An opportunity

I could see the train from a mile away, and I could hear it soon too. Its lights sparkled like stars, its eyes, and the little window at its front was so blurred I could only make out the outline of someone sitting on the other side of it. All I knew was that it was loud and slow. And winding down a long long track from a long long way away. It was almost near me now, I was on the platform, peeking at it like a curious kid, as rain pounded on its top, drenching the monster. Now I could see the bald man in the neon green uniform driving it. He looked preoccupied, probably didn’t even see any of us waiting on the platform so patiently, and then it was past me. Like a car going at 360.

The front of the train was past me.

The wind blasted in my face, and open doors and netted windows flashed past me in milliseconds. My heart beat faster as I stepped forward. How was I supposed to board? It was going too fast. It. Was going. Too fast.

Yet there were people inside?

“You have to jump.” Someone said. I turned right and my stomach flipped when I saw the other end of the previously slow train that was now zapping past me.

“Jump.” The man in the bowler hat repeated to me, stepping closer.

I turned back to the train, internally cringing. Why hadn’t I prepared better for this? I always knew, had heard, that trains don’t stop for you round here. Either you jump or you get left behind as they move past you and other passengers like lightning.

I could see the last carriage from the corner of my eye, almost.

“JUMP.”

I propelled towards the train, my hand grasping the handle by the door before I plunged into the cold metal space, my knees colliding with the ground.

I was breathing hard, my hands were shaking, and I felt feverish and damned. But I was in. I looked up at the lights and the blue plastic seats all around, my heart still pounded in my ears. I could feel the eyes of a small looking woman with large glasses on me, and the indifference of a burly white man and a youth who couldn’t stop checking his watch and the view outside his window, he didn’t seem the patient type…?

I blinked in surprise, how the hell had these people got in?

I got up, and turned around as we passed by the last of the people on the platform, some of their eyes large and regretful, others staring into their phones, and a few who walked in the opposite direction to the one the train was headed in with all the pride of a lion. And then came the grasslands where the platform ended, large stretches of green in the dark night, trees in the distance, and if you looked closely, a fox nodding its head at you from far far away in the shadows.

The train tooted, blowing steam against the tapestry of the star lit sky. It’s like I could see the whole galaxy above me, with its violet and purple shades and bright stars scarring it like they were the sight of a healed rip in its surface.

Funny thing is, I didn’t exactly know where this train led. Just that there was a high chance it went to where I wanted to go.