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Something dripped from the ceiling. Timothy looked up, but the roof was so far above him that it felt like gazing at the sky. He was an ant in a cave, or perhaps in the gaping mouth of a giant beast. For after Timothy felt the drop in his hair, he touched it and looked at his hand. And he expected it to be water, but instead, it had a color like blood. The dripping stopped.
Timothy looked at his pocket watch, which he always kept on a gold chain. Nothing scared him more than losing track of the time. There was one minute left for the train to arrive but he could not see it anywhere. Shouldn’t he be able to see it in the distance by now? He squinted into the darkness of the long, hollow tunnel. If he was indeed inside a beast, then that tunnel would be its throat and lead down into the depths of its stomach.
And what would happen if he fell on those huge, silver tracks below him? They were far down for sure, seeming like the depths of Hell. If he fell down, he would become a sacrificial offering to the beast upon those ghastly tracks.
Yet when Timothy squinted down at the tracks, he noticed there was a tiny door. It was difficult to discern from so far away, but when the door opened he was sure of what he saw. Out came a little man on wheels. Yes, he had wheels instead of feet! And his shiny, yellow helmet made him easy to spot. He polished the train tracks. They looked like human ribs and yet he whistled joyfully when he did his work. Timothy looked. But as soon as he blinked, the little man on wheels was gone.
He blinked again and then there was the train. Ghastly. A cloud of steam rose around it. Its body hummed. The shiny metal seemed alive. It radiated a power that drew Timothy in. Sucked him in, like he couldn’t resist it.
Onboard, Timothy struggled to stay on his feet and to avoid being suffocated by the crowd. He held on to a pole when the wheels started rolling and squeezed it until his knuckles turned white. The train moved with such a raging force and at such a speed that Timothy was afraid he would lose his balance. No one else seemed to be having the same issue as him. The people were calm, and stable, and grounded.
And what people they were! A man with no head, just an octopus resting on his shoulders which scowled at Timothy. A woman with a forked tongue, and, if you looked down at her legs you would notice that she did not have legs at all but a snake’s tail. Knives and swords wearing trench coats and carrying briefcases, moving like humans. Timothy realized that a lot of people on the train were not actually people, but what did it matter to him as long as he got to his station on time? He would get to Helmfirth station in a few hours.
Time passed. Timothy decided to make his way to the central coach, where he knew there would be a nice map on the wall and he could count all the stations between here and Helmfirth. He was clumsy and had to hold on to poles or to the side walls of the train. Begging pardon of the ostrich in the leather jacket in the way, saying “excuse me, sir” to a giant snail with a top hat.
By the time Timothy finally got to the coach where the map was, they were supposed to have arrived at Helmfirth. According to his pocket watch on its golden chain, he really should be there by now. Timothy looked at the map. It looked antique, rustic. A burned sienna color like the parchment paper of adventurers’ maps during the Gold Rush. And it was an enormous map and very complicated, covering an entire wall of the coach so it could fit the twisting paths towards hundreds of stations that this train went to. Timothy was out of breath by the time he got near it and found that it looked like they had passed Helmfirth station without stopping. He decided to bring it up to someone. A woman looked friendly because she had a mint ice cream scoop for her head. And she was with her children, a mango and strawberry scoop.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but doesn’t it look like we’ve passed Helmfirth station?” Timothy asked her.
“What?” said the woman.
“We passed Helmfirth station,” Timothy stated.
The mint ice cream scoop head turned a little, some of it melting and trickling down to the children.
“No, sir. It does not seem we’ve passed anything at all.”
Timothy turned back to the map, but now it was distorted. The paths were convoluted, and making sense of them would be like trying to untangle a bunch of knotted strings. The station labels could no longer be read, and “Helmfirth” looked more like “Æflfernth.”
Frustrated, Timothy pulled his watch out of his pocket. But it had somehow been detached from its golden chain. It was cracked. The numbers fell off. And the hands circled around wildly, again and again and again.
