It can’t be much further, she assured herself. The soles of Abigail’s feet were screaming at her. She’d gotten turned around but she was on the right track now. At least, she was fairly certain she was. It had been an hours long trek in the dark through this dense thicket, led by nothing other than the light of her lantern. A cool breeze sent a chill down to her toes. She wrapped her duster around herself as tightly as she could. The cold had sprung up on her tonight but Abigail Lambert prayed she wouldn’t have to endure it for much longer. The Eastwood train line she was hoping to find buried somewhere behind these trees was due to have a train roll over its rails any minute now and she needed to beat the iron beast there. She couldn’t afford to mess this one up.
Not again.
The beauty of tonight’s plan was in its simplicity. All it would demand of her was, ostensibly, to do absolutely nothing. The train would take care of everything; she just had to make sure she arrived early enough to meet it. Once she got to the tracks, she figured, there was almost nothing she could do to ruin this attempt as she’d done all the others. It wasn’t that she couldn’t go through with it; she’d seen every attempt through to its conclusion and somehow, she’d still managed to fail every time. Ropes that could wrangle the strongest mare would snap under the weight of her thrashing. Rifles that could shoot the scales off a snake from a hundred yards away would jam the moment they were aimed in her direction. She blamed herself in the aftermath of each attempt and by now, she’d simply lost count of how many times she’d even tried. It’s not like that fact mattered much to her, not much did these days. She only needed to be successful once and tonight would be that night.
She arrived at a break in the tree line to discover the tracks. She laid her lantern down beside the tracks and laid down with her back to the planks. She stared at the night sky, filled with stars but seeing only the darkness between them, when it occurred to her that in this orientation, the train was liable to roll right over her and this entire trek would have been for naught. She laid herself perpendicular to the tracks, the frigid steel rail sending a shiver through her whole body when she laid her neck down upon it. She looked to her left, and then to her right, wondering if she wanted to face the train once it arrived.
It was to her right she spotted one of nature’s curiosities: a lone flower, stalk standing tall as it stretched toward the sky. It grew out from beneath a crack in a pile of rocks just beside the tracks. Her attention drifted to the caterpillar as it slithered up the stalk. Just beyond it, she could see light from the train cutting through the trees up ahead. The rails tickled her from underneath, vibrating with the promise of her coming absolution.
The train sped forward as plumes of smoke billowed out into the night air. A sense of peace washed over her as she closed her eyes, the distance between her and the iron beast closing by the second. Everything she’d been forced to endure up to this point would soon be washed away and she could finally rest. She could finally confront God or fate or whatever force kept air in her lungs and blood pumping through her veins to demand answers for what she’d been forced to suffer in the fifteen years since she had to leave home and the downward spiral that ensued. That meeting though, much to her dismay, would be delayed.
The steam engine burst in a brilliant display of raging flames, its brakes crying the shrill scream of metal grinding on metal. The rails quaked beneath her. She prayed for anyone that might be listening to please let this be it, but it could not be so. The train ground to a halt mere inches from Abigail’s body. The warmth of the flames pinched her cheeks and she opened her eyes.
Still here.
She sat up and witnessed the train, the metal that once shrouded the engine, curled and stretched like the petals of a flower, flames burning out from within. She refused to forgive herself for not picking a spot a few feet closer to where it ultimately stopped, but the more thought she gave it; the quicker she realized had she chosen a spot ten, twenty or even a hundred feet in either direction—the train would’ve ground to a halt inches from her just the same. Her problem was not the method; it was what motivated those methods in the first place. She found that most times she wanted something in life, it was only after she’d abandoned those desires that what she initially wanted finally arrived. There would be no way to cheat this, however—as her yearning for death was likely her deepest.
People poured out of the train to see what had brought their late night journey to a sudden stop. It was then that Abigail grabbed her lantern and followed the tracks further into the woods and deeper into the darkness. About a half a mile down the tracks, she came upon a deserted train station. She spotted a Stranger, dressed in his Sunday best and a top hat, sitting by his lonesome on a bench.
“Whoever you’re waiting for is liable to be delayed,” she told him.
“I sincerely doubt it!” He replied.
“Train’s engine blew about half a mile up the tracks.”
“Is everyone alright?”
“Can’t say I stopped to check.” Abigail stepped up onto the platform.
“Something troubling you?”
“I’m beginning to think I may be cursed to this life for the rest of eternity.”
“Do you talk to most strangers this way?”
She thought it over. For whatever reason, she felt an odd sense of comfort and familiarity around him, like he’d been with her for longer than she might’ve ever realized.
“No, I suppose I don’t.”
“You know, some people might be inclined to call a life eternal a blessing.”
“I ain’t some people.”
“Then who are you?”
“Just a woman who’s ready to die.”
“Ready to die?” He scoffed at the suggestion. “Nonsense! You have so much life ahead of you. God will call upon you when it’s your time and not a moment sooner.”
“I’d be hard pressed to believe a world as full of pain and suffering such as this would have someone looking after it.”
“How can you deny God’s will when we live its consequences?”
“With what I’ve seen? Quite easily.”
“Even if we cannot appreciate it immediately, there is always a reason to God’s will.” He said.
“Reason? For what reason must the raped divine from their suffering? What do the families of the unjustly murdered have to learn from what was taken from them? There is no such thing as reason in a universe as unreasonable as this one.”
“To imply a lack of reason is to imply a lack of God.”
“I ain’t implying.”
“You don’t believe God is watching over you?” He asked.
“He very well may be. But if all he does is watch, when so many could be spared sorrow with his intervention, what’s that say about God?”
The Stranger considered her question.
“Sorrow is an important emotion,” he said, “as is its sister, suffering. You might even say suffering is the default mode of being. It’s in choosing to face the cruelty of being that allows us to cultivate the strength to bear it. It’s the only way God knew we would measure up to the task.”
“If you’re the type to believe light can be found in darkness.”
“Wherever there is darkness, there is light to counter it. You just have to be willing to uncover it.”
“If telling yourself this makes bearing life easier on you, then more power to you. But I’ve searched high and low for that light and I’m convinced it ain’t nowhere to be found.”
She stepped onto the edge of the platform, out toward what little of the forest she could see. The Stranger took to his feet and stood beside her.
“That’s a hard place to be,” he told her. “But if you accept God’s mission, if you carry hope home, well I reckon light must be waiting for you at the end of that road.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think God has a mission for any of us.”
“Then we agree to disagree.”
“Seems so.” She stepped off the platform and left the Stranger behind at the station. She crossed the tracks and wandered back into the trees.
Continue to Chapter 2:
God Damn My Aim
Night had given way to day as light pierced in through the cover of trees overhead. Abigail continued to roam in search of her next opportunity to greet Death at its door. After spending so long wandering in search of an end that would never manifest, time had become an irrelevant structure. Each day had become colored by the same shade of gray, ob…
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