Eventually he reached the boughs of the tree and sitting among them was a little orange bird. The bird turned to him and started to sing. Frederik felt something tugging at his back, but he ignored it and pulled himself up so that he was sitting on the top rung of the ladder.”
The train shook and the lights flickered, but Alex continued through the chaos. The little girl had woken up and the young man was rocking her gently back and forth. “The bird hit the final note of its song and in a soundless flap, fluttered upwards. Forced by something he didn’t know, Frederik soared above the clouds his newly formed orange wings beating steadily behind him. The bird led him to a mountaintop that was devoid of snow where an entire village of people with brightly colored wings lived. They came out to greet him from their huts on the peak.”
The station started to pull into view and Alex’s stomach knotted up. “With the growth of new wings, Frederik forgot his sister and lived contentedly the rest of his days with his new-found friends.”
The door to the train creaked open and Alex got out. The boy carrying the little girl followed him into the familiar station. The train sped off with an indignant huff and left the three of them in the exact subway station where Alex had started.
“Didn’t you get my message?” the boy asked sitting down on the bench and cradling the little girl.
“What are you talking about?”
The boy sighed and visibly swallowed back tears. “There’s a catch. The girl you first met, Persephone, her sole purpose is to get people to go into the second train. So, she tells them to do a noble cause and go into the first, and the first train takes you in a circle for the second train to pick you up. The game is rigged: everyone wins no matter how creative they are or not. The rules only apply to the last car and if you don’t succeed, you have to stay there.” The boy paused and looked down at the little girl. “She’s cold,” he said and felt her sweaty neck for a pulse. “She’s been sick since we got onto that car.”
Alex bit his lip. “What’s the next part of the game?”
“You get into the second train and you’re never seen again.”
Time seemed to stop as the boy dropped the girl and let her slip off his lap. The thud of her dead body hitting the ground reverberated around the walls and up the stairs, echoing Alex’s sealed fate. Alex sat down next to the boy as he started to cry and held him closer as if sympathy enough could suppress the pained sobs.
“My sister and I,” the boy said pushing himself upright and rubbing away his tears, “were just walking downtown looking for a present for our mother when we realized that it was getting really late, so we went down to the nearest subway station. Persephone approached me down here and told me that the train was done for the day, but if I went into the first train, I could get home pretty fast. So I do what she says because, by now, my sister is scared stiff. And we met this little boy who explained the rules of the game. By the time we got to the last car, my sister had probably gotten herself sick from crying and the temperature changes. It was freezing in the car and warm outside, so whenever the door opened…” The boy paused and bit his lip to stop crying. “God, it’s almost as if they wanted her to die.” He took a deep breath. “In the last car, there was an elderly man being held at gunpoint by a deranged man. The gunman told me that he figured out the game and that the point of it is to die. The old man just sat there and stared and says in this mechanic voice—I’ll never forget it—he said that the point of the game is to go into the second train where you will just keep going until you hit your destination. And the gunman yelled at the old man asking where the destination is. My sister was hysterical and the train had started going down the track when all of a sudden, the old man grabs the gun from the second man and shoots him screaming that he’s scaring the child. Everything was silent and he dropped the gun and told me to start telling him a story. So I did and when the station pulled up, I stayed on the train. Persephone kept coming back to take me out of the train, but for some reason she couldn’t go into the car. Finally, she told the first train to get a move on. We got around to our beginning destination enough times that I stopped counting at fifty-five. My sister got worse and I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know if Persephone stopped getting storytellers for spite, or they never got farther than the second car, but regardless we stayed there. One day she let me out only because I complained about the dead man and she let me carry him to an alley and leave him there. That’s when I left that note in the alleyway for you, because I knew that you could get us out of here.”
Alex frowned. “How did you know that?”
The boy smiled. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m that boy who used to travel on your train every morning. Tony took a lot of pictures of me looking out that window. You know, the one you wrote Autumn about.”
“I didn’t know you knew about that.”
“I didn’t until I became part of the system,” the boy stood up. “Every time we came to the last station, the doors would open and Persephone would be waiting for me to come out. Often she would talk to me, but one of these times I noticed that there was an underlying voice to the one she was projecting into my head. And when I focused on that voice very well, I could hear what it was saying. I realized that I could hear her thoughts; the real thoughts that she has that she thinks no one can hear. But I can eavesdrop on those conversations she has with other people in their heads, too. I can sort of sense her when she’s near and what she’s thinking. She has no idea I can do that.”
The second train started rumbling down the track like an impending storm. The boy stood up. “I’m Chris. And I think I can be use to you in part two of her game.”
Alex sighed and faced the upcoming train. He picked up Chris’ dead sister and placed her neatly on the bench. “I have a feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
