Pointless
The sky outside the window was ashen as was the rest of the world underneath it. Only the track for a few meters ahead of the engine was visible and the faint outline of a roof and pillars to mark the station outside the train doors. He watched her as she waited for the doors to open and then glide up the steps into a compartment to sit on a red velvet seat just like everyone else. Her mahogany hair was pulled back into a tight swirled bun so that the contrast between her hair and the sharp line of her mask was even more apparent. She wore an overly ornate Venetian mask that he had seen photos of amidst other marks of tourist fascination with Mardi Gras’s madness. A dark smear of blue acted as a thick eyebrow arching over her left eye and then down her nose bridge where it landed in a neat circle of purple. The eye underneath the blue smear was a golden brown whereas the other one, beneath an exaggerated array of black lashes on her mask, was blue. She wore a summery, strapless dress with a black bodice and empire waist raining down a skirt with every color imaginable—even some without names.
He reached to adjust his own mask, painted black with white and red swirls like vines or drips dancing around the face. She glanced at him before sitting down a couple seats away from his. He moved over so as to be closer to her, but she refused to acknowledge him and kept her bicolored eyes on something outside her window. But what he saw was nothing but a wet, shimmery gray.
The conductor yelled out into the open space before shutting the doors with the slam of hollow metal. The train whistle screamed into the mist before the steady chug of the engine kicked in and sped the cars into the fog.
“You seem nervous,” he said. She turned sharply to face him and he extended his hand. “Max Blackbourne.”
She glanced at his outstretched hand for a second before taking it and giving it a hearty shake. “Forgive me,” she said in a lavender voice, “I don’t remember my name.”
Max shrugged. “I didn’t either, I just made that one up during the ride.”
“Oh?” she said in a more relaxed voice. “Then I’m Ivette Campo. Pleasure to meet you.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
She shrugged. “I heard it somewhere. Probably the opera. Do you like music?”
“Not that kind of music.”
“Then you probably haven’t been introduced to it properly. I don’t suppose they have a phonograph around here?”
Max shook his head. “If they do, there aren’t any records.”
Ivette sighed. “Of course, that would be the way of things, wouldn’t it?” She shifted in her seat so that it was more natural to speak with him, but she faced the opposite side of the car and put her hands in her lap. “Where are we going, anyway?”
Max shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think it will be long before we get there?”
“It’s been a long time for me already.”
“Well, doesn’t anyone get off?”
“Why would you get off when you don’t know where you’re going, what you’re doing, or where you are when you get off the train? At least when I’m here I can say I’m on a train.”
Ivette laughed. “So you’d give up any sense of discovery so that you can feel safe going nowhere?”
“At least I know I’m not going to die as long as I’m here.”
“Hmm. But what if someone sabotages the rail? Or we run out of fuel and food and we’re reduced to starving? Or something horrible comes on the train and massacres us? Just because you can’t see five inches in front of your nose on the platform doesn’t mean there’s nothing out there. It seems to me that the danger risk is the same no matter where you go.”
“All those scenarios are highly improbable.”
“But not impossible.”
Max shook his head. “But if we sat here studying every little probability, we would become paranoid doomsayers with nothing to do but create self fulfilling prophecies.”
Ivette laughed. “I’m just saying…”
Max smiled, though he knew she couldn’t see it. “Let’s find another way to entertain ourselves.”
The door to their car opened and a rush of cold wet air entered before and behind a tall young man. He was dressed in a pressed, black suit with a pale yellow tie the color of cake batter. His mask had a bright sunburst around his right eye; the splashes of color spread from white to red in abstract spikes much like a target. He bowed slightly to Ivette before sitting down across from Max.
“The conversation was getting a bit dull and rather…whiny…in there. I hope you don’t mind if I join you.”
“No, not at all,” said Ivette.
“We were just contemplating the possibility of a train wreck,” Max stated, sharply.
“And whether or not we could just get off the train,” Ivette added, sweetly.
“No,” the man said, amused. “You can’t get off the train.”
“Why not?” she asked innocently.
“Because there’s nothing there. You’ll find that if you look closely, there are no stairs leading off the platform and though you can walk as far as you like eventually the platform will end and you will be forced to take the train.”
“Why? Where are we going?” Max asked.
The man turned to look at Max before saying: “We’re going in circles,” as if the answer was incredibly obvious and shouldn’t even be stated at all.
Ivette shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense…”
“My dear lady, if you want an explanation,” the man said, yawning, “talk to the conductor. If you can find him, that is. He’s often in the dining car drinking watered down coffee.”
“Which way is the dining car?” she said, standing up and motioning for Max to follow her.
“Towards the front a couple cars, I forget how many. Now if you’ll excuse me,” the man said, lying down. “I’m going to take a short nap while you’re gone.”
“We’ll be back,” Max said over his shoulder, in an almost threatening way, though he didn’t have quite that intent.
“Don’t rush on my account,” was the only response he got, much to his disdain. But Ivette was already out the door and into the gangway, walking with purpose towards the dining car.
Three cars later, the door opened up into a large space with several tables in a random pattern on the floor. White chairs surrounded the table like ghosts and stared down at the white plates, crystal glasses and silverware with gold leaf around the edges. Candles flickered at their entrance and flower petals gently shifted in the wind. In the corner table closest to the bar, sat a tall man in a black hat sipping from a china cup and staring at them. He only had a half mask on, but it was more terrifying and mysterious than the full faced masks of all the other passengers. It imitated something like a bird of prey and was nothing—and yet, everything—like the plague doctor’s masks during the fourteenth century. The conductor shifted his gaze but only so he could put down his cup of coffee and stand up as Ivette approached.
“We were told to ask you any questions we had,” she said confidently.
The conductor smiled. “I’m sure you have a lot of them.” He motioned for the two of them to sit down and politely pulled a chair out for Ivette to sit and then pushed her in.
“I have a question first, before we begin: how much do you know about where you are and why you’re here?”
“Very little,” Max said. “The man who referred us here said we were traveling in circles. I, for one, don’t know how long we’ve been traveling, but it’s felt like a long time.”
“And at the same time, not long at all?” the conductor prompted. “Boredom has always distorted one’s sense of time.”
“If we are going in circles,” Ivette continued, “then, why?”
“Well,” he smiled, reaching for his coffee cup and then stopped, “this train is going in circles because it isn’t supposed to go anywhere, but the station. Why does it go to the station? Because it has to pick up people. And how, you will ask, does it pick up people when the people can’t even get on to the platform since it has no stairs and no doors? Why are we here, how did we get here, who are we? Thousands of years and the questions haven’t changed.” The conductor finished reaching for his coffee and took a sip. “I’m told to give people answers only because they ask and yet, I have seen more angry people come in here looking for answers than those who I believe should know. So tell me, who is this friend of yours who referred you to me?”
“We didn’t ask his name,” Ivette said, “but his mask had a violent burst of warm colors around his right eye and he was wearing a business suit.”
“Ah,” the conductor nodded, smiling. “Harold…of course. Well, at least you heard it from a good source.” The conductor paused. “Then you know where you are, the only questions left are why.”
“We were hoping you could shed light on this situation,” Max said, impatiently.
The conductor smiled. “You’ve been here a while, Max. It seems odd that you’re impatient now.”
“Please, sir,” Ivette said, smiling to hide her irritated mood. “Why are we here?”
“You’re a very learned girl, Ivette, you’re probably familiar with numerous stories of finding a lost object. Many of the good ones have the characters searching far and wide for an odd object only to find it right under their noses. They’re so stuck on the object being far away, that they fail to look at their own possessions.
“I’m only bringing this up because when I say that the train takes souls from the dead and takes them to an Underworld, people often ask me whether this is Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory and fail to realize that perhaps mythology is wrong and that they’re looking for the reality of death and afterlife in all the wrong places.
“Souls don’t have memory, they have emotion. That’s why they are faceless; emotions are universal things. Souls are the essence of personality, but personality is formed by so much more than one’s soul. Choices vary according to environmental factors, memory included. Without a memory, you have a skewed personality. The personalities you’ve given yourselves probably weren’t the ones you had when you were alive. All you know is your emotions surrounding different things, you don’t have a clue of who you are. No one knows their name when they get here and it doesn’t matter. All of these questions and this existential nonsense doesn’t matter in the long run—thinking doesn’t make you who you are and even when you discover that how can you ensure that’s really who you are and not what you want to be for some reason or another?”
“How did you know our names without us telling you?” Max asked.
“Because,” the conductor shook his head, “I saw you when you were alive and I knew what name you’d pick.”
“So when do we get there?” Ivette asked.
“Get where?” the conductor looked at her quizzically.
“If the train never went anywhere since the inception of time,” she continued angrily, “not only would every car be full, but you wouldn’t have room at this point to put anyone anywhere else.”
“When you’re forgotten, you disappear. Anyone who’s forgotten disappears. Everyone else famous enough never to be forgotten has been playing peanuckle in the lounge. But if we ever arrive anywhere, I’ll let you know.” The conductor laughed and stood up before walking past them to the bar to drop of his cup of coffee. Then he tapped the brim of his hat and left the car.
“Augh. I won’t stand for this,” Ivette said, tears sparkling in her eyes.
“What choice do we have?” Max said, trying to comfort her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But there has to be more than this. I’ll make it more than this.”
Author’s Note on Post 328: Here’s my attempt to do something with my art. I’m not sure how ironed out the idea is, but I’ve been working on it for five days on an off tweaking here and there and making it something to be proud of. And I am. Thanks to http://twitter.com/storyprompt for the idea.
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