so deeply. I envied their connection, and their burden free minds. The train shunted suddenly and, as I recovered my balance, I felt a pair of eyes examining the side of my face. This passenger, very different from the rest, sat alone. No more than forty years old, this man had flowing black hair to the shoulders, and a healthy pink glowing on his cheeks. Tall with perfect posture in his seat, he was immaculately dressed in a grey three-piece suit with white shirt, red handkerchief and black tie.
'It is quite absurd for you not to sit down.' he said, with an appropriately eloquent voice. 'I have only seen one man look as weary as you do now — the man who last stood where you are standing, and I assure you, he felt moderately better for the seat.'
I took up his offer without a seconds thought, then he offered me his hand. 'Name is Wilde.' he said, with a good grip. 'Pray tell your name, or at least, the name you care to invent?'
'Fox.' I answered, tired. 'Pleased to meet you.'
The man sighed deeply. 'Alas,' he uttered; 'as no-one recognises the French, it is only the French who recognise me.'
'You're famous then?' I presumed.
'I am Oscar Wilde,' he returned, flicking back his hair then announcing to all the passengers. 'I am not famous — I am notorious!'
Mr Wilde scoffed at his indifferent audience before reclaiming his well-moulded seat.
'I don't quite recall your name.' I said, apologetically. 'Are you an actor then?'
'Dear boy I am a creator! And it is very curious that you do not recall my name, for art is the one thing which even death cannot defeat. The artist unfortunately, withers amongst this beautiful realm of sordid sins and her splendid sinners.'
I glanced out of his glazed window to find no beauty there, only a built up grime and blotch. The man then patted my thigh like an older uncle and pre-emptively answered my question. 'Beauty has as many meanings as a man has moods. In my view no object is so ugly that, under certain conditions of light and shade, or proximity to other things, it will not look beautiful; no object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. I believe that in every twenty-four hours what is beautiful looks ugly, and what is ugly looks beautiful, once. There I go quoting myself again, but if any man is worth hearing twice it is this one.'
This man's intelligence and intoxicating passion for himself urged me to pry. 'Mr Wilde, what is a creator, an artist like you doing — '
'In a lost world?' he replied, roused. 'I am here due to a simple difference of opinion. The authorities complain that I wasted my talents — I disagree. For quantity Mr Fox, is the ransacking of quality, and my masterpieces, although few in number are masterpieces nevertheless. I am here, brave passenger, because I dared to live rather than exist. Here, only the greatest artists, the sublime masters of their craft: Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Tolstoy, myself included, idle in this pitiful place. It is and will forever be the way of things. You'll find no greater crime in all the Heavens than the sculptured becoming the sculptor, the imperfect creating perfection; for if a mortal man can himself creative divinity…what use is there for an immortal God?'
Despite my hollow head, this character fascinated me; although I never had any time for art in my life, this man clearly had the time of his life with art.
'I'm afraid our conversation will be brief,' he added, 'but then all good things are. The conductor will soon arrive to escort you back to your previous seat.'
'Why does it matter where I sit?'
'It is the only thing that matters,' he whispered, keenly. 'It makes the experience either pleasurable or tedious. Already has a fingerprint of your soul been captured; the seat that you currently vacate has yours, and the conductor will shortly insist on your return to it. And how he will insist!'
'A seat?' I asked, confounded.
'Not the seat,' Wilde corrected,'but the train. Rather a snake slithering through consciousness, if you covet some tragic secret, the passenger sat next to you will see every guilty detail, as you will see his. A seat and secret shared is the method…and there is much to learn in the madness.'
I understood now — something of Kat's soul would be revealed to me, and something of mine to him. Rummaging through Kat's head was something I long desired, but what would the samurai see? What demon of mine would he scrutinize? No matter how privileged the information I would receive, perhaps the price was too high.
'Tell me Mr Fox,' said Wilde, gently clearing his throat; 'how long have you been wandering this underworld? I do hope I've stumbled across a hero of some kind; it is the romantic in me, for whatever my own life may have been ethically, it has always been romantic!'
I shrugged. 'I'm no hero Mr Wilde. I am just a man. Plain and simple.'
'And that simplicity of character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me. You are a humble sinner sir, but a sinner nonetheless.'
Already, Mr Wilde appeared to tire of my presence, and beside him, I felt ashamed of my own mediocrity. Again, he anticipated my thought process and fired his intellectual bullets. 'You are not dull Mr Fox, nor mediocre, in-fact I have been most entertained. Pray, you haven't been listening to a word I have said — to listen is a sign of indifference to ones hearers;' he rolled back his eyes and pinched the fat under his chin; 'and I do live in terror of not being misunderstood.'
I dared to think now, and so looked over this artist's situation, his eternal place on this locomotive.
'Are you happy Mr Wilde?” I asked. “Can a man be content here?'
'The man perhaps,' he answered, sharply; 'but the creator is never content, for he sees every crack in the work. I will say that one is certainly impressed with Hell, but not favourably impressed by the inordinate size of everything. The realm attempts to bully one into a belief in its power with impressive bigness. Besides that vulgarity I have found a certain level of contentment here, yes; however, one could always use a cigarette.'
'And you enjoy witnessing the sins of…other men?'
He smiled. 'I do not witness sins Mr Fox, but shameful crimes of the soul — indeed, the soul itself is a mystery; it broods in the darkness, and only God, and this locomotive can tell us of its workings.'
'And what would your soul tell me?' I asked him.
'Not sins dear boy, only truths.'
Wilde then considered out his smudged view a moment, a profound melancholy upon his face. 'My children,' he delicately said; 'I do miss my boys…'
Quickly, he flickered out of this personal thought and reset his grand guise.'Thou knowest all, I cannot see, I trust I shall not live in vain. I know that we shall meet again, in some divine eternity. I am sure you feel better for your seat Mr Fox. Forgive me, but I have shared quite enough with you this evening.'
I vaguely nodded, then stood to feel the conductor's belly ushering me from Mr Wilde, toward my seat and Kat's side.
'Belts!' announced the conductor, squeezing past me and moving off to the next car. 'Belts! Belts! Belts!'
Confused, I watched Kat hastily take the ends of his belt and fasten himself to our seat.
'What's going on Daniel?' asked Harmony, scratching her eyes.
'Hold on…' I whispered, strapping myself in. 'Wake up Eddinray, and hold on tight.'
The locomotive shunted forward. Passengers lamented as our car began to vibrate. Those vibrations soon became a shake so violent that I expected the nuts and bolts of this locomotive to come winding out of place. A befuddled Eddinray was the last to fasten his seatbelt, and the very instant he did, the train was catapulted over the ice and contorted our forms with it.
I cannot describe the sensation of unadulterated speed inside the car. Screams turned to inaudible muffles and vision became a blur of melting motion. This locomotive was rocketing toward something greater than a destination, it was smashing through barriers of space and time, sieving through every available ingredient of its passengers, then serving up a soul's secrets to those seated beside.
***
Sometime during the early hours, Eddinray danced over darkly cobbled streets and embraced the buzzing orange lampposts like a soused Gene Kelly. Singing at the top of his voice, he would only stop to gargle more vodka from his half empty bottle.
Making his way toward a steel bridge stretching over a lake, a black taxicab sped past, and Eddinray threw
