will i miss my stop if i fall asleep ?

nothing ever ends poetically.

all beginnings and endings

are bloody and raw.

none of this is supposed to be pretty.

but they were supposed to fix the seats. the one our protagonist continued sitting in was rickety and wobbly. 

i don't understand why someone would adjust to that.

this time however

our train took a different path. 

from the window, you could see the rain water slope down against the glass and when the 

train passed through you could hear the leaves hit the metal body.

the path was cosy and a little cold, but the train provided blankets.

the path was too distracting for me to remember how this episode started.

-

the innocence in the eyes reminded our little girl of the boy she had eaten alive.

but there was something else.

something she couldn't put a finger on.

she knew not to read between the lines now, so she ignored it like the mosquito bites she had been getting.

she sat in a different seat for a change,

but the passenger always sat close to her.

instead she wondered if the new passenger knew how intimate rain was to her.

and deep deep inside she told herself

dear god don't make me regret this.

i think god might've been slightly irritated by this seeing how she admitted herself to reason than religion.

but when she recognized hunger in those eyes,

her heart sank a little.

still floated of course, but

sank a little.

so she left her body once again and spoke softly in her mind

im afraid of falling in love

because youll make me feel like im on the top of the world and 

thats a long way to fall

and somehow 

someone heard it.

-

our little girl heard this 

in 

her voice

i love you in the way an abandoned house might love a person who had stumbled upon it

with sheer desperation and a sliver of hope

and that is when the window glass started cracking.

but the passenger said

i'm good at fixing windows.

i'll fix them up in our house too

you won't have to.

i'll fix you up

you won't have to.

or maybe i have writer's bias.

either way, a thief should never be told that luxury is hers

because then

she starts to personalize things that aren't hers, not preparing for the guilt that she usually knows comes after.

later

it just feels like a white hatted betrayal behind her back.

just like one felt long ago.

that reminds me of something kafka wrote to milena-

perhaps it isn't love when i say you are what i love most

you are the knife i turn inside myself

this is love

this, my dear, is love

-

it must be so nice to forget time and to forgive life. to her, that was the train ride through the forests.

but she knew the forest ended somewhere. or else the whole of earth would be rather pretty.

sometimes there is a clinical satisfaction in seeing how bad things can get. 

and sometimes she knew she was betting on a loss.

i wonder if the meaning in that thought dissolved when she watered herself down with all the pretty empty words.

moreover, our protagonist always did have a habit of idealizing pain.

from where she came from, pain was inevitably born in every house

one had to learn how to give reason to it, to survive.

when she saw the blue colouring itself in again, she made the excuses for her own self.

and the mistakes got worse

but she knew how to write

so she wrote all the explanations herself.

in a cruel satirical way, she was making amends to people.

destroying herself this time, the way all those travellers wanted her to.

destroying herself, to ask the traveller to make the journey with her this time.

oh but this story wasn't hers to write.

wasn't hers at all.

-

there's a sickening feeling of familiarity

when the wrong person knows you too well

and you know them too well

and they weren't always the wrong person.

the passenger looked disfigured now. she did not resemble any of the travellers our protagonist had seen before. and everything was so blue.

she could no longer sit in her seat because other people kept taking it before she could and she always sat right in the front.

the train had left the rainforest, and ran through tunnels again.

the passenger had killed a frog.

and she hadn't slept in weeks.

-

the girl wondered why the train wasn't stopping. still she didn't dare sleep.

because if she did, her passenger would leave.

the passenger.

she was scared she would hate her if she didn't keep on loving.

all passenger did was look through the window with longing in her eyes to escape.

but did smile back at times.

and when the tunnel ended under a dark sky

said

im here

always

yours

love

as the author, this looks like a fucked up story about a killer and a burglar.

-

turns out our passenger intended to ride the train through the forest for the experience.

it is beautiful, that journey.

she didn't intend on the rest.

still, absquatulation seemed cleaner than sawing a door into the train wall.

the girl was more hurt than angry.

and the repairs almost took forever before the train could run again.

the train wasn't very happy that it was stopped before it did on its own.

intervals.

they never do talk about aftermaths as well as they do about the journey.

seems a bit unfair.

because without rebuilding rome, there can't really be wars.

and the warriors don't really care about what happens in between, as long as the lands have their name on them.

the land can only take so much

before it begins to crack.

but once you were on the train, it did not stop. not for you. not for our protagonist. not for any of the ill-fated passengers.

-

the one with the blue eyed dog.

the train was rarely empty. but when it was, the girl would go to the seat at the far end and lay down with her legs atop the seat.

she didn't worry that someone would pry them open then.

the first time she spoke to the boy was when she laughed about the bus.

a bus too yellow.

a bus too pretty.

he agreed.

which to her meant that he saw the world like she did.

she had forgotten how to agonize her co passengers. which can be dangerous in scenarios like these.

in her defense he soon told her

im in love with you

why

you thrill me

and she probably would have laughed this off if he didn't speak kindly.

or if she hadn't told him how much she liked tulips.

or the planetarium.

or if he didn't smile when she made silly jokes.

or if he didn't go down on one knee and wrap a bracelet around her finger.

and she probably should've laughed it off

because one day

he made her feel like she was the most disposable thing in the world.

and that it was hurtful that she felt like that

because he didn't intend to.

he was simply a boy.

so when he later kissed this girl when the train was passing in a tunnel late at night,

she only felt very vomitish.

perhaps we can owe it to an acquired motion sickness.

he stopped boarding the train after that.

she didn't really miss him

she missed his blue eyed dog.

-

the one with the void.

the train made sure never to stop at places its passengers would get lost in. or lose themselves in. 

but then again, there were unfortunate exceptions.

it was almost 2 when the train halted here, and there were flashing lights that spilt onto the seats from the casinos in the horizon. the music was barely music. the music was a whole lot of sound. 

even the wind was too loud.

it is usually advisable not to leave the train when it is parked, but she knew the train would come back. it was the only train that ever arrived.

the floor outside the train was sandy, and she was too sad not to gamble.

for god's sake, she wasn't even looking for love.

so we could call it a decision. not a choice.

but the lord did not know all this. he had only ever known consumption. 

and she was too exhausted not to pick herself apart in front of him.

she should have understood that this,

was not a poetic sort of cannibalism.

this

was simply cannibalism.

he just liked to eat.

the girl didn't try to satisfy the lord's hunger. instead she often gave him old nutshells and candy bars from her pockets. she felt pity for the lord, for he only knew a world of money.

she wanted him to soften for a kinder perspective on the world.

a kinder perspective on her.

she refused to admit that he was simply a hungry man. 

a man who had taught her to speak the language of the woman he had once abandoned.

who had now tied himself to her against her will.

the girl in ropes finally acquiesced to his relentless pleas 

and sat in the ocean scrubbing her legs for the rest of the day.

she took the first train that arrived next morning.

meanwhile the lord made a shrine for the second girl he had ever loved. 

who had the nerve to leave.

i thought possession was much more intimate than that.

-

the one with the glasses.

she had been away from home for two years now and the train never returned to where it had started from.

perhaps, that is why it was frightening when the reader got on the train.

people usually slept on the train.

those that read, she did not speak to.

it always meant that they knew more words than they understood. once you know words, you get better at being believable.

the reader smiled at her when he walked in.

like he had known her from another life.

she found it amusing mostly

because this was the only life she would ever live.

all the others simply fed stories.

still yet, his consistency surprised her.

he always made good time.

right at 7.05

every day.

and the train always stopped at his station.

he spoke to her about all the cities he had walked to.

all the trinkets in her bag.

and handed her one.

what's this

pisces

like the fish ?

oh i never thought of it that deeply. it simply came to mind one day.

she learnt how to write about his blinding rage against a profit centred society.

she learnt how to smile when he said he had written in a book for her, where he kept flowers picked whenever he remembered her.

she learnt how to listen and understand when he spoke of his bride before her, as a fond reality than a fond memory.

she learnt how to ask him for reason when he left his darling standing alone at the ball

or when his darling felt lonelier with him than without.

he stopped calling her darling.

in all fairness, she found it disgusting.

when she learnt that she was simply a weighing down a scale, she grew quieter.

the reader tossed his books aside for the newsletter on his phone,

and called our girl a child.

then

she thought how he had asked her

is a dog that weeps after it kills better than one that does not

no.

your guilt doesn't purify you.

what a fucking phony.

-

the girl did always ask to sit in the driver's compartment, but she never could find the door.

she was tired of thinking instead of acting.

all the beauty in these stories was in her head.

outsiders would call all of this pretty ugly.

you're at the wrong station.

the girl was tired of being a protagonist.
in fact, she had never really asked to be one.
she would be irreparably happy to have been 
just another passenger.

she was instead,
stuck being 
an immortal with no home.

the train seemed so sad nowadays.
she didn't care about a window seat.
she sat down in the seat
nearest the exit.
as soon as the train stopped,
she would leave.

the sun stopped rising.
and the moon stopped singing.
the train travelled places that
resembled the oesophagus of something spiraling.
and she did not want to go back home.

the train stopped at a new station.
a boy with his shoes shined stepped onto the train.
this boy seemed to have his destination set. 
he bought a ticket, which our girl never had.
the train, now jam packed, left a seat beside our girl.

-

the girl no longer liked speaking to strangers.

her mother had warned her long ago, to keep her distance.

anger really is a funny emotion.

however it gets less funny when it rots into contempt.

not funny at all, actually.

she wasn't violent though. she never bit anybody before.

but it vexed her how simple this boy was.

how he didn't mind what seat he sat on as long as it was near her.

she kept mum, but her skin burnt with a stale anger. and a bit of rancid disgust.

these are ugly emotions.

she was not an ugly person.

it was an accident, she told herself.

(but only because she hadn't learnt how to explain herself yet.

from then on, all she did was explain herself.)

a hunger had been planted in her and

now there was nothing left of him. 

a greyscale shell.

and it felt so pompous to take credit for his ruin.

this train had no place without ghosts.

-

i'm sorry.

-

she tried running away, but no other train ever came.

always the blue train with red speckles and cranky wheels.

always right at dusk.

living the same day, over and over

and over again.

and watching different deaths

over and over

and over again.

-