“My heart. Where… have you taken my heart?”

There are stitches lining my chest. Their ridges are black, hard to make out on my skin. They aren’t neat. Cuts branching off of cuts, an insane mix of thread and scar tissue- no surgeon did this. No one… in their right mind. A line runs down my stomach. It feels sweltering hot under my fingers. My hands and arms are covered with sown up cuts, circling them, lining them.

But the ones on my chest are hiding something terrible. I can feel it missing. I don’t know what to do.

Everything is in shades of grey. Deep, deep shades. The walls are painted dark up top, with pale tile on the bottom half. There’s a counter along one whole wall, silvery sinks dripping water. Plop! Plop… There’s a rattling and a shaking. I finally notice how I’ve been shifting my weight. The ground is rocking. The room is filled with a quick t-tm, t-tm, t-tm. Like a heartbeat.

“What did they do to me?” Oh, I want to know. Who has done this?

The floor is white linoleum, but dark grey splatters cover it. They drop from my fingertips. They puddle around my feet. Long streaks stretch from where I stand to a metal door behind me. The door has a small window in it, at the height of my head.

There’s a pale face on the other side, with blind white eyes, and a wide open mouth- pitch black. The door swings open with a creak and a clank! A thing crosses over, feet slapping the trail of gunk, dripping grey liquid of its own. It breathes loud through its mouth, wheezing and groaning.

“Aaaaaaah…” It moans. It takes a few slow, shambling steps before stopping. Its head jerks so hard, I think its neck broke. Another twitch and it looks at me again.

“Ah…” This time I speak. We run at the same time. I feel a strange stiffness in my legs, but I push them past it. As I turn, I keep my eyes on the thing. It’s not slow at all. Every limb jerks in strange ways. It moves like a marionette, carried by invisible strings, every jerk and twitch so fast it’s hard to see. One minute it stands there, then a shoulder jerks back, its hand is reaching for me, its foot is crashing down, and it lurches again.

In a dozen steps I almost crash into another metal door without opening it. Luckily I glance ahead in time. My fingers scramble with the handle before I wrench it open, and slam it behind me. The thing crashes into the door. A fan of liquid spreads across the tiny window like grey ink in water.

I’m standing on a small piece of walkway between two train cars. Only the guardrails on the side stop me from sailing over the edge. All I make out is the night, and white all around me, blurring past. Endless snow.

The thing’s fingers scrape down the glass, smearing it. The handle rattles, rattles and turns.

I run the other way.

“Raaaaaagh!” The thing screeches. I face another door, open and slam it on my way through. This new train car has a flickering light in a lonely ceiling fixture. It doesn’t make anything brighter, but it brings out the color in things. The rows of vinyl seats in the dining car show themselves as deep red, just like the blood splattered over everything. The swaying drapes switch between deep grey and navy blue. The bodies slumped over tables wear all kinds of colored clothing. A lot of black, white and brown. Blues and yellows too.

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It’s horrifying. I take step back. I can smell the stink in this place. As a doorknob rattles behind me, a head moves. A man with a bowler cap sliding off his balding scalp, turns and looks at me, eye sockets spilling maggots, mouth stained red. A little girl in a purple dress falls from her booth and crashes into the ground like a sack of bricks. She drags the tablecloth with her, and a full meal’s worth of fine china comes raining down, shattering on the floor.

I run as they all start moving. They aren’t going fast yet, but the door already opened behind me. I can almost feel it move, and I rush to avoid the pale thing. The train is already thin, and with the tables and seats taking up room, I have to shoulder past the hungry looking things glaring at me, to hop over the little girl in her purple dress, while she tries to uncurl her finders from thick linen.

“Raaaaaaaaaagh!”

Another doorway. Another in between place, this time filled with falling snow. I look up to see fat flakes clouding the sky. The melt on my skin, leaving behind a chill.

I glance through the little porthole in the door this time, before going through. Something’s waiting for me on the other side. A grey shape, standing perfectly still.

I glance around for clues. Forward or back? Where can I go, surrounded by monsters? Why should I go anywhere? I’m missing my heart…

I do catch a glimpse of a rail around the top of the train car. There’s no ladder, but…

I throw my arms back, bend my knees and jump. I was afraid I wouldn’t make it, but I sail higher than I thought. Faster too. My toes catch on the edge of the roof and I collapse on a layer of snow. It crunches as I move. Wind roars over me.

It doesn’t sound like a normal wind. It screams like a voice.

I stand after a few attempts. I keep my feet wide apart, but I still I shake under gusts of wind. I take a step that threatens to spill me over the side. There’s a crash behind me. That pale thing jumped like I did, but from the way it clings to the railing, it barely made it.

It struggles to its feet while I step, step, step. It shambles, feet twisted in unnatural, painful looking ways. It drags deep furrows through the snow.

I take my eye off it a moment to look ahead. This horrifying train is blasting through some winter wonderland, some icy landscape that slides past too quickly for me to see more than shapes. I know to the left is a mountainside and the tracks wrap around it. It’s a shadow looming overhead.

To the right the slope falls away. The lands around the mountain look like forest, as far as the eye can see. No lights speak of, besides the haze of the moon behind the clouds, and those bright stars I can make out.

The train car ahead is looks about the same as the one I’m on. I come close to it, as the thing follows behind me. I reach the edge and balance carefully. Like before, I swing my arms, bend my knees and throw my whole body into a huge leap across the gap. I feel the wind pushing me back, fighting me, but I make the other side. I sit there and spin around. It’s easier riding on the roof with my ass instead of tottering around on my feet. I scoot to the edge of the train, while the pale thing reaches the end of the one I was just on.

It looks so much like a person, except for the way it moves. No living thing would do to itself what that thing does just by walking around, twisting its own body, hurting itself- if it can be hurt.

When it reaches the gap between cars, it half falls half leaps across. It lands halfway on the roof. Its legs hang over the side, probably scrambling for a foothold to finish the climb. I give it a good kick to the top of the head.

“Raaaaa-” And another kick cuts off its scream. It’s only holding on by the barest margin now. It swings its hand on my next kick and I feel the finger wrapping my ankle. I jerk my foot back while it flails around. It almost had me.

Boom! This time I put a lot more force behind the kick. Thing is knocked free and flies out of sight. It crashes into metal. Its long scream drags on, getting smaller and cutting off.

I scoot closer to the edge and lean over to make sure, careful not to lean too far and fall over. It’s gone. No sight of it.

In that moment, I feel powerful. I almost feel a phantom heartbeat, this wave of exhilaration. But it’s only a ghost of what should be, and something is wrong. I don’t know this strange train, or the nightmare creatures. I don’t know how I’m here. I’m sad to say I don’t know who I am. But I know something is missing.

I can feel my scars. None of this is an accident.

Someone stole my heart, and by God, I will find them and take it back.