On the train

It was Grossmueti Rust who suggested that they travel separately. She left two days before him – it seemed safer but Grossvati Rust felt sick with apprehension.

The train was long, the carriages old and rusted and shabby.

It was uncomfortable for Grossvati Rust to share the compartment with two unknown women. He was a friendly person but these were not the days for openness and candour. A stilted introduction – they were Shelly-Marie Palmer and Kana Yamaguchi – set the tone. He would have clung to either of them and sobbed till he could cry no longer, told her his fears, shared with her all the pain that crushed his heart. Instead the three of them politely discussed the exigencies of this rail journey and shared partial and heavily redacted and essentially dishonest accounts of their lives and purposes for travel.

The grime blew in the open window from the hot, dusty landscape through which they travelled.

At night Grossvati Rust took an upper bunk and pretended to read as the women made their furtive preparations for bed.

By the third day they were all tired and dirty but somehow resigned to this strange here and now being the whole of existence.

When the soldiers had come to the museum with their list of how things would be from now on and what was acceptable and, more importantly, what was not acceptable, Director Rust had been scrupulously polite, had offered them tea and discussed their requirements as if he intended to fulfil them.

Instead, two days later he was boarding this shabby train with a small suitcase – from now the extent of his possessions, each object freighted with terminal significance as representatives of his old life.

He prayed that Grossmueti Rust would be waiting for him at the station when he arrived – if this hypnotic journey ever ended.

Barnaby McBryde