The Passenger

I usually don’t believe it when people say that life is interesting or enjoyable. After all I’ve been through, I’m pretty sure anyone would think the same way. You see, my life made me think of everything as something that can be explained with logic, no emotion. Love was a response of the body for one to leave their descendants in this world; an act of thankfulness meant nothing more than the conscious side of your brain not wanting to have any burden towards someone else.

I looked into the sunset with blank eyes. Others see romance in the mixture of the various pigments, but all I see is the Earth rotating. No beauty, no feelings.

I gave out a big sigh; everything seemed so meaningless.

As soon as I got on the train, I sat down on a seat. Thinking of how meaningless everything is, I could feel the train moving away from the rays of the sunset, putting me into a pitch of darkness. The darkness slowly seemed into me, as if I was a shadow, not the real object. I didn’t care; that doesn’t change anything. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be on this train again, continuously rotating in my own circle.

More people came and went. They seemed no different from me. Uninterested, emotionless looks. The same hard faces, the darkness that covered them, and the lack of the sunlight in their eyes. We were all shadows, finding no meaning, being no meaning.

But then, somebody got into the train. It was a little girl with a few pals. They came in all different shapes and sizes; one was abnormally tall with a ghost-like figure, while one was as small as a joint of my finger with a figure like a bird. Another one of them was a rat. But I felt nothing. No awkwardness or interest, not even a bit of repulsion. As the doors closed and the light disappeared, they seemed no different from me or the rest of the remaining passengers.

It wasn’t until the sun shown upon us again that I felt something different from them: color. They had color. Unlike us, I could see that they were not shadows. As the sunset showed the last of its light through the windows, they all bloomed with aquamarine, ruby-red, topaz-yellow, opal-uncertainty, and pearl-sparkles. Their eyes were pointed toward a place for a reason, and their hearts were beating for a reason.

The girl and her friends left after the train stopped 6 times. I have no idea why they got on this train or why they got down at the swamp-floor station. The only thing that I know of is that they were colorful and unique, even after the sun disappeared from the sky. I looked into my hands that were dark whether the sun was there or not.

I realized that I wished for a change; a chance to be as spectacular as that girl and her friends, a reason, a meaning, and life that I could experience.

#sharonsence #fiction