All Aboard The Q-Train

[Penguin]

They say the Q-Train is always on time, if you want it to be. It was for me. One minute I was in the hospital, and the next? It's hard to describe. The first thing I noticed was the smell, like a wet ashtray. That rancid stench clung to the air, and came down in a brown rain that painted everything. Dense smoke crowded the air as I stumbled blindly forward. Then, to my left, an ear-splitting hiss that just about slapped me out of my skin, I don't mind saying, and an even louder whistle. I fell on my side, and clapped my hands over my ears, and clenched my eyes shut as shut gets.

 

I unclenched when it finally stopped, but nothing could've prepared me for what I saw. All that dense smoke was gone, and the brown rain with it. I mean, it was still there over everything, but I could see my hand in front of my face. I could breathe, and I did. All that clean air in my lungs didn't mix too well with the smog I'd been breathing down for so long, and I fell into a cough. After a minute, I felt a hand on my back, and followed it back to the face that went with it. Somehow he was hard to see, but not because he was blurry. He was just so very plain, apart from the kindness in his eyes.

 

"All aboard?" he asked, and raised his free hand toward the behemoth idling on the tracks before me. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a train out of the Old West, but without the smokestack. The thrum of electric engines purred lowly beneath the warm and gentle breeze. Sunlight peered down through the clouds high above, and shone off the clean metal hull of the train. It was painted in blue and silver and orange, with a large "Q" near the steps where a line of passengers stood, waiting to board. I looked to the man, and for the first time I noticed he wore the uniform of a conductor, in the same color palette as the train he conducted.

 

"I don't have a ticket," I told him.

 

"Oh? What's this?" He reached into my shirt pocket where I'd always kept my cigarettes, and showed me the ticket in his hand. He gave me a coy smile, tore the stub from my ticket, and stepped past me. From that point forward it was as though my feet carried me for themselves, toward the back of the line. I stood behind an old man, bald and wrinkled, wearing a hospital gown. He turned back and smiled at me, but there was something sad there. Behind me, a young woman held the hand of a boy who could only be her son, while her other hand cradled her barely pregnant belly. Her smile was brighter, and her son's was the brightest of all.

 

At length, I found myself standing at the bottom of the steps to the Q-Train, with warm air from the motors rushing over my feet, as if to lift me upward. I reached for the rails on either side of the steps, and pulled myself up.

 

((Now that I've set the stage, somewhat, I'd like you to imagine a train that isn't bound by the normal rules of reality. Imagine a train that encompasses a universe, and it can hold whatever you can dream. What sort of things might you see as you move from car to car? Much like Dr. Who's TARDIS, the Q-Train is bigger on the inside, and what looks to be a train from the outside may very well hold vast mountain ranges, tropical islands, frigid oceans, galaxies, and the list goes on. Use your imagination to describe what all you might see aboard the Q-Train.))