Dying For Change
The train ran down the tracks at a snail's pace. Each move forward made the joints groan and the carriages run into one another like bulls fighting in a pen. Needless to say, Amy wasn't having a pleasant journey. She gazed out of the window at the cemetery of nature Winter had made: skeletons of leaves barely visible against the frozen ground; shrivelled flowers encased in an icy tomb and trees left to mourn their passing. Amy pulled her coat tighter around her. Despite the fact that the train was packed with sweaty bodies against sweaty bodies, cold still managed to sneak its way into her bones. The train pulled up at Scarlett Station and Amy could almost hear it sigh with relief. Some people got off and even more got on, bringing with them the smell of oil and chemicals. Scarlett was a factory district, bursting with people who couldn't make it in the inner city. A gaunt man in filthy clothes snatched the empty seat next to Amy. His hands were stained blue and his eyes were bloodshot from the factory fumes. There were bald patches amongst his prematurely greying hair and Amy counted herself lucky that she had managed to get a job at Maiden. Yes, it was only shelf stacking, but it was better than wasting away in a factory. As the train pulled away from the station, Amy adjusted the pollution mask over the lower half of her face in a pitiful attempt to stave off the stench. Twenty more minutes, she thought. Twenty more minutes that could be walked in fifteen if she braved the freezing cold. She willed the train to move faster as she breathed as shallowly as possible. She could feel the eyes of the dishevelled man on her. His rancid breath was hot on her cheek. Amy squirmed, not able to shift any closer to the window. She turned to face him and saw that his eyes were glassy, and his breathing had become erratic. His hands started to shake violently, and his face drained of all colour. Amy shrieked as he suddenly fell onto her, his mouth foaming all over her coat. A cloud of sadness and apprehension descended over the train's occupants as they went through the motions of laying the man in the centre of the carriage and alerting the driver to yet another death. The fourth one in as many weeks. No one paid attention to Amy as she sat squashed against the window. No words of comfort or pitying glances came her way. After all, why would a girl with a cushy job in the inner city need anyone's sympathy? Another man took the seat next to her, reopening the free paper that was supplied at the stations. He scanned page three, snorting at what he saw and leafed through to the sports section. Amy calmed her breathing and looked out at the changing landscape. Dead countryside and towering factories had melted away into the suburbs. Rows upon rows of neat little houses with neat little gardens lined the tracks. Her world. After that, the train would go onto The Bins. An area of massive blocks of grey flats made for two per room but instead housed six; a home to a polluted river that gave off noxious fumes in the summer and turned to frozen sludge in the winter, and the harbourer of an overwhelming atmosphere of complete and utter despair. Their world. She battled her way through the hordes of starving people with stained hands and patchy hair, hoping no one else would die on her. The doors opened painfully slowly. A gust of icy wind encompassed Amy as she leapt from the train and onto the platform. As the train carried on, she thought of everything but the dead man but soon she ran out of other things to think about. His dead blue eyes pierced her soul as she made her way home and she could still feel the weight of his body on her lap as she unlocked the door to her house. She felt like she was going to be sick. It wasn't the first time she had seen someone die on the train, but it was the first time she had been close enough to see the life leave their body. She shook her head violently, trying to shake him from her memories. This is life, Amy, she thought, don't be so weak. The sad thing was that Amy was right. That was life. People from The Bins were slaves to the inner city, caged in grimy flats and even grimier factories. That was until a very important man with dyed blue hands and prematurely grey hair died on a train, catapulting a young shelf stacker into a turmoil that would change the course of reality forever.
