Night Train to Istanbul

A splitting headache awakened me and my world quickly slipped toward a bottomless hell. Another night of little sleep, laying awake many hours wondering what kind of keyboard logorrhea I could feed my loyal blog readers for another day. Having failed to come up with pertinent or witty prose, I at last fell back into the arms of Morpheus. The sleep was ragged and didn’t last long; I again was wide awake and feeling very cramped as if my entire body had been stuffed into a box that was many sizes too small. My glowing watch was in front of my face, and it happily read 2:20 and I assumed it was a.m. because the world was otherwise extremely dark.

Something was oddly wrong, however; I wear my watch on my left arm but its face was upside down and the numbers were backward as if my left arm had changed place with the right one. I also had a sense of movement throughout my head and there was quite a lot of vibration and noise to accompany my beginning notes of distress. I tried to move my arm so the now brilliant timepiece would not be so close to my eyes but it would not budge; the effort caused a drop of sweat to roll from my forehead, across my eye, and down the side of my nose which tickled immensely. I attempted a scratch with my right hand but it too refused to move and I had no sense of even having any arms at all.

Consuming my nose was a god-awful stench emanating from all around me and I wondered if I had farted; if so, it was one worthy of writing home about. Everything seemed oddly misplaced; my head still ached and there was a burning sensation all around my neck, my shoulders, and my pelvis. It was then I heard the whistle blow and the entire horrid scene was pictured in my mind. The unnerving whistle was some distance away as it occasionally went off and only a European railway engine makes that ear-splitting screech. As the scene slowly developed in my confused brain, I heard the endless clickety-clickety-clickety of a train traveling merrily along its rails and my dire situation suddenly enclosed me more tightly than could an asylum straitjacket.

Had I followed little Alice into a hellish Wonderland adventure?

I actually was in a box that was too small for my body; my arms and legs had been severed from my torso but the greatest disappointment was the realization that my head had also been removed and tossed into the box along with my body and appendages, all in a willy-nilly fashion. The accompanying stench must have been from my bowels breaking loose when my head was removed; the re-fried beans, the meatballs, and the beer I had for supper was having a final but glorious curtain call. Another insult befalling me was at times my head would roll from side to side with movements of the train and I would pick up a splinter in the tip of my nose from the rough-cut wood. I desperately wanted to sneeze but my present predicament deemed it impossible.

It took me only a moment to realize I was on a night train to Istanbul; I have forever desired to visit that crossroads of the ancient world, a timeless city where so many cultures, nationalities, and religions collide and mingle. A city ripe with mysteries and with intrigue hiding behind every closed door in the narrow streets and alleyways. And I have always wanted to go there by night train, the romantic Orient Express tugging at my wanderlust.

I was in a rough wooden box or container of some kind, my body dismembered, and riding in a boxcar which was streaking through the darkness behind a deafeningly noisy train engine. It must have been a boxcar, mostly empty and echoingly hollow sounding; I was definitely not carry-on luggage and my stench would have been most noticeable. I think I at least deserved a coach ticket, if not a first-class berth.

At last and after what seemed like many hours, I felt the train slowing as I wondered how I had gotten myself in another fine mess; I again looked at my askew watch and it was proclaiming 2:35; my precarious situation had unfolded in my mind in only 15 minutes. For some cosmic reason, my head was still alive with all faculties seemingly intact, and I made up my mind that I was somehow going to right this heinous wrong that had been committed against my person and that somebody besides myself was going to rue this particular day.

To be continued … I come face to face with a world renowned surgeon.