Prompt 51, Train, "Swallow Up the Miles"
Title: Swallow Up the Miles
Author: Tiamat’s Child
Series: Manga
Word Count: 400
Rating: K
Characters/Pairing: Marcoh
Summary: A train isn’t anywhere. It goes places: it is none of them.
Warnings: None.
Swallow Up the Miles
Trains were in between spaces. A train wasn’t anywhere. A train passed through places, but you wouldn’t say it really was any of them. A train wasn’t Central. It wasn’t East. A train was not an address. Trains carried mail, but no one sent mail to trains, only by them. Trains slid through the world on narrow paths that kept everyone safe, unable to leave their tracks. Trains never had to make decisions about where to go or which way to turn to get there. That wasn’t their responsibility.
Trains were nowhere places. If you were on a train it was almost as if, for a little while, you might not really exist.
Marcoh sighed and leaned back further into his seat, slouching down behind his suitcase. The sigh hurt. His shoulders hurt. Everything hurt, except for the places that were going unpleasantly numb, because he could not make himself relax, and in consequence his muscles had been knotting and seizing for months. He slept, and he woke with little slivers of white indentions in his hands, where he’d clenched his fists tight closed in the night.
It would be nice to not exist, he thought, maybe just for a little while.
He didn’t know where he was going. It was safer that way, he was sure. He’d planned on not planning. Surely they’d stop at a depot somewhere, in some small town, and he would know this was the place he should stay. So he'd get off the train and find a room, and then there had to be something he could do. He couldn’t think what. He was such a small man. He had thought of himself as reasonably clever once, but he didn’t any more. He couldn’t trust himself. He knew better than to trust himself. All those years of thinking, “At least I’m intelligent,” and he’d turned out to be a fool. A very great fool, and, like all great fools, very dangerous.
There was a vast emptiness in him when he thought of it. It might swallow him up from the inside. He’d planned on not planning, and that was good, because he could not plan. All he wanted anymore was to do no more harm.
He looked out the window. He was on a train. He wasn’t really anywhere. His eyes were sore.
Perhaps he’d shut them for awhile, and be nowhere at all.
Author: Tiamat’s Child
Series: Manga
Word Count: 400
Rating: K
Characters/Pairing: Marcoh
Summary: A train isn’t anywhere. It goes places: it is none of them.
Warnings: None.
Swallow Up the Miles
Trains were in between spaces. A train wasn’t anywhere. A train passed through places, but you wouldn’t say it really was any of them. A train wasn’t Central. It wasn’t East. A train was not an address. Trains carried mail, but no one sent mail to trains, only by them. Trains slid through the world on narrow paths that kept everyone safe, unable to leave their tracks. Trains never had to make decisions about where to go or which way to turn to get there. That wasn’t their responsibility.
Trains were nowhere places. If you were on a train it was almost as if, for a little while, you might not really exist.
Marcoh sighed and leaned back further into his seat, slouching down behind his suitcase. The sigh hurt. His shoulders hurt. Everything hurt, except for the places that were going unpleasantly numb, because he could not make himself relax, and in consequence his muscles had been knotting and seizing for months. He slept, and he woke with little slivers of white indentions in his hands, where he’d clenched his fists tight closed in the night.
It would be nice to not exist, he thought, maybe just for a little while.
He didn’t know where he was going. It was safer that way, he was sure. He’d planned on not planning. Surely they’d stop at a depot somewhere, in some small town, and he would know this was the place he should stay. So he'd get off the train and find a room, and then there had to be something he could do. He couldn’t think what. He was such a small man. He had thought of himself as reasonably clever once, but he didn’t any more. He couldn’t trust himself. He knew better than to trust himself. All those years of thinking, “At least I’m intelligent,” and he’d turned out to be a fool. A very great fool, and, like all great fools, very dangerous.
There was a vast emptiness in him when he thought of it. It might swallow him up from the inside. He’d planned on not planning, and that was good, because he could not plan. All he wanted anymore was to do no more harm.
He looked out the window. He was on a train. He wasn’t really anywhere. His eyes were sore.
Perhaps he’d shut them for awhile, and be nowhere at all.