Cat Train

It was a dream, no doubt. Armed with that knowledge, Lindy squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds then reopened them. She expected to be lying in her bed, cursing the light bleeding through her bedroom curtains. Instead, the illusion remained. She was in a vast impossible desert of pink sand with her only waypoint being a mountain that seemed miles away. There were only two options in her mind: stay where she was or walk in the direction of the mountain. Lindy wasn’t one to stay still.

She couldn’t tell if minutes, years, or eons had passed as she trekked in the direction of the mountain, but after some time she saw a reflection of light within the sand. The source was a set of railroad tracks going in the same direction she was. She turned away from the mountain to see a train approaching at a fast speed on those rails. She jumped out of the way and the speeding train came to an abrupt stop in front of her.

It was a boxy single car painted green with six square windows on the side and a windowed door near the front. The windows and door were all tinted to the point where Lindy couldn’t see inside the vehicle, which resembled a bus more than a train. The door opened to reveal a male lion in a blue conductor’s uniform standing on two legs. She expected a menacing growl or for the ferocious feline to pounce on her. Instead, the lion spoke. “Lindy,” he said. “I can’t believe it worked.” The lion rushed up to Lindy and gave her a hug. She was startled at first but gave into the hug when she realized that the lion wasn’t going to eat her. When he pulled away, he looked her in the eyes and said, “Hop aboard, we don’t have much time.” The lion reentered the train car and sat in what must have been the driver’s seat near the front. When he saw that Lindy wasn’t following, he pleaded, “Please, Lindy. We really need your help.”

Despite logic telling her to stay put or, better yet, run away from the train, Lindy decided to board it. As the door shut behind her, she saw two rows of chairs against each side and only one other passenger, a tigress in a dress wearing glasses sitting near the middle of the train. “Would you mind sitting next to me, child?” The tigress asked. Lindy moved with trepidation toward the seat across from the tigress. “I know you’re scared,” the tigress told her. “We look much different than you’re used to, but it’s me, Lindy. It’s Tygee Tonya.”

A bolt of recognition struck Lindy at the sound of that name. She couldn’t recall from where but the name itself caused whatever trepidation she had to abandon her mind. “It sounds familiar,” she said with frustration at not being able to remember.

Tonya’s attention turned to the driver. “You were right, Lem,” she called at him. “She doesn’t remember us.”

“I knew there was a chance,” he replied as he pulled a lever. “Messing with those dream gates can have consequences but I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case this time.” As the train gained momentum, Tonya turned back to Lindy to say, “We won’t have much time before the princess’s minions find us, so I’ll try to explain quickly. Everything made by human hands in your world that represents the living is given real life in our world. Toys and sculptures, stuffed animals, and the like. They all get a life here. Our lives can only end when our counterparts in your world are destroyed. Are you following me so far?”

Lindy was transfixed with what Tonya was telling her but still didn’t understand why she was here, so she asked, “What does any of this have to do with me?”

“A dictator sprung up and conquered most of the peaceful lands,” Tonya said with a cracking voice. “Like I said, we can’t be killed but she has found ways to torture our minds if we don’t bow to her.” Tears started to well in her eyes as Tonya continued, “It’s horrific the things she does. We need you to…”

Before Tonya could finish, Lem shouted from the front of the train, “They’re here!”

Lindy stood to peer out the windows. Seven unicorns, each of a different color, were rushing the train. Tonya turned Lindy around towards her to tell her, “Soon, you’ll get pulled back through the dream gates and you’ll return to your world. There’s a chance you won’t remember all of this, but I have faith. The unicorns serve the princess. Princess Nela. You must destroy her when you get back. We can’t do it here.”

If Tonya planned on saying more, she didn’t have a chance. The stampede of unicorns crashed into the train knocking it off the rails. The train flipped to its side causing all three to get knocked down and fall on the side that now had become the bottom of the train. Lindy was okay but she looked over to Tonya, who seemed dazed yet able to lift herself slowly from the floor. “Hide,” she whispered to Lindy who did as she was told by ducking behind the seat furthest from the door. There was a crashing sound against the part of the train that was the bottom but was now a side wall. Two of the unicorns, one red and one purple, tore through the wall.

“The fugitives have been found,” the red unicorn said with a humanoid smile.

“Princess Nela will be satisfied,” the purple one replied with little emotion in its voice. “These two were high on her list.”

Lem ran past the unicorns to try and escape but, before he could, a pair of horse legs appeared and kicked him across the train. An orange unicorn revealed itself and said, “There is no escape for you.”

The red unicorn trotted toward Tonya and said, “For you either.” It turned in a quick motion and kicked Tonya hard, tossing her on the floor near Lindy.

The purple unicorn then noticed Lindy in the corner of the train. “Another one,” it said as it got closer to her. It stopped when it realized who it was. “Lindy?” It asked.

The red unicorn turned its gaze toward Lindy in disbelief before turning back to Tonya. “What have you done?” It asked before bringing a hoof down onto Tonya’s leg causing her to cry in pain.

A distraught Lindy closed her eyes and unleashed a furious cry that caused the world around her to disappear. When she reopened them, she was on a brown leather couch with a grey blanket draped over her. The fireplace was still lit, though dying, and the TV was playing some movie with a cowboy riding a horse. Her memories came back. She was Belinda Brown; Lindy to her family but she insisted coworkers call her by her full name. She was a forty-four-year-old pharmacist who lived by herself in the house that she inherited from her mother. She questioned those facts as she lifted herself to a sitting position because the dream had been so vivid. Even so, it was already starting to fade from memory until she glanced back at the TV with the cowboy riding the horse; a horse that she fixated on until the entirety of the dream came back to her.

Lindy jumped from the couch and rushed up the stairs to the last bedroom down the hallway. She opened the door to what used to be a guest bedroom but now stored several boxes of things that her mother had left her before she died. It had been a slow process over the past year cleaning everything out, but she finally only had five boxes left to organize. She sought out a box with “Old Toys” written on it and opened it. Digging through old stuffed animals and dolls, she found a green toy vehicle that looked like a combination of bus and locomotive. There were two images painted onto the windows. At the front, was a lion in a conductor’s hat and somewhere in the middle, you could see a tiger wearing glasses. Lindy could barely make out the faded words on the side but knew that they had once clearly read “Cat Train.”

Lindy smiled and placed the train to the side. She dug into the box again until she pulled out the only unopened toy box. It was an action figure of a girl with angel wings wearing a crown. It came with seven smaller figures of unicorns, each of a different color. The label read “Princess Nela and Spectrum Squad.” She remembered back when she was a child that she had begged her parents for the Princess Nela toy for months but didn’t get it until a year after her father left. He had sent it to her for her birthday; two weeks late. It came with a card that was the only means of communication he’d had with her since he had left. With tears in her eyes, young Lindy threw the toys she’d been wanting in the trash. Her mother took it out and insisted they keep it in case she changed her mind about wanting to play with them. She never did.

Nearly four decades later, Lindy walked out of the guest room with the Princess Nela box in one hand and the Cat Train in the other. She walked down the stairs and to the living room where she placed the Cat Train on the mantle alongside two framed pictures: one of her and her mother in Jamaica and one of her graduating from college. She looked at the box in her hands and stared into Princess Nela’s dead toy eyes. She then tossed the box into the burning fireplace giving life to the dwindling fire. As she saw the cardboard burn and the plastic of all the toys melt, Lindy felt a calm wash over her. She lay back on the couch and watched the movie on the TV. On occasion, she would glance over to Lem and Tonya on the Cat Train to make sure they were doing alright.