Legacy has always been revered.
From the outside, you would see a bold inscription painted onto both sides of this mechanical worm, and as it rushed past you, your eyes would zoom left and right as you tried to catch the Legacy inscription on each car.
I felt light as air, and my feet felt like grass being blown in the wind as the train zoomed past fields. Cows dotted the green carpets with black and white.
The train zoomed past murky waters and deep blue ones. It scared the fish away.
Curious critters living on the tracks got squashed, and squelched guacamole textured insides slid onto the unsuspecting pebbles underneath the tracks.
The train rushed into a hole like a worm going underground. It felt as though I'd been lifted up from my seat close to the window and was about to be thrown to the back of the train.
“They told me that I would get to see Fish-rabbits,” a dumpy woman scoffed. “Liars. I wish I'd used my ticket money to get food instead.”
“If anyone finds that cockroach litter they sell at the subway delicious, then it means you have some hope, Netty. Maybe someone would request the recipes for the slop you make.”
I didn't move. Didn't turn my head away from the window. Didn't even blink or breathe.
It was easy. Pretending like they didn't exist. It was easy. But not as easy as most people thought.
“Netty goes deaf sometimes,” a woman in her early 20s says. “It's a quirk of hers.”
“Who knew deafness was a character trait?”
“People who know Netty,” a blue-haired girl responded and puffed in exasperation. I heard her footsteps receding and I imagined that she'd rolled those brown eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose as well.
The chatter continued.
It felt like the 600th time the train would circle the atmosphere. Even on an empty stomach, I felt the urge to barf when it circled back down into a tunnel that was deep underground. Darkness cloaked the train. That same darkness choked me. Restricted the air in my lungs so that I took big gulps of air. When the train burst out into the light and it felt as though the darkness was peeled away from my eyes and from the train. Oxygen snuck back into my lungs.
“I'll have a thousand concussions before I sit next to Netty,” a pitchy voiced girl's voice pulled me back to the present.
“Kids,” a man said in a condescending tone and low laughter rumbled through him.
“Kids? They're young adults, Lestor.”
“When you have a couple of teens doing the silliest things that are a reflection of our society right now, you just have to be amused at how they feed the circle of destruction that has become our existence,” he shook his head in amusement.
“Lestor.”
“Mary.”
“How many cups of coffee have you had?”
When I heard a smack, I imagined the man had hit his forehead with his palm and that he was about to say something like, “Wives,” in an exasperated, playful manner.
But I heard the smack again and a third time and even though I wanted to keep pretending that the views outside the train fascinated me anew each time I saw them, I wanted to join the people getting up from their seats and turning back to see the commotion.
“How horrible,” one of them whispered and another gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
I looked down at my pale palms and I rubbed the moisture against my pants. I exhaled and sucked in air so gently that no one noticed I'd moved.
A woman was whispering in a harsh, angry tone.
Someone yelped and there was another smack.
Another smack.The train darkened and something slid into my mind like a ghost would float into a body it desired to possess.
“Tell me why, Ashley,” he bellowed. The man whose features were lit by the dim light of the candle. “Tell me why.” Smack. Smack. Smack!
“Mom?” My voice was tiny and I was hiding behind the door. “Dad?”
“Tell me why, Ashley. Tell me!”
“Dad?” I sobbed.
He stomped towards the trembling figure that was my mom sitting on the bare floor.
“David!”
Light swallowed the train again, and just like that, the memory floated from my mind but my hand still trembled.
“Don't do it anymore!”
At once, all eyes turned to me, none of them blinking.
I stood up and my hands were clenched at my side.
“Why?” Someone asked. “It's Dan's new project.”
Dan's new project?“Dan's new project?”
“Yes.”
The woman moved and the crowd parted to reveal two buff action figures I'd never seen before standing face to face on a white platform like a wrestling ring. They both had angry expressions on their faces.
“He made it.”
“Isn't it cool? I can get them to wrestle each other. They look just like miniature humans.”
“But… Someone hit someone,” I stuttered
“Hey! I thought you said she was deaf!” A girl said.
“That was Laz's attack on General Mullen. Their skins are textured just like ours. So naturally their bodies would sound the same way ours would when we're attacked,” a bright smile was on his face all the while. “Check this.”
He moved the control on the pad in his hands and one of the action figures sent a slap across the chest of the other. Smack! It stumbled and fell on its back.
“General Mullen is down!”
The crowd cheered.
“He got quite the beating, didn't he?”
“Oh,” was my only response as I sunk back into my seat.
“Another round of Laz and General Mullen?!”
The crowd cheered in the affirmative and soon, the noise died down and the smacking continued. No one made a sound as they watched, some with eyes glazed over. Except the woman who'd been harshly whispering before. Whatever her reason for whispering was, it seemed important that she did it then.
“Your money's burned and the ride on Legacy ends in 15 minutes,” a man's voice echoed in the speakers and I watched as a shark swirled in a shoal of sardines with its mouth wide open.
It turned out that Legacies do end, I thought as I stepped down from the train and onto the subway.
The realization hit me. The Legacy was just an escape route from the normal world.
I was returning to the bustle that my life was. The noise hit me square in the face. I suddenly remembered that I was a 21 year old college student who'd never had a boyfriend, and more importantly, one who had a thesis to submit the very next day.