The Night Train to Nowhere in Particular

Date: 1/26/2026

The café feels cobbled together from vanity and fractured egos. Exposed brick, trailing plants, tortured art clinging desperately to the walls like it needs emotional validation. Everyone inside looks young, deliberate, and softly smug — the kind of people who own houseplants with names and opinions about oat milk foam density. Don’t get me wrong — I do name my plants (shout out to my homeboy, Rick.) But I grew swiftly out of my oat milk era the moment it graced my lips. My shoulders droop the moment I step inside. My clothes feel aggressively normal. My face feels… historically lived-in. I hover in the queue studying the chalkboard menu like it’s a GCSE exam I forgot to revise for, now bluffing my way through with blind optimism and mild panic. Matcha latte, obviously. Cake… spiritually yes, metabolically… hell no. I’m mid internal debate when a voice cuts cleanly through my social paralysis. “Hey. You look fun. Come sit with us.” I turn. He is wearing an actual jumpsuit. Not metaphorically speaking. A literal, unapologetic, full-bodied declaration of self. Gold. Sequinned. Zipped halfway down with the arrogance of youth, excellent collagen, and not a single visible pant-line of shame. He’s beautiful. Radiant. Criminally twenty. “I’m Jamie,” he grins. “How old are you?” I cough politely into my soul. “Old enough to remember dial-up internet trauma.” He laughs. “Girl, you don’t look your age.” The compliment wraps around me like a puffa jacket. I accept the warmth greedily and immediately ruin everything by referencing a children’s TV show from the early nineties. Congratulations, Amanda. You’ve just aged yourself in dog years. I gesture towards his companion — older, pierced enthusiastically within an inch of facial collapse. Nose rings, lip rings, eyebrow jewellery like a human metal detector, attracting every rogue bit of shiny metal within a three-inch-radious. Sweet eyes though. Soft. Slightly desperate. “You know,” I say thoughtfully, “you’ve got an uncanny resemblance to Zippy from Rainbow.” They both blink. Silence. “Oh god,” I blush. “Showing my age now. You wouldn’t even have been born then.” Jamie grins wickedly. “Nah. Just a sperm in my father’s wee nutsack.” I choke on imaginary cake. Something in the ridiculousness cracks us open properly. We laugh until nearby hipsters side-eye our joy like we’re committing some unforgivable social faux pas. The tension dissolves. The café softens. Suddenly I’m not performing — I’m simply present. Unedited. One of them. We order cake. We talk art. Creativity. Dreams. The strange theatre of being alive and pretending you know what you’re doing. Jamie talks about living loudly, about refusing to shrink for anyone. The pierced chap nods along carefully, like someone quietly hoping courage might be contagious. I recognise myself in him far more than the golden boy in the jumpsuit — the decorating, the effort, the subtle asking to be loved. I accidentally assume they’re together. “Oh god, no,” Jamie laughs. “Just friends.” The older chap visibly deflates like a pin to a lilo. Something tender collapses behind his eyes. My chest tightens — I’ve accidentally stood on something soft and invisible. Then Jamie casually drops: “I’m a train driver. Night line.” My eyebrows waggle instinctively. “Oh. I do love a good ride.” He snorts. “You’re terrible. Come with us tonight.” “Well… I mean… I’ve always wanted to ride a train with two gays,” I beam proudly, like this ambition has been laminated and pinned to a vision board. The night train is chaos in motion. Overpacked. Overheated. Everyone damp, over-fragranced, eyes sliding suspiciously, bodies folded small, trying to vanish into the fabric of the carriage. I’m squeezed into a human panini when I suddenly feel… A breeze where no breeze should ever be. I look down. No trousers. Gone. Vanished like dignity at a karaoke bar. Panic flares. My legs are bare. Prickly. Pale. Emotionally unprepared for public broadcasting. I look like a distressed yeti trapped in beige high-rise briefs. Every eye feels on me. My brain catastrophises wildly — headlines, viral videos, my mother somehow finding out. I start tearing through the carriages like a woman possessed. “Excuse me,” I hiss to strangers. “Have you seen my trousers?” A man clutches his briefcase tighter. A woman slides away and stares fiercely out of the window. A baby takes one look at me and starts crying. No one meets my eye. Society quietly disowns me. I spiral. I check toilets. Luggage racks. Under seats. I’m sweating. My soul is shedding layers. Eventually I find a pair of waterproof trousers in a storage locker — comically enormous. Fisherman chic. Industrial swamp couture. I step into them. They puddle around my ankles. They swish aggressively when I walk — shfffft, shfffft — like two haunted bin liners. I resemble a depressed deep-sea trawler on its final voyage. But at least I’m clothed. And only half dead inside. The train releases me into a quiet street. I wave cheerfully at Jamie. He salutes back like I’m boarding another dimension. Then I hear the sobbing. A man stands under a streetlight unraveling. Talking to thin air. Breaking in public. The kind of grief that doesn’t care who sees. Every compassionate cell in me knows he needs kindness. Every self-protective cell knows I don’t have the bandwidth to carry a stranger’s collapse tonight. Unhinged people are drawn to me. They sense the cracks in my scaffolding. We recognise each other like animals who have learned to limp politely. I put my head down. He follows. “I just need someone to talk to.” I pretend I’m deaf. Which is technically half true. Deaf to fractured souls. Selectively fluent in avoidance. I bolt into a block of flats and start taking the stairs two at a time — or at least attempting to. The ridiculous waterproof trousers flap violently around my legs like rebellious sails. Shfffft. Shfffft. My heart hammers. My dignity trails several steps behind me. I grip the rail, nearly trip, nearly die. Somewhere behind me I hear footsteps echoing, distorted and too close. At the top, I spot a door ajar — practically begging me to flex my moral fingers. Naturally, I oblige. I’ve never been good at turning down an invitation. Inside: shadows, dust, a trapdoor leading to a basement. I take each step slowly, venturing into the dark, seedy depths of my subconscious — and wonder if anyone upstairs can hear my ridiculous, flapping trousers. I hide behind an old sofa. A cloud of dust hits my sinuses. I’m trying to stifle a sneeze. For fuck’s sake, I think, eyes watering. Do NOT sneeze. Footsteps. The door opens. Instead of the man, children enter. Five of them. Dressed as wizards. Proper commitment. Capes. Wands. Unshakable belief. They form a circle. Lights flicker. The air thickens, as if the room inhales and holds its breath. Dust motes lift like galaxies waking up. A chair shudders and drifts sideways. Pages ripple open by themselves. Shadows detach from corners and slide slowly across the walls. My rational brain scrambles for explanations — drafts, invisible wires, adrenaline hallucinations — but none of them land. Something older and quieter inside me simply bows its head and accepts wonder. Monkey jumps onto the sofa beside me, purring like a chainsaw. “Shhh,” I whisper. “I’m trying to hide.” He meows loudly. The children freeze mid-spell. They spin towards us — then charge, capes flapping, wands flailing, theatrical menace in full bloom. I panic and do the only thing I feel I can do in this situation. I leap out and shout “BOOO!” They scatter shrieking in every direction like terrified wizard rats, cloaks tangling, wands clattering. I double over laughing, adrenaline fizzing in my veins like cheap prosecco. Monkey gives me the look. “Don’t look at me like that,” I tell him. “You ratted me out, you snitch.” One object remains floating, suspended impossibly in the air. A tiny Hogwarts train. Perfectly detailed. Scarlet engine, microscopic windows glowing faintly, wheels spinning silently in midair like it’s waiting for invisible tracks. I stare at it. Then I laugh — a proper bark of disbelief. “Oh for god’s sake. I hate Harry Potter.” I step closer. My fingers hover beneath it. It vibrates gently, warm, alive with quiet momentum. And suddenly it clicks — like a train easing back onto its tracks again. I never left the train. Or maybe I never boarded anything at all. The café with its costumes and borrowed courage. The jumpsuit confidence I admire but have not yet grown into. The trousers vanishing — skin exposed, control slipping. The oversized shelter — stitched from something that was never mine. The running. The avoiding. The art of graceful escape. The grief I refuse to turn towards when it reaches for me. The magic waiting in rooms I pretend not to see. The train isn’t transport. It’s momentum. It’s the habit of forward motion that keeps me safe and slightly lonely. Humour as armour. Disguise as survival. Movement as permission not to arrive too quickly inside myself. Monkey presses his warm weight into my chest. The tiny train slowly lowers and settles into my palm — solid, calm. For once, nothing is missing. For once, nothing is chasing me. For once, I’m not rehearsing escape. I breathe. Maybe the bravest journey isn’t boarding another carriage — Maybe it’s finally letting myself arrive.