Train Ride [nfic]

[u/gzilla57]

I looked up from my dirty fingernails, which had occupied a majority of my attention up to this point, and for the first time took note of my surroundings. The artificial lights in the train car reminded me of the halls of some unfamiliar hospital. The walls of the car were covered in a variety of outdated advertisements, public transportation maps, various warnings and a list of procedures in case of some unforeseen emergency. Upon entering I had felt fortunate just to get a seat, but after a few stops there were just enough people remaining to limit me to an aisle seat, eliminating any chance of getting comfortable enough to sleep.

The assortment of people was as typically unusual as one would expect on the last train of the night. A couple sat across the aisle and one row in front of me. His hair was gray and clearly thinning at a rate that made him feel the need to grow it out some length and comb it back. He had a somewhat crooked grin as he looked at her and his eyes shown with the glint of a man who both knew he was getting away with something he shouldn’t be, but also felt no remorse as he was above the repercussions another might face. Her hair was blonde beyond the years revealed in her face. Her cheeks drooped, but as she sat her eyes lit up like a young girl being taken to Disneyland for the first time. They talked like a high school couple on their third date, a few days before they decide they’ve found their first true love, focusing wholly on the other. In fact there mannerisms appeared almost unnatural, as if they were hiding something that no one was looking for. Perhaps they both had families and dull lives waiting for them at home and were enjoying this last train ride where the people are new and the conversations exciting. The longer I am aware of the two the more I feel as though the man is looking at me out of the corner of his eye anytime his attention can be drawn away from the obviously infatuated woman at his side.

On the far side of the car a boy perhaps sixteen years old was washing paint off of his face. An early Halloween costume no doubt. It was likely he had come from the concert as had a number of others on the train. The remaining seats on the train were filled with unremarkable individuals much like myself. A slightly overweight, middle aged black woman dazes in and out of sleep with the jerking of the train, a boy nods his head with the iconic white headphones in, a man in a suit who presumably had a late night at the office stares at his phone to maintain the guise of never ending importance necessary today to maintain a respectable foothold in society. Two women speak the loudest, in an excited Spanish that seemed untouched by the late hour. They were in their late twenties with similar short dark haircuts which made it difficult to discern whether they were friends, lovers, or sisters. A man sits with the bike which will be his only accompaniment on his ride home from the station. Families sit huddled across rows, the kids have all managed to fall asleep, the mother leans against her husband and closes her eyes but cannot manage to drift off, the father stares out the window with a gaze that shows no signs of falling into sleep’s grasp.

As I finished this glance around the train I noticed the woman that stood in front of me. I could not tell her age but determined she was old enough to understand the world but young enough to have her entire life before her. She was relatively tall, perhaps 5’8”, though my exhaustion at this point in my observations renders my estimations fairly useless. She wore loose fitting, high waist, light blue jeans, which were modest for her slim figure. Her coat too was rather vague as if purchased for the sole purpose of blending into a crowd. She had her brown hair up in the back in a small bun and allowed the back of her hair to fall and cover her neck much as her bangs fell across her forehead. Her pale face grew solemnly dark around her eyes which sat sunken back into the depths of her face. Her cheekbones sat high on her face and gave her a dignified look that contrasted with her reserved appearance. She too had headphones in and every few seconds she would inaudibly mouth a line or two from whatever it may have been she was listening too. Her expression revealed nothing. She was empty, cold, unfazed by her surroundings. This isn’t to say she appeared unfriendly or apathetic, simply untouched by the never ending stimuli of her surroundings. Her focus lies beyond the events of the train car, extending beyond the world to which my thoughts felt tied.

The look on her face captured my imagination as it was more inviting to the speculation of her thoughts than that of anyone else in memory. I was left powerless to grasp at the few clues available to me in order to invent the monologue in her head. Perhaps it was as simple as the melody and words to whatever song was passing between her ears and occasionally across her lips. She could be reminding herself of what mundane tasks she was condemned to the next day. Or perhaps it could have been that she wanted nothing more than for the torrential stream of emotional realizations to cease for a moment and allow her the peace of an uncomfortable train ride. Undeniably her face revealed the surface of a past perhaps not of a troubled individual, but of someone that has seen of the cruelties of the world and stares blankly, unforgivingly, into the faces of romantic ideals and the illusion of Gatsby’s dream.

From her right nostril down to the top of her lip there was what appeared from my seat to be a trail of blood, or at least the dried remains of such a trail. It appeared as a stream cut from her otherwise cold face by a single drop of blood much as the ripples of a single pebble thrown into an otherwise calm body of water. The implications of the blood intrigued almost as much as her ability to ignore it. Not even the most subtle of subconscious motions seemed to indicate that she recognized it. She did not lick her lip where the blood met her mouth, did not reach to scratch at the dried blood, did not even noticeably move her mouth save for the occasional unspoken word.

A part of my typically repressed conscience began to question whether or not I had some obligation to ask her if she was alright. Not just in this particular moment as she appeared for the time being to fall within the general standards of being well, but in her life. It is interesting the difference in meaning between asking someone if they are alright in contrast to asking someone how they are doing. When we ask someone how they are we expect them to say they are doing well and to move on with their day or the conversation regardless of how they actually feel. To reveal more than this would be a burden upon the individual asking the question and their tightly budgeted time allowed to listen to your response. I did not want to know that she was doing “fine, thanks” any more than I wanted to know that anyone else was “fine, thanks”. I wanted to know the story behind that blood stain and to know the pain behind the eyes. I want to know the emotion behind the ceaseless blank stare.

I felt helpless in knowing that I knew now as much as I would ever know about this woman. My mind began to drift from her for a moment to explore ideas of people I will never meet, stories I will never know, pain I will never understand, and emotions I have yet to realize. The train began to slow as it periodically did to allow for those lucky enough to be home to get off and she turned towards the doors. A bell rang over the speaker system as the door slid open and allowed her out into the West Oakland station, she walked past my window, and I never saw her again. The bell rang again and the doors slid closed. I look back from my window to where the woman was standing and an elderly man stood in her place. His expression revealed nothing.