Train Ride

There is magic in the world tonight.
A full moon on Christmas Eve. Something,
something is about to change. Something big. A
mystery from the scary place. The place where good
people die without
reason, and floods wipe-out peaceful, intelligent
civilisations. The same place from which people fall
in love.
The trolley looked like a San Francisco cable car.
Something about trains. Weird things always
happened on trains. That was the way life was for
Shannon: rapid, exotic, and mysterious. A train
curving around mountain after precarious mountain
in Eastern Tibet, but no one on the train knew where
they were going, not even the driver. Somebody
suggested turning on the Engine-lights
because it was night, but the moon was so bright
nobody got around to it.
Shannon had never been
to Tibet, but she carried subway token's from
Toronto and New York City, which had their own
adventures and eroticism. The heavy tropical air
dripped with unspoken challenge as she prepared
for her ride. It wasn't a real train; it was a train with
wheels in Honolulu, Hawaii. She didn't need a token,
it was free. Someone had bought her a ticket and
slipped it into her pocket. She knew she would use
that ticket. Shannon knew the best gifts in life
threatened ordinary mortality. Was tonight the night
she received her present? She looked at the
near-Christmas moon shooting out its reflective light
almost as bright as the sun. Then she realised the
void of darkness; the expansion of the night sky
that even a holiday celestial shower could not
penetrate.
She hoped her ride that night would be an enjoyable
one.