Train

I've spent my whole life on a train. I don't know when I got on. Maybe they dropped me off as a baby. Maybe I was born on here. Maybe I have amnesia. Or maybe I've just been here forever. I don't remember ever being a child or learning to speak. All I remember is the train. It stops sometimes. But there's no way off. I've been up and down the whole length of the train. There are no doors.

I don't remember ever being outside. I certainly see the outside. I can look at the window. We go through cities. We go through deserts. Sometimes, the train passes through mountains. That's my favorite. Whenever we pass through mountains, I stay glued to the window. I look at it for hours. My other favorite is at night, when I can see the stars.

There are other people here, on the train. They're all foreigners. They all seem irritable, most of the time. They don't speak my language. They don't seem to like me very much. Sometimes, I pass through one of the train cars, and I see a group of them talking. Sometimes they ignore me. Sometimes, they all fall silent and glare at me until I leave. Very rarely, they try to speak to me. They yap at me in their strange language. Usually, it's loud and angry, with lots of gestures. I can't understand them. As far as I can tell, they can't understand me, either. That's when I meet them in a group.

Sometimes I run into one of the other passengers while they're alone. They don't seem to like it. They always freeze. They go stiff and stare at me, wide-eyed, leaning back a little and inhaling sharply. They put their hands up, back away from me. Some of them shake a little. As if I were a mad dog.

I do some work for them. They let me sweep floors. In return, they hand me a plate of food, or some new clothes. The food is bland - some sort of grey meat and tasteless bread. The clothes do not fit well. But, I'm not starving. Most recently, I wanted to write. So I made a motion as if I were writing in a book. To my surprise, they understood. They gave me a diary. A little leather-bound black one. And a pen. A rather nice pen. It looks expensive. I don't know how to say "thank you" in their tongue, so I just put my hands together in a 'praying' gesture, smiled, and bowed. The one who gave me the book nodded in response. I think he understood. For a split second, I think I saw the ghost of a smile. How kind! I can't forget him.

Like I said, there are no doors. But nobody else seems to stay on the train very long. They get on and off somehow. I rarely see the same person twice. I have never seen the same person three times. There have been thousands of them over the years. And not a single one has spoken to me.

And the train goes on and on. I sit by the window. I listen to the engine. The steady, endless chug-chug-chug as miles and miles of track race by. The endless tracks go on forever forward and forever backward. And there's a whole world out there, and I watch it fly past me. We never go by the same place twice, it seems. Once something is gone, it's gone. I never see it again. There are no mirrors, but I can see my reflection in the window. And I can see that I have some grey hair now. I am not sure how old I am. But I think the grey hair is new. I'm having trouble seeing things far away, too. My eyes don't work as well as they did.

One day, the train stops. I look out the window. There is another, parallel set of tracks here. There is an other train, going the other direction. But both trains are stopped for now. I can see the other people in the other train. Directly across from me is a woman. She's fair, like me, with green eyes, like mine. I look at her. She looks at me. Something passes between us.

Her eyes light up. I'm sure mine do, too. I leap off my seat and excitedly press my face against the glass. I wave at her. She waves back. She looks at me and yells something. I can't hear her, but I can read her lips. She just yelled, "Hey!"

My heart flutters. She can talk! I yell "Hey!" back. She smiles, bounces a little. I can't believe it. I yell "How are you?" She can't hear me either, but - lips. She says she's fine. I can't believe it. It doesn't even feel real. It's like a dream. And I do dream, when I sleep on the train at night. Oh, yes, I dream.

I hear the engine starting. My face falls. So does hers. My heart feels like it suddenly turned to lead. Oh, no. Already? The train lurches into motion. I press my hand against the window. It seems more meaningful than waving. She fogs the glass with her breath and tries to write something with her finger, but it's too late. The trains move in opposite directions. Even with my head smashed into the side of the car and craning my neck as hard as I can, I can no longer see her. She's gone.

That's the only time I've seen another train. Much less another passenger. Much less one who spoke my language. I often think of her. Especially at night, when the train travels along the coast and I can see the stars over the ocean. Who was she? Where was she going? Did she have some destination in mind? Or was she like me? Just stuck on a train and unable to leave? What if that other train was really the back-end of this one, and we're on the same train? What if she's been there the whole time, and it's impossible for us to reach each other? Somehow, that seems like it might be true.

I said before that I dream sometimes. Since then, I always have the same dream. The same one, every night. Where the train stops. Where I see a friendly face. And for once, just once, someone speaks to me.

And then I wake up.