The train clanks and rattles down the track. Its staccato pattern banging endlessly. Scenes flash by, each moment a snapshot in his mind that fades like an old polaroid as new scenes come snapping in. He falls in love over and over again: a crooked and lilting picket fence, shattered and rotting, a small weed-harboring back yard, forgotten toys, still and sun bleached like bald corpses, a house with peeling paint and tiles missing from the roof, a window showing the tiniest slice of a home, a place where people lived, an eddy of sex and fighting, laughing and crying, a whole world flashing by at each moment, a whole epic story. He loves them, he misses them. He wants to stop at each one and stand in the little slice of kitchen that he can see through the window. He wants to smell the roast in the oven, hear the children laughing on the couch in the living room, hear the toilet flush, and feet on the stairs, and a conversation on the phone and the sound of hugging and hand shaking and, and, gone.
The train stops and starts. Passengers embark and disembark. People enter and leave the room over and over again, in different countries, on different continents, speaking different languages. From time to time he steps off the train, wanders through the arcade and under archways until he finds a public phone. He picks up the receiver and waits for the operator. He asks to make a collect call and gives a number. A thousand miles away a phone sitting on a kitchen counter is ringing.
A crisp voice speaks into his ear: “Will you accept the charges?”
“Yes,” a voice comes from the other end of the line.
He hesitates a moment before speaking. “Have you noticed anything unusual?” he asks.
The other person, lazily affecting curiosity, responds: “Not really. What do you mean?”
He wants to say what it is, but embarrassment wells up and chokes the words before they can come out. Instead he says: “You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t.”
Another pause. “I think time is up. This is almost the end of the line.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“OK, good bye then.” His voice breaking, sadness expanding in his chest.
“Bye.”
He hangs up the phone and walks back to his compartment on the train. Twin benches face each other, huddled around a lone window that looks out on the passing world. On the bench to the left are his things: a green duffle bag, worn white along the seams, and a black and white mottled hard backed notebook with a blue disposable pen tucked in its pages. An exposed page hints at the monochrome structure inside; endless blue ink, and furious scratches, like the weaving of a bird’s nest.
Since the last stop he had been sharing the compartment. The other traveler is a younger man, good looking in a youthful, impenetrable way. His shoes, clothes and backpack are all new with expensive outdoor brands printed on them. Standing in the door as the train begins to gently wobble under his feet and the cold seeps through the soles of his shoes, he feels embarrassed about his own cheap and worn clothes.
He sits down.
“How is your brother?” the young man asks.
“Fine,” he responds flatly, picking up his notebook.
The younger man begins to speak, but stops after the first syllable. Then, after a minute, absently says, “It’s getting cold, it might snow soon.” After several more minutes of the two of them sitting in silence, the younger man pulls out a novel and begins reading.
They sit quietly for a while. The world is flashing by. He had wanted to make friends with the people he met on his journey. The two of them had talked for hours before the stop and discussed where they had been and what they had seen as they watched the world roll by. They had become friends.
But now he feels like the other person is a complete stranger. He fixes his eyes at the window. He can’t explain the feeling. The alienation crowds out his other thoughts. He watches the man out of the corner of his eye. His mind wanders, it fills in the spaces left by time and distance. It scrawls and scribbles and jumps outside the lines of reality, it fills in the unknowns, and overwrites the knowns. It drifts out the train window, over the passing landscape, and out into space.
He imagines a world where spaceships have landed, where aliens have quietly invaded human society. They secretly replace each person one by one, until only imposters are left, impostering themselves to all the other imposters, all still pretending even past the point where there is anyone left to fool. He imagines that he is the last human left on earth. A seam opens on the other traveler. A hinge on the side, pivoting the torso up, off of the hips. The interior surface: polished chrome. A cyclopsian monster slowly emerging. A shining, silvered octopus. Its metallic tentacles quiver as they touch the outside air. Its central eye clicks like a shutter as it watches him.
The vision fades. A chill of loneliness blows over him. He misses his family. He misses his childhood and childhood friends. The happy moments blur together. He doesn’t know why or how, but he feels like he will see them all again. His childhood was yesterday, and tomorrow they will all be rejoined. They will be larger and older, but they will still be smiling. The sun will still be shining. The grass will still be green and crisp under their hands and bare feet as they resume their childhood games just where they left off.
He wonders where the others are now and what they are doing. Maybe they they aren’t fine. Maybe he will never see them again. Maybe they didn’t understand that last thing he said the last time they said goodbye. Maybe they didn’t understand what he meant when he was trying to tell them how much he needed them. Maybe he won’t ever see any of them again because they don’t know that someone wants them, needs them, someone misses them, he misses them. But maybe they don’t know that because he didn’t quite say it right. Maybe they are gone forever. His life seems empty to him. It goes rolling past him, career, ambition, love, like so many toys on a conveyor belt gliding off the end of the line and falling into oblivion.
He remembers Angela. She was large and soft and curvy. Just a brief memory of her closeness, her breath on his face, and he begins to get excited. Through the static interference of the hospital staff and the impossibly thick fog of the medications, they still found a way to become close, and to find private places to be together. They both had grown fat at the hospital, and the hours were constantly drowned by the patter and hum of the television. He was happy to leave, but when he saw her outside the hospital, she too had become an imposter. Somehow the aliens had gotten to her, too.
The train begins to slow. He stands suddenly. “Good bye,” he says, staring directly into the other traveler’s eyes. “This is the end,” his face is expressionless. He grabs his bag and leaves the compartment.
He steps down off the train, the first snow of the season crunching under his feet. He is wearing a t-shirt and cargo pants, and carrying his bag on his shoulder. The cold breaks him out of the cradled feeling of the train. The resort town is between seasons and the streets are quiet, yet ready, like the town meant to have a celebration but everyone decided to sleep in.
He holds a travel guide to the United States of America in his hand. He looks at it and finds his bearing from the train station. The cold bites through his shirt and ice water seeps in through the cracks in the soles of his shoes. He bag feels light. The building is old. A blue “hostel” sign pokes out of the facade over the door. He checks in, and puts his bag on his bunk. He searches the building. He watches the other travelers. He studies the photos and maps on the walls. He sits in the lobby. He eats smoked salmon and Brie cheese and baguette, and chases it down with supplements and mineral water.
“You’re sick, you need help,” echoes in his head. The idea is like a wall he is running towards but suddenly comes to a stop in front of, his heart thudding in his chest, his throat tight. He can’t take another step. His body is resisting him, he can’t go through.
Each of us is our own operator. You check the schedule and release the breaks, you pull the levers that throttle the engine. And somewhere, stuffed under a seat or hidden in the back of a cabinet, is the manual. It’s worn and ancient pages contain all the secrets that you care to know, though by the time you find it you feel like all the interesting parts have already passed you by. You can’t see what goes on inside other people’s cabins, but if you could you would see that for some rare people the wheels don’t turn, the levers don’t pull, and the manual is in a language no human speaks.
He walks out of the hostel. The sun is setting behind the snow covered mountains. He walks along the side of the highway that snakes towards a pass far above. He is going uphill and the hike keeps him warm despite the occasional passing car lashing him with freezing wind and mist.
The world is smothered in snow. He takes the first unpaved road that heads into the forest. The road follows a creek. He watches the water flow over rocks and around little frozen islands in the stream. Moonlight sparkles colorlessly on the snow, as if the world were nothing more than a canvas on which to project an endless black and white movie.
He sits where he can see the the water flowing by, where the mountain lies like a giant shoulder, inviting him to lay his head on it and rest, and where the moon hovers like a stage light.
The light wavers and slowly dims like a used up bulb flickering in its last moments. Until, finally, it goes out. The world opens up to him. The world marches onward.