The Journey

Prologue

       "Everybody has a journey," said the old man on the commuter train. "When it's your time the things you need will appear. Don't lose them. They are useful tools to get you started and help you out of a sticky situation."

       I couldn't listen any more so I zoned out and put my head phones on, listening to my music the rest of the ride home. Watching the light orbs zip by in the tunnel put me in a kind of trance. The music was no longer foremost in my mind. Instead I couldn't stop thinking of the journey and the words the crazy old man had said about it. I knew it was a rite-of-passage for everyone and only the strongest survived their journey but looking at the other commuters on the train made me wonder if it really was the only option. Could it be avoided, I wondered?

       All around me people sat with some sort of disability; lost limb, missing eye, snapped spinal cord, the list goes on. The ones that look whole on the outside are crippled within from their own horror story being played out over and over again inside their head. This, I thought, this is the government's response to over population. Send them on a life or death trip. If they die so be it. If they live give them a job and let them work the rest of their miserable lives. There has to be something more, some other way to solve our problem.

       The worst part of the journey is not the actual journey itself. It's the waiting and the not knowing that gets to most people. The agony of not knowing when it will start or what it will be when it finally does begin has been too much for many to bear. Those people don't wait long enough to find out. Most people however, take their journey when they come of age. Some get "lucky" and live the majority of their lives before beginning their journey but they live in paranoia.  I couldn't live like that. Not knowing if it would happen until I finally had something to live for. A good job, a wonderful family, children all before my package came.

      As I gazed around the train car I noticed all the sullen faces with hard lines etched into their foreheads and cheeks. Lines won from worry for their children and battles they themselves had hardly survived. People practiced incantations to warm themselves and a few created a dim glow light to hover over them as they tried to read their books. A few seats away from me a woman sat clutching a bundle in her arms rocking back and forth gently despite the constant to and fro of the swaying train. I had assumed it was an infant but the bundle lay still and ridged. The woman's eyes were distant and empty and her lips twitched as if in silent prayer to some long forgotten god. I knew then that this woman was one of the very unfortunate ones. Her child was sent on a journey when it was still very very young and it had never come back. Children sent before they can gain any sort of survival skills or even their magic is rare but not unheard of. Those children rarely survive. One can only hope that they get picked up by a loving family and raised into adulthood instead of some predator, human or not.

       I am lucky to not have had my journey yet but I know I will soon. I'm nearly seventeen-years-old; soon to become an adult by society's standards. We have a name for this age. It's called the culling age. This is the time most people go on their journey and don't return and those who do come back are a shadow of their former selves. This year, to date, twenty-nine of my classmates have gone on their journeys and so far no one has returned. I dwelled on that heart wrenching thought for a while longer.

       When the commuter train pulled into the station I was pulled from my loathsome thoughts. My mind focused on dodging person after person as I struggled to make it out of the tunnel. The light from the street shone through the tunnel entrance filtered by shadows of people passing over head. What little light did make its way in bounced off dirty tiles and grimy metal poles scattered to oblivion on tiny particles of dust floating through the air. I made my way towards the light climbing as quickly up the stairs as I could manage. Eager to leave the dark and dirty train and its sullen passengers behind me I stepped into the fresh air above ground. Breathing deeply the damp autumn air I took a step in the direction of home. The warm dying glow of the afternoon sun penetrated my clothing and heated my skin like a kiss from a lover after a long day of work. Before I walked another step someone grabbed my arm from behind. I swung around, terrified and angry. It was the old cantankerous man from the commuter train. His wrinkled and scarred face gazed at me but maybe he was staring at the air between us. I couldn't tell. His grip didn't slacken and he said to me in the same distant preaching voice as before, "Everyone must take their journey sometime. Yours may be sooner than you think."

       I pulled my arm from his vice like grip as best I could without hurting him or myself. His words bore their way into my head and lingered there the rest of my short walk home. I should have let that be my omen but I couldn't get over just how strange the man was. You get all sorts of strange people in a large city.