The passengerby
hajekaComment by K3Master: It started out like every other ride home. The evening commute was generally a bore. He boarded the train at Stropping station at 5:30pm, sat in row 6, seat 34, every day. He was such a regular that the other passengers wouldn't dare to take that seat. He would then spend the next 2 hours watching out the window at the dull and endless scenery that had become so entrenched in his brain that he would dream of it in his sleep, like a broken and repeating film reel.
Yes, it started out like that today. He boarded, found his seat, and settled back to stare out endlessly as he always did, and for a time, it went as it always did. When he finally noticed that things were changing, he couldn't be sure for how long they had been. He'd drifted off into that semi-conscious state that one enters when they are too familiar with the thing that passes before their eyes, and he thought that it probably took quite some time for the fact that it wasn't the same to break that spell.
For things now
weren't the same. Oh, the things passing by him were as they always were, but there was a stark and terrifying difference. As he blinked and rubbed his eyes, hopping it was a dream or a trick of the light, he realized he wasn't seeing things. It was as real as real could be. The color had drained out of everything that he was seeing. No green in the trees or grass. No blue in the sky. No reds, browns, yellows. All was a stark monochrome. As if someone had simply turned a knob and sucked the color dry.
As he stared, he happened to look down, and blinked yet again. So there was color, but it was only on the train. With another start, he realized that the train wasn't plodding along as it usually did. No, it was racing along. Racing and gaining speed all the time. With a shocked start, he sat bolt upright and started to call to the other passengers to see if they could see and feel what he was. His voiced died before it passed his tongue. There were no other passengers.
It was then that a panic that he was not even aware was building took him over completely, and as the train's acceleration shot it into speeds that defied the laws of physics, the lone passenger lay screaming on the floor, and was transported to a dimension in which he didn't belong.
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