A Fearful Journey

A Fearful Journey

What follows is a horror story- at least I think it is a horror story, I believe that it is.  Then maybe not, maybe horror is not the correct word for my particular experience, maybe I should instead say that it is a fearful story- for it is full of fear, it haunts with suggestions and whispers with riddles, it’s the spider crawling at the edge of the room that scuttles under a bed before you can see it fully but know, know that it is there, it is there!  Yes; I shall not call my story a horror, but a fear, and very fearful indeed.

  Have I forgotten something?  I always feel that I have forgotten something, an object, and a note, left behind?  It’s a strange feeling.  More curious than strange, I suppose, much like the feeling of De Ja Vu, a very curious feeling.  I check my pockets in my coat and pat down my trousers but, no, no, I have all I need.  I breathe out with comfort and return watching the fields go by.

  The fields, the fields!  Are they endless?  All we go past is fields, endless, endless fields.  Why am I here anyway?  What am I doing in a foreign country, traveling at high speed through the depths of its fields.  I should be back home, boiling and baking a large lunch: beans, waffles, gammon, grilled fish-like haddock- or fried small fish- like sardines-, melted cheese on a hot jacket potato with beetroot and pickle onions…salad cream… time gnaws away slowly between meals.

  People on the train are fascinating even if the fascination is only the fact that they are on a train.  Take, for example, that couple sitting down on the other side, who haven’t said a word to each other since they got off, or that smart gentleman in the suit with the ponytail sitting directly behind, and can we really move on without mention of the person with the wild eye and the tight grip with which he holds his leg?  We cannot.

  However; as the journey continues and the people change I become tired of others and withdraw into my own dreams that move through my mind as smoothly as the train and think of the old steam trains of my childhood that use to run through the village and under the bridge where standing in the middle it would envelop me in a smoke of white cloud erasing the track the bridge the world everything and me.

  Though there is no white smoke here, at my table of the train, there is no steam.  Strangers and strange fields that go on stretching for this long moment.  I imagine that the train will go on and go on and not stop or slow like a sleeper though deep slumber.

  I am tired and I am awake.  Shall I have a coffee or a hot chocolate?  I like luxury but do I have the money?  No, I won’t check.  I am too sleepy to mind.  I shall yawn instead.

  The yawn seems familiar to me, I wonder if I have yawned recently, just now or a couple of hours ago, or…have I been yawning continually only coming to the end or will I yawn again then again…again.

   Suddenly the train seems dark to me, like the darkness of a stage between lights, somehow artificial and stylized.  Who are these people?  Do they know me and what I am doing?  Are they playing parts like actors or performers while all the time watching, watching me?

  What?  What am I doing?  A holiday, I’m passing through a holiday.  Hiding-me?  I’ve nothing to hide.  Running?  I’m not running.  Yes it’s a miserable holiday but can’t you see?  I can’t run or hide, not enough, not nearly enough, only when I sleep- but one can’t sleep…always one can’t…get enough…

  The nightmares, nightmares of the daylight, every scratch and scar, rash and disease always to return, never to be inoculated, never to be immune.

  At once the stuffiness of the air takes me and I wish for nothing more than something fresh but as I reach up for the window I find that it is stuck and will not come loose.  I feel desperate for air but I don’t think I can move while trying to breathe, I don’t think I can go on.  The train will carry me on, I don’t need to move, the train will move me.  There’s something terrible inside of me, I feel sure I will infect the others, the others who will feel my pain if not share it.  They are beautiful, these strangers, in this last lingering moments I can see their beauty and my only wish is to get to know them better, to my only regret, my regret, I regret. 

  Goodbye, goodbye you beautiful people, I fear this is where I…stop.