Escort on a Train (Closed)

Trains were interesting inventions, honestly. They were the perfect mix of architecture and travel convenience. Most people found them boring, but Reyna found every facet of them worth investigation. Her own architecture work was amateur at best, but the Magnolia Central Redliner was a perfect example of vehicular design in almost every regard.

A set of ruby red wheels drew wary eyes to the bottom of the steel behemoth’s body and rotated up into a carriage of glittering steel and reinforced glass, which made the train nearly transparent. Passengers could see the countryside rolling by below in a rush of green and brown, as if it were being speed-painted in their wake.

Rembrandt Marceau, who was shaking at Reyna’s side, didn’t share the same beauteous enthusiasm that she did. To him, trains were roving death machines, born to break apart and fracture. To manufacture a train made of glass was sheer insanity, especially when metal ones broke down often enough. His eyes latched onto the MAGNOCORP logo that was plastered across the middlemost car of the Redliner and refused to venture elsewhere for what must’ve been an eternity.

Reyna snapped him out of his trance with a well placed elbow to the side.

”Are you okay, buddy? We have to get on now,” she said, her voice practically muted by the blaring of a nearby whistle. Steam shot out from the train’s skirt and beat down on the stones beneath the tracks, only to wash up around their ankles and ruffle the young woman’s cape. ”I know you’d like to wait, but there really is no time.”

She grabbed him by the elbow and ushered him forward, urging him to the threshold of their gate. Rembrandt put one boot on the tip of the train’s step and shuddered, practically torn apart by the mere idea of setting foot on the glass death trap Reyna was trying to force him onto.

“I don’t wanna,” he said, because suddenly he was a ten year old. Reyna swiveled around behind him and gave him a harder push, forcing him up the first step and onto the actual walkway of the train car. Rembrandt turned to flee down the steps and onto the platform, but Reyna was already blocking him. Her thin arms stretched across the threshold and her eyes burned with an irrefutable fire.

”That sucks.”

The train ride itself was filled with only a little bit of whimpering and two minor escape attempts. Reyna honestly hadn’t seen either of them coming, either. She’d been under the impression that a man terrified of trains probably wouldn’t throw himself out of one to escape sitting in one. It just seemed like such a contradictory and stupid idea that she’d ignored the possibility altogether.

Still, when Rembrandt pulled one leg out of the window of their passenger car, she tugged him back in and went back to sketching out the designs of the walls in her notepad. They were glass, so obviously not very ornate, but they were crystallized on the sides and on the roof so as to prevent overheating while inside the car itself. It was a functionality thing that she felt was warranted, not that she was a capable architect.

The floor, as she’d noticed earlier and read about in the paper, was completely transparent. Rembrandt had a habit of looking down and watching the wheels churn until he got sick, which she figured was probably a common problem, but one worth sacrificing for.

”Looking at the floor won’t make your fears go away,” she said.

“Well, I can’t jump out the side and just end the worrying,” Rembrandt muttered sourly.

”You’d seriously rather kill yourself than just deal with a train ride for two damn hours?”

Rembrandt shook his head and leaned back in the seat with his eyes closed. It was only then that Reyna noticed that he was literally caked in a layer of sweat and that his skin was now almost a ghost-white. Her eyebrows knitted together in minor concern and she considered interrupting whatever he was about to say, but let him speak out of respect for the obvious arduousness of his next statement.

“It’s not the... the motion that gets me,” he explained. “It’s the anxiety. I can’t control this. I can control a carriage. I can control a walk. On here I have no control. If somebody else makes an error, my wife could suddenly be a widow.”

Reyna inhaled through her nose and slowly folded her notebook shut. This was a conversation worthy of her, at least for the time being.

She kept him talking long enough to get him off of the train a few stops down. He didn’t even notice that the train’d come to a halt until he stopped talking and the lack of motion hit him all at once. Like a drunken fool, he stumbled to his feet and toppled over the seat across from him (narrowly missing Reyna). Then, like a man who’d never known faithlessness, he prayed to his God and kissed his fingertips. The sweat was still there, layered like a fine cologne, but it was less evident now.

”It’s not so bad, you know. Trains are beautiful. This one is a magnificent piece of architecture,” she said, matter-of-factly. ”Have you tried collecting model trains? It might help you conquer this fear of... whatever it was that you said.”

Rembrandt braced himself on the wall for a second and turned to face Reyna, his face full of either shame or embarrassment.

“No, I have not tried playing with toy trains,” he muttered. He didn’t seem to think highly of Reyna’s idea. Perhaps that was why he was stupid -- he didn’t like listening. He just liked talking.

”I don’t think you should do it ‘cuz they’re toys. I think you should do it because putting a train together shows you how they work. If you know how they work, then you’re more comfortable on them, because you no longer feel helplessness. It gives you control over the situation that you otherwise wouldn’t have.”

Rembrandt turned his eyes to the wall and stared at it for a long moment.

“Perhaps.”