The Train Station

I didn't have many things from my past. Looking back at where I've been only led to retracing steps, and I needed to keep moving forward. That was how I wound up in the train station. It had been long enough. Time to go.

The woman I'd been seeing had become a bit clingy. Janine always wanted to know things like where I was going or what my dreams for the future were. The circled section in the jewelry ad was too much for me.

I didn't think they had expected me. Janine poured over a borrowed copy of the knot with Sheila nodding knowingly. "Oh, sorry, ladies."

"Holling!" Janine gushed. "Isn't this the most beautiful dress ever?"

I glanced at the photo. The bride in question had a much different figure than Janine - the perfect hourglass that I knew wouldn't flatter Janine's pear shape. "Yes, it's beautiful." If you like that sort of thing. I didn't.

"Oh, Holling. I shouldn't show you that if I might wear it." Janine giggled.

Sheila simpered.

That was the hard part about girls. I don't care how old they are - they're all about that wedding. And when they finish the wedding they want babies. I hid my disgust.

"We could invite your whole family, Holling." Janine hadn't seen anything change in my face, though I wondered what Sheila might have seen.

"Uh huh." I hurried to find the three things I had left at Janine's: my hunting knife, a photo for my passport, and the book of passkeys. "Have fun, ladies." They always like it when you called them ladies. It was enough to get my leave.

Sheila still had a look in her eyes like the grin was pasted on. I finished the passport application that day and forwarded the thing to my new address.

I always had a new address. Maybe I'd just had enough of Janine and her constant hints. She couldn't help me, so I'd just be moving on.

At my apartment, I packed my satchel. It wasn't about furniture, because the place had come furnished. Just the things I would be hard-pressed to duplicate. Like the hunting knife - it was difficult to find a dragonbone knife in these parts, which is why I'd brought it with me from where I came from.

I grimaced. I couldn't let myself think like that. Something might come through. Something might find me. I breathed in and out, a slow measure of the training from my youth. It always served to calm me. All those thoughts drained from my consciousness with the simple exercise. I repeated it until all the memories left me.

The train station was dirty, bustling, yet empty. The travelers with money went by car, by plane, any other method of travel. The train was left for those without much money and could afford the travel time. Even the bus was preferable within the city. The train wasn't like the subway at all.

Yet I boarded with the luggage and the cargo. The moving air whistled by the window I cracked open. It didn't provide much breeze, but it freshened the space. I drowned out the acrid scents from previous occupancy with a lit candle.

My destination felt a lot cleaner. The floors had been swept and a man polished the door handles within my view.

That made me wonder why someone would leave a Styrofoam cup on the bench. It felt so out of place, even more when I could see the coffee shop serving out of the more-recyclable paper cups with the cardboard cupholders.

I walked up to it. The thing seemed more menacing as I approached. Inside was no liquid, neither coffee nor tea, but a golden locket. Beautiful in the workmanship. Too beautiful. The face of the clock had a different gemstone at each hour mark, and there were twenty markings. If I'd had any doubt that this watch was not from this world, that sealed it. I checked for an inscription, and it said, "Never look back."

I closed the face of the watch. I didn't want someone to see it and ask questions. "Never look back." I breathed through the calming exercises again. Who sent it? Who on the other side wanted me to remember to forget?

Only one face loomed in my mind. My betrothed would send me these messages. She would fight for my return through complicated messages. Even my mother appreciated my choice more than my love.

Not that it was easy to leave her behind. She knew that.

I crumpled on the bench, just a man who missed the life he'd left behind. I pocketed the watch, because I couldn't leave it to be found by someone else. The man still polished door handles, another set farther down the wall. The clerks at the ticket counter and the coffee shop made faces at each other. No one else populated the space, so I left before someone noticed me.

New town didn't seem so much different than the old one. Perhaps a little cleaner. I found lodgings and a job within hours of arrival. My book of passkeys opened to a random page. The old temptation was there, to return without completing the mission.

I couldn't do that to them. Somewhere on this forsaken world I would find the key to challenge our notions of science and time. I knew it. I believed it. I followed my inner compass to the next town, and the next, never getting too comfortable. I needed the natives to lead me to it. Janine had been helpful, as had the people in every other town I visited. No one knew the secret.

Maybe this time would be different. "Never look back." Those words led me onward, ready to search as many towns as it took. Anything to return to my home.