Short Story: Oblivion

The rail’s regular rhythm rocked me through the night with gentle, loving sways, and yet oblivion’s sister would not come for me. Dreadfully sober, I spent the night in dark musings as the cart oscillated on the tracks.

They say the undead cannot sleep, for they are banished from rest, also, that the demons cannot dream, for they cannot move through that boarder between reality and fantasy. My eyes were red and burning. I tried to keep them shut, but they would betray me, opening again and again at any little sound.

My watch said it was three. I was sitting up now, half dressed. I decided to leave my compartment. I was buttoning my vest and fiddling with my tie as I passed the curtained compartments of my fellow travelers. It is a narrow path, allowing for more room in the quarters I’m sure, but still, it felt cramped.

I turned from the rooms and stared out at the passing landscape. It was a desert, a low, sandy plain stretching on infinitely into the night. The moon was a thin cut of light in the clear sky, and the stars were glory, uncountable. I stopped for a moment, unable to do anything, but the train still moved, the carriage carried me on though I was arrested by the desert in the night, by the sky over it, by the fading moon and the stars.

That was the closest to sleep I came, but I started, and the moment was passed. It was just sand, just night; the magic was gone.

I made my way forward to the dining compartment. There was no one there, only the imperceptible rocking of the train as it rolled on in the night. It was very dark on the train. I felt a creeping feeling like I had left a morgue, left the sleeping, boxed up and lifeless bodies behind me, but still there was no life beside my own in the night.

It is a lonely thing to be awake when all are dead, to be sober in life.

It was dark, and I stumbled against a table. It was as good a place as any to be restless, and so I slid into the adjoining booth. I took out my watch, but it was too dark to read. I leaned closer to the window, and tried to catch some light from the stars, but my weary eyes were too blurry for me to see.

So the next day found me, and the waiter also, my open watch in my hand, my head leaning against the cool glass. I shut the timepiece and ordered breakfast. He was not a minute late. They all came back to life, my fellow passengers, returned from their dreams and nightmares to the real, but I, in infinite limbo, was still trapped between the two, undead and damned.