The Endless Journey to a Better Place

I was tired. So impossibly tired.

Life was better when I was a kid, and I longed for the days where everything was simple. Sometimes I would begin to feel sad for no reason, an overwhelming sadness my friends and even the adults in my life couldn’t understand, but then a simple nap would make everything alright again. As long as I took my naps, the greatest darkness in my world consisted of the brief moments the villains in my Saturday morning cartoons had things their way until the heroes found a way to set things right again.

As I grew older, however, the naps began to last longer, the sadness mutated into a darkness that was all-encompassing, and I grew to learn that there were no heroes on the way to set things right again. Perhaps I had even become the villain of my own story. As the darkness, the sadness inside of me expanded and became inescapable, the world outside began to reflect what I felt.

Eventually, I broke down to a point of inconsolable apathy; I was a husk of who I had once been, the person I wanted to be ostensibly unreachable. No longer feeling like a legitimate member of society, but instead perceiving the world as though I were an outsider. It often felt as though I were merely looking down at a model train set; idyllic in every way, and yet I could never be a part of the bright and hopeful world in front of me, no matter how badly I longed to jump in and feel a sense of belonging.

Sleep was my only reprieve. Sleep was my escape, my nightmares liberation from the worldly occurrences that haunted me in my waking hours. Crippling anxiety anchored me to the waking world for, at times, several hours. Often I would finally drift off to sleep, only to be jolted awake minutes later in a cold sweat with a wave of nausea lurching through my body. But when I finally managed to let go of everything, when I finally gave in to the warm embrace of the unconscious world, I found true bliss.

Unfortunately for me, the trains kept me awake at night. My house sat at the back of an old, nearly forgotten neighborhood that backed up to a vast, swelling sea of grain fields. A dilapidated country road started just beyond my neighbors house, stretching on for miles through the fields, interrupted only by a few scattered farmhouses and a seemingly unending stretch of railroad tracks. I had expected serenity from the chaos of the world around me this far out on the outskirts of town, instead finding myself jolted out of my slumber in the middle of nearly every night, laying wide awake and wondering where the train was going and what life was like at its destination.

On this particular fateful night, I found myself drawn out of my sleep at 3:17 in the morning by the sound of a train barrelling down the tracks. Its blaring whistle intended as a warning to anyone foolish enough to be caught in its path, I instead heard a siren song. Where was this train going? Was it a better world than the world I felt I had been merely sleepwalking through for the entirety of my life? Was it destined for a place where I could have a fresh start, some alternate plane of reality where things could actually be good? Somewhere I could feel as I did as a child once more? I was just tired; I knew that. What I needed was sleep. I needed to roll over, pull a pillow over my ears, and do my best to tune out the sound of the train. But you have to understand that this particular train in that moment was unlike any other train that had pulled me from my sleep before. I genuinely believed in my heart of hearts that this one was my way out, my permanent release from my sadness beyond my dreams.

I vaulted out of bed, grabbed a sweater, sprung out the side door of my house so hastily it bounced back open behind me, and barreled through the fields. I got to the train with the end in sight; my grandmother had always told me it was bad luck to count train cars as they passed, but I couldn’t avoid noticing that there were only ten cars left. After a moment’s hesitation, I leapt for the eighth from the last car. I missed, falling onto my back. I sprung back up and went for the fifth from the last car, and my hand smashed into the side. I swore, stepping back and revving up for my final leap. The third time proved to be a charm, and I just barely made it through the opening in the last car.

I smiled victoriously; I had made it. I was on my way to a better place, and I sat back against the frame of the doorway of the train car as I watched the darkness unfold before me. The train passed through miles of fields, steadily increasing in speed, the darkness broken only by the light cast from the homes of the occasional sleepless snacker.

“Who are you?” The question came out of nowhere, and I nearly fell from the train car to the blurred ground below. My eyes darted around for the source of the voice, but I saw only shadows beyond the nearby piles of boxes.

“Who’s there?” My heart was beating through my ribcage like a prisoner trying to escape a death row cell.

“I asked you first.” The disembodied voice lingered coolly in the shadows.

I desperately grasped for my phone in the hope of illuminating my unexpected companion before realizing that I had left it charging on my nightstand. Goosebumps erupted down my arms; I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was, how long I had been on this train, or when or where it would stop, if ever. I couldn’t call for help. I was at the mercy of the conductor; more urgently, I was quite possibly at the mercy of the stranger in the shadows.

“What are you doing here?” I fell back as a second breathy voice whispered through the darkness, the pain from landing on my tailbone sending a lightning bolt of pain up my spin. “Be careful,” it cautioned.

“It’s too late for that.” The first voice solemnly chuckled. “The kid’s already boarded.”

“I’m sorry.” The fear was audible in my voice. “I didn’t realize anyone else was here. I’ll get off at the next stop.”

“What are you doing here?” The second voice persisted.

“I just… I just wanted to get away from it all.” I felt foolish trying to explain what I was doing on this godforsaken train in the middle of the night. I longed for my cocoon of pillows and blankets back at home, the dark, cool air and the feeling of complacent comfort.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a third voice hissed. “Get off.”

“She hasn’t anywhere to go,” the first voice resurfaced. “She just may have to stay with us forever now.”

“Is this some kind of circus train?” I inquired, wondering if perhaps I had unknowingly leapt onto a sleeper car for performers. I felt my face flush as I thought of how brash my actions must look to my companions.

All three voices emitted unsettling crows, their haunted amusement lingering in the ever-thickening air around me. I swore I heard additional voices sprinkled throughout the laughter, a chorus of unforgiving madness. I did my best to swallow my fear as I wondered whether or not it was simply my imagination; I secretly hoped that this was all just a dream.

“Something like that,” the second voice responded earnestly.

“Leave,” the third voice insisted, sounding as though it were coming from right behind my shoulder, a chilling whisper in my ear. I lurched forward, unsteady on my hands and knees as the trail wheels ricocheted across the tracks.

“Our guest is welcome to stay as long as she’d like,” the second voice sternly soothed.

“As if she has a choice,” the first voice rasped, and a wave of nausea rolled through my being as I found myself fearing I had unknowingly volunteered myself to some sort of human trafficking operation. “Who are you?” the voice asked again.

“I’m nobody, just a lost soul making poor decisions thanks to insomnia. I’m so very sorry to bother you, I promise I’ll get off at the next stop.” My eyes sought some sort of soft landing beyond the car door, contemplating the idea of leaping off sooner rather than later.

“You don’t have to do that,” the second voice purred. “You’ll hurt yourself at this speed. We’d be happy to have you as our guest for as long as you’d like.”

I repressed a shudder, a frigid shiver rolling up my spine at the thought that my imperceptible companion appeared to have read my mind.

“Leave!” The third voice thundered. “Jump! Even if you don’t see a soft landing. Just get off!”

“Oh, hush now.” The first voice sounded louder, closer, yet more distant, as if it were somehow everywhere all at once. “We’re all going to the same place.”

I was tired. So very, very tired. I longed for sleep as the darkness became oppressive, no more homes or buildings in sight as we barreled along the tracks at a vicious velocity. I felt sick to my stomach as the train car jolted and shook, a slight screech from time to time as the train and the tracks wrestled for control. I wondered the last time anyone else had seen or heard the train; I silently prayed that someone had seen me board and had called the authorities. That at any moment now, the train would grind to a halt as uniformed officers dragged me from the train car, questioning me for hours before locking me in a cell for the rest of the night. Or perhaps they would take me somewhere with psychiatrists. In all fairness, perhaps that’s where I should have been all along. Behind some sort of bars or nestled into a padded cell, it would never matter where I was physically; I would always feel trapped by the darkness. Trapped in my body, trapped in my mind.

“Trapped in a cage of your own volition.” The first voice echoed my thoughts with the same thoughtfulness I imagined my future psychiatrist would give, rubbing his chin as he mulled over my anxiety-ridden ramblings, wondering which pills to prescribe to make me normal.

“No way out,” the second voice concurred sympathetically.

“You could always jump,” the third voice offered.

“Now where’s the fun in that?” The second voice breathed. “Stay with us.”

“Who are you?” I inquired again, the fatigue now barreling into me, my brain pounding and pulsating behind my eyes. The train car had somehow grown even darker.

“You know us. We’ve always been with you,” the first voice murmured, a strange intimacy to the way it seemed familiar in such an unfamiliar way, as if it had sung me lullabies as a child.

“Stay with us,” the second voice repeated.

“I greatly appreciate your hospitality, but I’d like to get off this train now.” Despite the total darkness encompassing the train and its surrounding landscape, a darkness that seemed to be growing somehow darker with each passing moment, I felt confident in the thought that the darkness out there was better than the claustrophobic darkness I faced in here. Perhaps I could land with minimal injuries and sleep curled up in the grass outside, test my luck finding civilization when the sun rose. If I followed the tracks, there may be a good chance of me following them right back to my neighborhood, even if it took several hours of hiking. Deciding it was better to try getting off safely first, I asked the voices if there was any way to contact the conductor.

“You are the conductor,” the first voice promised. “You are in complete control of this train and its destination.”

The second voice sounded almost giddy, growing louder as it spoke. “All we are are passengers. You have all the control.”

“You have no control at all,” the third voice told me, and despite its aggression, it was the only one I believed.

“What do I do?” I directed the question at the third voice. “How do I get off?”

“You jump,” the voice shouted. “Jump now!”

Stay with us,” the second voice insisted. “You’ll never leave us, we’ll never leave you.”

Both voices began to argue, and I clutched my hands over my ears as the voices rose in volume and quantity, the familiar voices fading into a sea of voices screaming like a pack of hornets. How many others were in this train car? How many could there possibly be? I sobbed as quietly as possible, my body packed tightly into the far back corner of the car as I curled into a ball, hoping to wake up from this nightmare.

“You wanted to go to a better world,” the first voice whispered in my ear. The others went silent. “You wanted to know where this train was going. Where do you want it to go, conductor? Do you want to ride on to a better life? Do you want to jump? Do you want to go back to what’s safe and familiar? You’ve been sleepwalking through life. Are you going to wake up?”

‘We’re just along for the ride.” The second voice was calm again. “We’ll stay with you.”

“You wanted a permanent release beyond sleep,” the third voice told me, now eerily placid. “You don’t have to be sad anymore.”

“Moment of truth,” one of the voices said, although I could no longer discern which. Did it even matter at this point?

The silence was deafening as the voices waited for my answer. The quiet seemed almost to echo, not even the sound of the wind rushing by as the train bore on. “You know what I should do, don’t you?” But my question fell flat against unwilling ears. My companions had grown silent once again, and I knew that it was up to me alone to end this nightmare.

I crawled to the edge of the door frame, and I sat and stared blankly into the nothingness beyond the train tracks. I stared for as long as I could for what felt like hours that turned to days, and then slowly into weeks. Time grew meaningless. The train continued on, a consistent speed barreling along as I waited for the sun. But the sun never rose, and the voices never returned. The air in the train car was as thick as ever, a miasma consuming me along with all of my thoughts and feelings, any hopes and dreams I’d ever had, any chance of happiness, all of the feelings of sadness and hopelessness that had consumed me. The child I longed to be again wilted away inside of me like a flower in the desert sun. There was no destination for this train, no end in sight, and I desperately longed to get off one way or another.

“Jump,” a voice whispered. And I realized that this time, it was my own.