Chapter Text
I opened my eyes. It had already grown dark, and a blue twilight landscape raced past the windows, too quick to study. Curiously, there were no stars in the sky.
The passenger car smelled rancid and mechanical. Voices jabbered all around me. I observed people of all sorts, some sleeping, some animated, some wretched. I was glad to have a seat to myself.
Across the aisle, a woman stared at me, unapologetically. She was dark skinned, with tight cornrow braids falling upon her shoulders from beneath a wide-brimmed hat.
She asked, “Where are you headed?”
“Headed?”
I twisted in my seat, as if to find something, but what? A handbag? A ticket? I did not even know. Nor did I see anything that belonged to me.
“I think you’re going to Alpha Low,” she said. She smiled, revealing a row of perfect teeth. “And I think you must have been a bad girl, like me,” she added.
I reflexively gripped the cracked, stiff seat cushion beneath me.
“I don’t feel well,” I said, closing my eyes tightly, trying to push back a roiling confusion growing within me like a dysplasia.
My fellow passenger then said, “Don’t try to get off at the wrong stop. You’re already headed for the lowest level. Anyway, I wouldn’t advise it.”
“Why not?” I asked, shivering.
“Because you’ll lose what’s left of your soul,” she said. “You were ordained to come here, to abide here.”
The train shifted and turned on its tracks. I tried to focus on the landscape outside the window, but it was ill-defined and seemed to stretch into nothingness. There were no lights, no cities, just a murky void.
I asked uncertainly, “Do my people have a soul?”
“Who are your people?” the woman asked.
“I—I’m a…,” I reached for some word or idea, but could not connect, could not grasp it. Again I tried, “I’m from the planet…the planet…”
I broke into a cold sweat, my mouth still open.
The woman laughed a bit cruelly. She was lanky, with a muscular neck well defined jaw.
“We’re all the same here,” she explained. She continued to look at me probingly and I shrank in my seat, pressed close to the window.
Closing my eyes, I pretended to sleep while searching within myself for some shred of explanation as to how I had arrived here. But it seemed I had lost everything, including my identity and name.
I looked at the reflection of my own face in the window. Large eyes, short orange hair, no makeup. The tips of my ears were pointed, while none around me shared this trait. Yet it did not seem unusual.
What was I expecting to see instead? I traced my face with my hands, then watched the reflection of the woman who had spoken to me earlier. Her image hovered and jittered above the undefined dark landscape beyond the glass. Some of the other passengers appeared ragged and worn, as though refugees. But this woman, in contrast, seemed substantial and powerful.
The train stopped several times. I would hear the shuffling of weary feet as people departed and the train emptied.
One time I tried to stand, as though to leave, but the woman in black shook her head and indicated I should sit back down. I could not tell whether she was a friend or not, or even whether that had any meaning here.
But I continued to watch her in the reflection of the glass. Eventually she slept, seemingly unconcerned by our mysterious destiny. I could not remember boarding the train or indeed anything from before. Just existing suddenly in a sickened and agitated state, sitting alone on this decrepit bench.
I looked around the darkened cabin and realized that we two, me and the woman across the aisle, were the last passengers in the car. Suddenly terrified, I bolted from my seat and squeezed in next to the other woman. She opened her eyes and gazed at me.
I shuddered. Was this a supernatural world? My companion seemed comfortable enough with everything that was happening. She smelled odd, like unwashed clothes that had been stored away for a long time.
“What did I do,” I asked, “to wind up here?”
“I don’t know,” the woman replied, facing forward.
“What did you do?”
“I…observe…a horror that cannot be forgiven, every day,” she answered. “But, even considering that, I think I’ve been sent here to protect you. Perhaps this is a last chance…to redeem myself. A way to break this cycle.”
The train began to slow, its brakes screeching angrily as we lurched forward in our seat.
“We are here,” she said.
I grabbed her strong hand in mine and asked, “What is my name?”
She looked at me coldly.
“If you do not remember, then how can I?” she asked matter of factly.
“Then what is your name?” I asked.
“Sylene,” said the woman. “My name is Sylene.”