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.
No comments:
Post a Comment