There’s no place like home. These iconic words, for whatever reason, I can’t shake out of my mind. There’s a rumbling sound that’s coming from metal wheels against metal rails and a hissing of brakes that is unsettling my calm. These happenings tonight lead me to one unforeseen conclusion: I’m on a train somewhere, to someplace, in some time.
How did I get here? I have no recollection. Is it an end or an invitation to a life filled with uncertainty? Will I see picket fences and green grass where I’m going? The answer may surely come in due time.
Where is everybody? There’s not a living soul here but me. Light flickers in the dark train and reveals through wide windows bricks in an underground tunnel. Ahead, darkness swallows the entire tunnel. I believe I know my destination now. I believe the tunnel runs underneath the grounds of The Fields, a petting zoo located in the heart of New York City. Before entering The Fields, the terminal welcomes passengers with its graffiti images; a white rabbit with red eyes is usually plastered on the bricks. But this particular night I see nothing — no graffiti at all, only bricks, mold, and cobwebs.
Minutes elapse, and I just realized I’ve been standing. I can’t move! can’t even lift a finger! There’s an invisible force acting on me, keeping me rooted in one spot. The only areas in my fields of view are the rooms ahead and in my peripherals.
The train lights zap, blink, then kick on bright. In a well-illuminated train I see doors to each car open, red benches adjacent to the walls, and stanchion poles mounted in the center aisles.
“Someone help!” I scream, hoping a body will come to my aid. This train is picking up speed. I can’t fucking breathe.
The lights blink frantically as heat radiates from my face and fogs the nearby window. Static crackles in the train’s intercom system; a voice, feminine and unnaturally pitched, pours out of the speaker.
GOOD EVENING, PASSENGERS. WE’LL BE DEPARTING THE TUNNEL SHORTLY TO —
It cuts off.
“To where?” I say. “Where are we going!?” I understand that home isn’t promised. The scent of oak coming from the living room furniture. My wife, Annie, holding me close to her heart. And our little son, Henry, dancing in a circle. By the time I reach my destination, they wouldn’t care to remember. I’ll be renowned as the man who left his home forever.
Out the window to my right, the brick tunnel bends skyward. Metal pops as the train throws its weight back and starts climbing an impossible hill that conflicts with modern physics. To put things in perspective, picture a vertical platform used in skating competitions.
I ascend this hill at a 90-degree angle, held in place by the force field as I flatten into an astronaut lift-off position.
Just then, a sticky substance crusts on my fingers. It mimics dry paint, and without seeing exactly what it is, my eyes tune to the void beyond the tunnel.
Choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo.
All aboard the train that accelerates over 80 miles per hour. Blood pools in the back of my head and induces wooziness. The greater I ascend, the more dazed I become. Starlight beams at the mouth of the tunnel, to where this train is surging with unbelievable velocity. Wheels underneath the cars leave the track and derail.
Ahhhhhh!!!
Is it over yet? Did I die? The answer is a disappointing no.
In mid-flight, I see dark matter and the Earth pulling further away. The train levels on its wheels but, oddly enough, there are no railroads in space.
That cracking noise floods through the intercom again.
GOOD EVENING, PASSENGERS. WE’RE CURRENTLY EIGHT MINUTES AWAY FROM THE EDGE. PLEASE REMAIN SEATED WHILE TRAVELING.
Quite frankly, the only edge I know is the one aligned with the limits of the universe. Or shall I say, the point where my universe ends.
The train trembles. Then it warps, leaving behind Mars faster than I can view it, now beyond Jupiter and Pluto, and exiting the Milky Way. Once traveling in minutes per light-year, the train relapses to miles per hour.
I’m entering a galaxy without darkness. It’s white. Outlines of stars and planets show in a black trim, like a galactic coloring book. Hovering in the center of the outlines are written words. These words accumulate into substances that fill in the white spaces.
Gravity emanates from a pile of words written on this particular planet. The closer I get, the bigger the letters. Nooo, we’re crashing into it! This word called gravity manifests its definition: “A force of attraction that tends to draw particles or bodies together,” and pulls the tail end of the train, breaking loose a car.
Metal flies off the next, nearest car, jarring it loose. The train begins to accelerate but struggles to break the pull.
Hurry up! Get me outta here!
The train thrusts closer to the planet that’s enlarging. Debris in the shape of letters slashes my window, sucking out the red in the bench.
As my car drifts into a word nest approaching the planet’s stratosphere, the engine boots again, increasing my force field. In the car I scream with the intensity to puncture lungs, then POOF — the planet vanishes far into the distance.
GOOD EVENING, PASSENGERS. UP AHEAD IS OUR DESTINATION — THE EDGE.
Beyond the coloring book galaxy where words manifest matter, this train halts at a translucent wall. Deep within me, I understand what’s behind this wall. Those visions of me holding Annie while she rakes her fingers through my hair, and me kissing my son’s forehead after tucking him in bed for the night, will cease to exist behind this wall. My house, my home, my legacy, my future, will never have existed.
Now the train starts forward. I gaze at the aisles ahead and see, one by one, cars disappearing in the translucent material. But so weird how it happens. It appears the cars ahead of me never existed. Somehow…I’ve been traveling through a tunnel, then beyond galaxies in a single, busted car?
Up close, I see the translucent material. It’s gel-like, and eating away at my car door, a door I never remember being there. My time is pending. Translucent globs spread to my soles, creep up my legs, amputate my soles, and then my entire lower half is gone. I choke up. Begin sweating. Begin wheezing.
Get me outta HERE!!
NOW! RIGHT NOW!!!!
I JUMP awake in my art studio in front of a 24 x 36 canvas that just captured my vision precisely. Paint’s all over my hands and staining the hardwood floor. My arms are stiff from locking them in place for hours. Wow, I get so deep into my work. Sometimes I forget I’m painting, like nothing else even matters, lost in thought on a quest to enlightenment.
The final piece is my masterpiece, and it’s only achieved when traveling to that world beyond the tunnel, a place where I find home within my obsession.
