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The Invisible Forestmore fictionintrepod travelerJan 17, 2021Share Full brightness blared through the window as he rode the train home from the airport. Beyond it the world continued to hum along to its routine, but he had temporarily stepped out of his. He surveyed his companions. A clear, logical trajectory had led each one of them here. Most appeared to be returning from business trips,weary, lone or paired people toting a piece of luggage each. Others bore the worn out but satisfied afterglow of completing a family visit. And the stragglers, empty-handed and leaning back with ease, donned badges that marked them as airport employees. They were riding out at the end of their shifts. He had no reason for riding the train in the middle of an ordinary workday in the middle of an ordinary workweek. Wary glances scanned his thin, stylish messenger bag, the sole attaché accompanying his business casual dress. In this sampling, he was the oddball. What was his trajectory? Who was he among the crowd? He had been sitting at his desk, listening to the murmurs of people walking past him to heat up boxed lunches while laughing about something on TV, feeling very strongly that he was not in his world. He had simply gotten up and left. While riding home, on a whim he had disembarked at the airport and caught a shuttle to the terminals, from there had descended an escalator to the bar, and had sat down to watch the people walking by him. He stole glimpses into strangers' worlds that revealed the same exact setups as the one he'd just left. Most people fell neatly into place. They maintained their circles, their ties, their memberships in organizations that held them securely to the world. They gossiped excitedly about their plans and the innards of their lives, never lifting their heads out of the warm sand. What need did they have for that? Their lives, though undoubtedly filled with the spectrum of human drama, flowed smoothly, disturbing nothing and remaining undisturbed. Several jarred out like sores from the bright crowd, cracking the smooth painting and holding his gaze. The loners, the weirdos, the unexplainables. The rail bodied middle aged man at a table by himself with a stack of empty glasses and a newspaper he read with resolute tunnel vision. The Salvation Army-styled woman with thinning gray hair who muttered to herself on a bench beside several tearing bags. The twenty-something fidgeting awkwardly on his phone as he fought to escape association with the reject table, stealing uncomfortable glances around the scene until his friends joined him. He felt closer to those on the fringes. At some point in their lives they must have fallen from the swift train bounding toward a clamoring bright world and been left to forage for scraps along the tracks as it carried on without them. Those he put into this category he often remembered as being brighter in their youth, as people who harbored the disorderly grain he himself had been fighting his entire life to suppress. They were his mirrors. In the outcasts he saw his own future, for despite appearances of composure he stood very close to that ledge. He could take just a few steps forward and jump off. He came home when it was still midday and threw his messenger bag onto the couch, then sat down himself and stared at it with loathing. Casual yet sensible, his roommate had espoused when he'd exercised contemporary sensibility in picking it out. It lent him an edge of self-possessed youthfulness while remaining safe with its timeless design, and it earned him many – his only – compliments around the office. He had not had an appointment, nor an interview for a better job. He had not felt remotely ill. It was a mystery. On the surface he appeared to be going along as ordinarily as everyone around him – he was mild-mannered, calm, barely noticeable. One had to peer closely to glimpse the staccato hidden in the smooth pattern of his life. It was buried in the missed step, the skipped beat that threw off the whole song until hurried back into sync. It was in the weeks of steady work in perfect health followed by an unexpected sick day, or an afternoon of joking before an anticipated happy hour followed by an unexplained no show. These maneuvers were not grand enough to raise audible questions or brew long-lasting unease, but if one wanted to, one could glimpse behind them the infinitesimal space between his business casual attire and unremarkable life, and his own skin. It was in this gap, where they did not mesh, that his destructive tendency lay. He did not know why he could not simply carry on. It couldn't be easier. Put one foot in front of the other, follow the dress code, keep your head down, and don't fight your boss. For this, a peaceful night's sleep in a comfortable apartment with a slowly fattening bank account to sweeten your dreams. By all accounts he had a good life, many would even say a blessed life. In fact, this iteration of his life was the most acc...