Train Wreck

Train Wreck

“Just fall.”

         Trevor McDowell heard these words everywhere he went, never knowing what they meant. They had first started to form on his seventh birthday, as the words “Rust hall.” He never had any idea of what it meant or why it had appeared, but slowly over the years, it began to change. Every year, on his birthday, the words evolved into different messages.
         At the age of fourteen, the words had turned into “Just fall,” which made just as little sense as when they had first formed.

         “Trevor, are you okay?” his father asked him.
         “Yeah, dad…fine,” Trevor replied absent-mindedly.
         “You sure?”
         "Yeah, dad. I’m sure.”
         “Because you don’t seem fine.”
         “Well, I am.” Trevor was now getting annoyed.
         “It’s just that lately it seems like you’re listening to nothing or something.”
         “Well I’m not,” Trevor snapped.
         “Alright, I’m sorry,” Trevor’s father replied, realizing that he had struck a nerve. “Your mother and I are just worried about you, that’s all.”
         “Well you don’t need to be.”

         Trevor climbed up the 13 stairs to his room, counting each step that he slunk up. He opened his door and looked at his calendar. It was May 8, exactly two months before his 15th birthday. He collapsed onto the chair in front of his desk and took out a binder. He flipped through the pages in it, trying to find a blank one, but they were all filled with the words “Just fall.”
         Trevor was failing every subject at school, and he had been held back two years. His mind was too preoccupied with the words that constantly haunted him.
         He went downstairs to his father’s office to get some more paper, and he saw something unusual on his father’s desk. It was a letter from a psychiatric agency, but there was nothing on it except for a handwritten note in the middle of the page that said:

Just fall

         Trevor’s heart was pounding violently as he stood paralyzed in front of his father’s desk. He suddenly realized what he was seeing, and frantically searched for the return address. He lifted stacks of paper, he lifted the letter itself, looking for the envelope. He picked up the garbage can in his dad’s office and dumped it out, rummaging through the discarded junk. He found envelopes upon envelopes, but none of them were from the psychiatric agency. He sat down on the floor, trying to think where the envelope would be. Then he realized that he could look up the address of the psychiatric agency in the phonebook. He quickly got up, snatched the letter, and ran into the living room.
         “Mom!” Trevor panted at his mother, who was reading the newspaper from a week ago.
         “Yes, Trevor?” his mother asked, curious as to why her usually unenthusiastic son was now filled with such brio.
         “Where’s the phonebook?”
         “In the cabinet above the sink. Why?”
         “Uh, I just want to look something up,” Trevor replied. His mother let it go at that, because she could tell that this was important to her son, who she hadn’t seen so lively in years. Trevor darted into the kitchen, ripped open the cabinet, and pulled out the phonebook. He flipped through the pages frantically, trying to find the psychiatric agency in it, all the time the words “Just fall” throbbing in his head. His finger slid up and down the page, searching for the agency.
         Trevor shouted a curse word into the phonebook, and ran up the 13 stairs to his parent’s room, where his dad was watching T.V.
         “Dad! Where the hell did this letter come from!?” Trevor shouted angrily at his father as he paced in front of the bed.
         “Watch your language, Trevor!” his father said sternly back.
         “Ugh…Shut up, dad! I don’t care about that right now. Just tell me where this letter came from!”
         “I don’t remember, Trevor.”
         “You’re lying! I know you remember! It was on the center of your desk!”
         “Just calm down, Trevor.”
         “Screw you.”
         Trevor went to his room, locked the door and cried angrily into his pillow.

Just fall…Just fall…Just fall… Just fall…Just fall…Just fall… Just fall…Just fall…Trevor…

         Trevor graduated high school at 21, having to repeat the fifth, eight, and tenth grades. He never went to college, but instead lived with his parents, never actually getting a job. His parents kicked him out of the house a few months after he graduated, giving him the money from his college account, which was quite a bit. Trevor had learned by now to tune out the words that constantly pulsed in his head, and he bought a small apartment. All he bought for it was a bed, two plates, a cup, and silverware.
         Trevor never liked life. To him, life was a sad attempt at reality. He felt that his existence was unnecessary and an inconvenience to himself and those around him.
         Reason was what he thought he didn’t have. He would complain to himself about not knowing what it was.
         Escaping life was that reason. Trevor McDowell died May 8th, 2010, shortly after finding a small hole in his floor. He documented it in his journal, which he wrote in whenever something interesting happened in his life. Then again, he hardly ever wrote in his journal.
         All of his life, Trevor thought that his existence was pointless; that it was just a train running off the tracks, about to fall over and catch fire in the middle of nowhere, himself being caught in the inferno with no one to pull him out.
         Sure, you could say that Trevor was a pessimist, but he just thought he was being realistic. His concept of reality, however, changed late one night, when he stumbled upon a hole in his floor, quite literally. He fell and hit his chin hard on the floor.
         “I hate life,” he thought.
         He got back up, rubbing his jaw, and looked at the hole in his floor in bewilderment.
         “I hate my life,” he thought again.
         He got on his stomach to take a closer look at this enigmatic gap in the floor. He couldn’t see into it, but he felt a cool breeze coming from inside it. He reached his arm in the hole slowly, and the cool air floated up his arm, giving him chills, which he hated. He got his arm in as far as it went, but he still felt nothing except for the walls of the hole that were tight around his arm.
         He pulled out his arm, went to a cabinet in the room, and pulled out a flashlight. He laid down in front of the hole again, pointing the flashlight into the darkness, but to his bewilderment, the light reflected off of the hole, as if it were just a black spot on the floor.
         Trevor was now more curious and baffled than angry. He ran upstairs to get his journal, and wrote about what happened in it. He then sketched a diagram of the hole, a fruitless endeavor.
         Trevor went back over to the hole with his flashlight, hands shaking, and held it above the hole again, to the same results. He let go of the flashlight, hoping it would illuminate the hole as it went down, but as soon as the flashlight was actually in the hole, the light went out. Trevor laid there for a moment, now terrified more than anything else.

“Can you help me with my Italian homework?”

         Trevor’s heart raced as he heard that question emanate from the hole. He was used to hearing voices, but it was always just two words over and over. Trevor swallowed hard, and shouted down the hole:

         “Is there somebody down there?”

         There was no echo. Trevor might as well have been screaming into the floor itself. More voices joined in.

         “Just tell him you’re busy or something.”
         “Because it bothers me when people ask me about it.”
         “I don't want to talk at all to anything...”
         “Many say that he’s outré, a sure sign of a genius.”
         “Can’t you see I’m busy here?”
         “I don’t want to die…”
         “Shut up!!”
         “Trevor, I’m watching you.”

          Trevor jumped up, and backed away from the hole, his stomach base-jumping, and his heart playing a drum-roll.

         “Trevor…Trevor, I know you. You’re lost. You can’t find your way out. You’re on a train about to fall over and blaze like the sun.”

         Trevor was shaking and sweating uncontrollably.

         “You feel like there’s no purpose to your life…But now, I’m going to give your life reason, and all you have to do is ask me what that reason is, Trevor. All you have to do is ask.”

         Trevor woke up with vomit dribbling down his chin as he leaned against the wall. He looked around, and saw the hole. He let out a shriek, and tried to scramble backwards, but when he realized the hole wasn’t going to do anything to him, he relaxed his muscles and started to cry. The tears flowed and flowed, his nose condensing and snot running as he wept for hours. Finally, the tears stopped, and Trevor dragged himself over to the hole, and asked the reflection of him dwelling inside the hole,

         “What’s the reason?”

         “Listen,” his reflection said to him.

         Trevor then remembered that it was his birthday. He looked at the clock as the second hand ticked to the end of this day and the beginning of his birthday. It hit the 12, and everything became clear. All of the mystery, all of the reason, all of everything suddenly made sense, and Trevor laughed through his tears.
         He got up with weak knees, and walked to his kitchen drawer. He opened it and pulled out a knife. He put his back against the wall, and slid down it, his laughter subsiding.          Tears dripped off of his smiling chin as he turned his arm and looked at his palm. He slowly lifted the knife, and played the most beautiful violin piece ever heard on his wrists. Blood slid off of his arms as the silence grew. His blood pooled quietly by his legs as his life faded out to black, to white.

         The train running off the tracks fell over, and blazed away. Trevor sat upon a snowy hill, gazing at the train wreck below. The fire crackled peacefully as snow fell upon it, and Trevor stood up, pulling his warm jacket tighter and taking a puff of his cigarette. He turned his back on the flames and walked away to find another person to rescue from their own train wreck.