The train jolts through the deep, green countryside. The thick mists clouding the forest floors and open fields muffle the noise of the wheels clacking across the rails. Aboard, the passengers are asleep or toiling endlessly, unaware and uncaring of their destination. The train lumbers where the rails will take it, and despite the track being fixed in place, for all the passengers care this destination could be anywhere. For all the passengers care, the train could wreck itself in an instant, spiral and tumble onto the grassy earth all around, lose itself in the fog, and
nothing would be different.
Different carriages hold different contents, even if all the passengers are all identical,
genderless, all dressed in grey
jumpsuits. In one, the tables are adorned with glass tubing and
powders of various hues, which are burnt, mixed, or ingested seemingly at random. Another is filled with musical instruments of all kinds, all broken, at which the passengers vainly pluck and grope, desperately trying to make a coherent sound.
Each night the whole operation travels a little further, the reflections from the moon illuminating the train’s way through ghoulish,
off-white clouds. The sun is never seen – lights out is at exactly the same time as the moon disappears, and at any rate nobody ever looks outside. There is simply too much to be done, efficiently and systematically, as it is meant to. It is simply as if the day-time doesn’t exist, and never has existed – even if, in some part of their wrecked memories the passengers know that it used to.
One carriage has all curtains closed and all lights on, all day and all night. In this carriage, the passengers whose heads are not lolling on the headrests in restless sleep scribble furiously at their work. Periodically a
steward, resplendent and dominant in blue and red uniform, will cast an eye over the efforts of the passengers, or bark the occasional vague order, but they are mostly left to their own devices, some
struggling against the straps, others bent double over the tables working feverishly to complete before the
deadline. Handing-in day is a cascade of
loose leaf, the ink barely dry. Hoarse shouts and cries don’t spread far into the valleys and gorges through which the train passes, but inside the carriage the noise is deafening.
In this carriage, one passenger stops writing, and looks down in distaste at what he has wrought –
I desired to kiss an angel
Melt in her soft embrace
Lips of poison, perfume breeze
And her breath surrounds the night
Eyes of fire, long flowing hair
Blazing mind, red scorched skin
We will make
Peace from trust
Laugh wild away
He continues glaring for a few moments, then scrabbles at the paper in a sudden rage, tears starting to fly from his eyes. To let the stewards see this would be
folly! The ink smudges onto his hands, patches of black and blue spreading across his fingers as the paper shreds. He starts again on a fresh sheet, gasping, trembling and glancing around in terror. The other passengers that have noticed are terrified too – what if the stewards
punish the entire carriage?
How would you like to rule again?
Live the live you see others hoard
All you and I need to do is
Wipe the slate and clean the board
Seize all their ill-gotten gains
Relish in their downfall
Don’t worry about their pain
They’re not human after all
How would you like to see
Our country taking the lead?
The key advantage that we’d have is
We’d be rid of all our weeds
Don’t trust the Reds
All they want is bread
We dream of better things
Come with us
The rage returns to his fear-stricken face. His pupils
dilate, despite the lights burning above. Blood rushing to his head, the truth floods his brain. Again, he scrabbles at the paper, his fingers seeking to undo their work. Another gasp of
premature relief, and another sheet is set upon.
The sky is filled with water
The ground is wet with blood
Betrothed have finally come apart
Lying, silent, in the mud
They no longer wish to fight
But neither will they work together
To rebuild what they have broken
Neither dove will lift a feather
In my head
There is a void
Ripped, devoured by rage
In my heart
I can feel nothing
But the bars of my cage
He gasps yet again, as if reaching for air having broken the surface of the sea, and dives back in –
The bootmarks drying in the sun
The shrapnel rusting in the rain
The soldier lying, without his gun
The angel blinking through his pain
The holy man in his enclave
The saviour in his blood-red throne
The artist sinking in his enclosure
The young man with sins to atone
In my head
There is a roar
The silence is lost
In my heart
I can still feel nothing
But return feeling must
He sits back,
triumphant. The stewards will like this. His neck suddenly weak, he slumps back into the seat, his head rolling against the headrest, eye held tightly shut, until gradually they rest, lighten, and sleep comes naturally. Those passengers that have been watching him shake their heads in disbelief, cross themselves and return to their work.
The dreams came to him, of pints of
ale lined up on the bar, of crowded pavements and sneering, spitting
schoolboys, and of her, she who he cannot write about for fear of
cliché. To write about something as coherent and as real as a
pub, or a
city, or a
girl – that would be folly, pure folly! Even as conviction flooded his sleeping body (I will write about her, I will describe her very core, and it will blow them away), his mind remained staunchly resistant. After all, there were more important things to consider on that train than
loyalty, or
love.
When he wakes, it is in the strong arms of two burly stewards. Their dark eyes belie little besides cold
authority, as they drag him out of his seat and onto a surgical trolley, strapping him in so he can move nothing but his eyes. Rattling down the narrow aisles, he feels the eyes of a thousand passengers boring into his body. Are they
envious? Are they
scared? The doors suck open, and for a second he hears the dull, hollow sound of the valleys, a
funereal moaning that makes him momentarily tearful before the stewards wheel him into the next carriage, and all is deadly quiet. Although his head is strapped in place, if he strains his eyes he can just about see a heavy walnut door, outside which the stewards have stopped and on which one has knocked.
The cabin looks like a traditional doctor’s office, heavy dark wood panelling adorning the walls, and a large framed certificate hanging next to the window. When the stewards release him from the trolley he can see the sun streaming in. It makes him blink, and it takes a while for the figure in the
high-backed office chair to become more than a blur. Dressed in a lightly coloured suit, a large file overstuffed with writing paper sitting on the desk, the
doctor – is he a doctor? – looks the passenger up and down, before nodding slightly to the stewards and spinning in his chair to face the window. Nothing is spoken – for all his
literacy, the passenger cannot remember ever having uttered a single word, and the doctor seems impatient to get back to the sun. The stewards lead the passenger out, and to another room, sparsely furnished with
spartan bunk beds. Gratefully, he chooses a bunk, and this time he doesn’t need to hold his eyes shut – sleep comes quickly and gracefully.
The train has stopped when he wakes. Someone has changed him out of his jumpsuit into a blue
pinstripe suit, akin to the doctor’s – only this one is slightly too large. The shoes are too long and wide, and the fit of the jacket at the shoulders has been badly measured. He stretches and tried to rearrange his suit, before glancing out of the window. It is night time, and the train seems to have stopped at a quiet station, the platform underneath a dusting of snow. He opens the door, and walks to the end of the carriage, his heart thumping in his throat. There is no-one else around. He looks through the window to the next carriage, the one he has spent all those years writing in, and has to stifle vomit. The floor is black with old blood, and the seats are filled with the bodies of his fellow passengers,
blasted holes stuffed with grey cotton in their chests. He turns away quickly, and exits the carriage through the side door, stepping gingerly onto the platform.
The moon is directly above. Snow crunches beneath his
oversized shoes as he walks towards the
station gate.