The Train

by Antaeus

Flow Clark

I awoke early this morning from a dream that I felt compelled to write down. I wanted physical proof of the dream, something tangible to prove that I wasn’t going insane. Then again, perhaps I wrote it down so that if the substitute people get me, someone may find the note and know what happened. Either way, I’ve written it down, and I feel it was the best thing to do.

No, I didn’t write it down because I was worried that I would forget the dream. I’ll remember this dream for the rest of my life.

Think of it as hitting your finger with a hammer: you don’t have to write it down to remember it. You do it once, and you remember the experience every time you pick up a hammer. That’s how I feel about the dream. Like I hit my psyche with a hammer.

***

There were tears in my eyes and great sadness in my heart, when I awakened from that dream. As hard as I tried to, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. The tears just wouldn’t stop. They were like a river running from my eyes, along with the sadness one feels when they have lost something precious to them.

Not like when your wife throws out your first edition of Mad Magazine. The one that you went to great lengths to protect for over fifty years. Instead, it’s like when there has been a death in the family, or some other great tragedy has occurred.

My wife Glendora is usually very sensitive to these things. Typically, even though she was sound asleep, she would have sensed something was wrong, woke up, and comforted me.

Not this time, though. I had to do things to wake my wife up so she could ask me what was wrong. I tried blowing my nose and coughing, but they didn’t work. Sticking my tongue in her ear did.

Once she was awake and calmed down, I tried to explain my dream to her, but then I couldn’t. How could I? She would get better results if she asked me why people pick the toe jam from between their toes. Or why people choose to pull the lint from their belly button and then examine it?

At that time, I didn’t know the dream’s meaning myself, so how could I have explained it to someone else?

It was three o’clock in the morning, and we had gone to bed at around one thirty, so my Glendora eventually went back to sleep without hearing about my dream. I stayed awake to write this. Like I said, something was compelling me to get this down on paper. I cared about me, even if Glendora didn’t.

The dream was mine, and as with all dreams, the telling is never the same as the experiencing. It’s like when you have to pee really badly, and you finally get to go. You can explain to someone how you did it, but not the orgasmic-like feeling you had while you were doing it.

That’s how I know that the dream and the sadness it brought into my life will always be with me, even if only on a subconscious level.

I’ll bet if you’re a guy reading this you can remember the name of that first date who let you feel her breasts. You remember it because you either went home satisfied or with what we called “blue balls” back in the day. You got all excited, your body got ready for action, then, nothing happened, and your balls ached. Blue balls.

It’s like the dream gave me mental blue balls.

***

In my dream, I was in a house that was different from the house we actually live in.

As it is in dreams, I knew that my wife Glendora was there with me, although I never actually saw her. I was in the kitchen preparing supper as I usually do when a stranger walked in.

Dreams are funny. Sometimes you can’t tell if the other person is a man or a woman. Sometimes they change from one to another in the dream. It all feels so natural that you don’t notice. Except if you’re dreaming that you’re lost. Then you see everything. You know you are staying in a hotel because you can see the top of it many blocks away. As hard as you try, you can’t remember its name, or the street it’s on. You can’t find the room key either. Then you go looking for a phone, and there is none around. Who are you going to call anyway, the hotel you don’t know the name of? The people you ask for help send you in a direction that takes you even further from your destination.

I hate lost dreams!

This dream was different in that I didn’t pay attention to the details, but I noticed everything. I must have known this person because I wasn’t alarmed at all. It seemed perfectly natural that he or she should just walk into my kitchen.

We began to speak to each other. Not with words, but telepathically. At the time, I did not, and still do not, feel that this was strange. It felt as normal to me as breathing.

Have you ever been so close to someone that you sometimes finish each other’s sentences? Well, it wasn’t like that at all.

As we communicated, the stranger and I walked together outside the house and into the yard. It was dusk, and I could look back and see the front porch aglow with lights from the kitchen.

The stranger told me that a train was coming and that I could get on the train if I wanted to. As he said this, I could see the train arriving.

There were no tracks on the ground and no wheels on the train. The cars just flew over the field. This didn’t look strange to me, so I guess that on some level I thought this was a perfectly natural occurrence.

Have you ever dreamed that you could fly? You don’t have wings, but you just jump up, like Superman does, and soar through the sky. You can feel the wind in your face and the warmth of the sun on your back. Me too, but it wasn’t like that at all.

When the train stopped, it was only a few feet away from us. By this time, it was almost entirely dark, with some of the shadows looking more ominous than others. The strange thing was that even though it was dark, I could see as well as if it were mid-afternoon.

I could clearly see someone walking out of one of the shadows, but not from the direction of the train or the house.

As the person passed, I could see that he was myself. Again, I felt no alarm or curiosity, I just accepted this as if that was the natural way of things.

My other self, as it were, walked a little way past us and stopped. He just stood there in the darkness, waiting.

I asked the stranger why there was another “me” standing there.

He explained that the other me was going to take my place here and that no one would know the difference. For some reason this did not alarm me, I intuitively understood what he meant. That it was not an evil or malicious thing.

The stranger then said that I had a choice to make. I could get on the train and “move on,” or I could stay here.

If I chose to stay here, I would live a mundane life like all of the other people on this plane. If I got on the train, I would have the adventure of many lifetimes.

When I looked at the train, I could see other people sitting in the lighted cars. Some of them seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember who they were.

All of the people had a golden glow about them, and I suddenly realized that the only thing that was in color was the train and the people on it.

I realized too that the world I was living in was only shades of gray in comparison. That what we thought of as color was in actuality not real color at all.

With this revelation came a great yearning to get on the train. The adventurer in me wanted to see what great adventure lay at the other end of the invisible tracks.

I took a few steps toward the train then stopped and turned back to the stranger.

“What about my Glendora?” I asked.

The stranger placed a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but Glendora can’t go.”

It was at that point that I had the urge to pee, so I just turned around and peed. It’s like that in dreams. If you have a bodily function you have to perform, you just do it right there. No one in the dream seems to mind. Except that I’ve noticed that no one else in my dreams, other than me, does these things. It’s like I am the only one allowed to do them because it’s my dream.

Anyway, I zipped up my pants, checked the front for pee stains, and told the stranger that I couldn’t go without my Glendora.

The stranger replied that I would only get one chance and I had to choose now. He said that Glendora would not know I was gone because the other me had all the knowledge I had, and “he” would be with her.

I looked toward the train, and once again I felt compelled to the very core of my being to get on it. There are no words to describe what I felt.

How do you describe feelings that we have no words for? Feelings which are beyond our comprehension?

I don’t think I ever wanted anything more in my life than to get on that train. Well, to be honest, wanting to hit the lottery when the prize money was half a billion dollars would have been my first choice. However, since that was not going to happen, I wanted to get on that train with the very fiber of my being.

I KNEW in every cell in my body that a great adventure lay ahead of me if only I boarded the train. That everything I wanted to know, I would learn on that train. I would see and do things I could not yet imagine.

More, I was sure that I would finally be rid of all of the things and people that bothered me. That each day aboard that train I would begin another journey filled with wonder and enlightenment.

Yet, even knowing all of this, I reluctantly turned to the stranger knowing I would refuse.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t go without my Glendora. I just can’t.” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I promised her we would always be together. And because for over thirty years, we’ve done everything together.”

The stranger removed a funny looking hat. Did he/she have a cap on before?

“She’ll never know you’ve left,” he said.

“Yes, but I would know. Besides, how could I enjoy my adventure without my Glendora? She is my other half, I wouldn’t be whole without her by my side.”

It was then that the sadness came, and the tears began. I knew for sure then that I had lost something precious. Just as I knew that what the stranger had said was true, that my Glendora would not be able to get on the train with me.

As the dream began to fade and I started to awaken the stranger gave me a final chance to board the train.

“No,” I said. “Don’t you understand? I made a commitment, it would be dishonest, I can’t go without my Glendora.”

***

Having just written these words, I now realize that I have had this dream before. So, my sadness is lessened by that knowledge, but only a little.

The feeling is akin to having the urge to eat a piece of chocolate, and there’s none in the house. You have this craving, and you can’t go out and buy a candy bar because all the stores have closed.

Then you remember that Hershey bar you hid in the glove compartment of your car. Sure, it’s been there for three months, and the bar has probably melted and solidified any number of times. But, it’s CHOCOLATE, so you eat it anyway. Your craving has been satisfied, but at the cost of a stomach ache later.

Perhaps that is why I feel compelled to put the dream down on paper so that someday someone might find it. Then that person will read it and know I did the right thing. That I gave up the most excellent adventure of all for love.

I hope that when Glendora’s time comes to have this dream that she will choose to wait for me. I don’t know how I know she will have the same dream, I just do.

As I write this, part of me knows that everyone has this dream. That sooner or later we all have that choice to make.

My Glendora has a strong sense of adventure. Like me, she always takes the road less traveled. How many times have we said to each other, where does that road go, and then taken it?

My fear is that the call to adventure may be too intense for Glendora to resist. It may be that she can’t stop herself from getting on the train.

When the time comes for Glendora to board the train, I know she will call me. She, like me, will want us to get on the train together.

Wait! I just had a thought. Perhaps Glendora has already boarded the train. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t get on the train with me. Because she is not the real Glendora.

If my Glendora has boarded the train, that means the person in my bed is not the real Glendora.

How do I tell if she is real? If I cut this Glendora, will it bleed real blood or some green goop that smells like rotten eggs? What to do, what to do? Think, man, think!

Now I’m contemplating that maybe the stranger who asked me to get on the train was my Glendora. The real Glendora.

She should have told me it was her. Why didn’t she tell me? If she did, I would have gotten on the train. Why wouldn’t I?

Maybe she didn’t want me to get on the train. Maybe Glendora wanted the adventure all to herself. I know Glendora can be selfish at times, but this…this is outrageous.

To deny me the chance to take the adventure of a lifetime, of many lifetimes. Why that’s…that’s, immoral!

My God! I’ve missed the train, and it’s all Glendora’s fault!

Now I think that perhaps my compulsion to write this is not for me but for this other Glendora. So that in reading this she will, on some level, remember that she is not the real Glendora.

But what then?

***

I’ve given this some thought for a few hours now. It’s now seven thirty in the morning, and I’ve retrieved my gun from the safe. I’m sitting by the bed waiting patiently. I’m like a cat waiting to pounce on its prey. My butt is even wiggling in anticipation of the pounce.

Look at her, just sleeping away so peacefully. I wonder if she has dreams. I had a dream once. It was a very revealing one. I even wrote it down.

When this Glendora wakes up, I’ll make her read this.

I’ll watch her eyes. If they widen, then I’ll know for sure. The eyes always betray them.

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Antaeus is a poet, award-winning writer, and author of The Prepared Citizen, a three-book series on situational awareness. In addition to nonfiction, Antaeus has also published epic sci-fi, action/adventure, and fantasy novels. Antaeus’ poetry and short stories have been published in numerous magazines such as Gravel, Ariel Chart, and The Lycan Valley Press. Antaeus’ favorite quote is by Groucho Marx: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” Antaeus’ website is http://www.antaeus-books.com.