With the sun up, I tried my best to get comfortable and catch some sleep, but before long, the first people on their way to work entered the tram. In frustration, I set out for another toilet break before things got too crowded, and also to change my clothes. I might be a weirdo, or hell, an idiot for doing this Long Ride, but I’d try to at least not look and smell like a freaking hobo.
It didn’t take long, and I soon set out for the tram again. Needless to say, it was still packed, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever. Once the tram approached the city’s outskirts, I could finally return to my trusty row of seats. I put my headphones in, turned on some low-fi chill mix, and settled down for some much needed sleep. I guess I really was exhausted, and promptly slept through the rest of the morning and almost the entire early afternoon.
When I woke up, I had a stiff neck and a painfully twisted back. Those damned tram seats really weren’t comfortable. I cursed at myself for not investing in a traveling pillow.
At around four in the afternoon, after another one of my short, hourly updates, my friend Derek messaged me. He asked if I was fucking with him and posting old videos, or if I was still at it. I assured him I was, but I’d see how it would go from here on out, given certain things that had happened. He asked me what I meant, and I thought about telling him what I’d seen last night, but there was no way he’d believe me.
When he mentioned he was at the city’s central mall at the moment, I got an idea. Sure, I still had some sandwiches left, but by this point, I was sick and tired of the same ham and cheese ones. So I asked Derek if he could get me a few supplies. He told me to just get off the damned tram and get them myself, but I interjected it would break the rules. Then I offered to pay him double for anything he’d bring me. We ended up exchanging a few more messages before he yielded and said he’d do it. I thanked him profusely before I gave him the time my tram would arrive at a station near the mall.
And wouldn’t you know it, there he was, holding two shopping bags in his hand. He noticed me the moment the tram arrived and sat down in the row in front of me.
“You know you’re a freaking idiot, right?” Derek said, laughing. “You’re really set on doing this for an entire week? Why?”
I shrugged.
“Already made it half-way, so I can’t call it quits now.”
“This really is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. Also, you look like shit, dude.”
“Can’t sleep for shit on a tram, you know?”
“Well, duh, idiot,” he said, shaking his head before he handed me the grocery bags.
The first bag contained an assortment of snacks, some canned food, and a few vegetables. When he handed me the second one, my eyes grew wide. Below a few more packs of snacks, I discovered two bottles of Absolut Vodka.
When I stared at him, he gave me a shrug.
“Thought you’d want a drink every once in a while.”
“Sure do man, sure do. After the shit I’ve seen…”
He raised his eyebrows, but I gave him a dismissive gesture.
“It’s nothing.”
“Well, I got to go. Still got a ton of things to do, and not everyone can keep doing stupid shit all day. You know, some of us got jobs and all that,” he said, giving me a wink.
“Yeah, whatever, man,” I said, laughing, and giving him the finger.
After he’d left, I was on my own again. Got to say, it felt damned good to actually talk to someone. Most of the Long Ride was pretty damned boring.
I guess today would be slightly different, I thought, as I pulled out the first of the two vodka bottles. It was late in the afternoon, anyway, so I might as well have a drink. Hell, after all I’d been through, I deserved it. There was a rule against getting plastered on the tram, of course, and technically against drinking at all, but no one cared enough to enforce it. So, cheers, and bottoms up!
I did my best to be as inconspicuous as possible, but I still got a few glances from people here and there. Especially the hardworking, productive members of society on their way home from work couldn’t help but frown at the idiot drinking from a bottle of hard liquor at five in the afternoon. Yeah, I felt pretty guilty.
As the evening progressed, and I got progressively drunker, I soon noticed strange things again. Same as the day before, there were the same people getting on and off the tram at various stations. Some I’d seen before, others I hadn’t. They still crept me out, even in my drunk state.
The tram also passed weird places again, places I’d never seen before. It felt like the longer I was on, the more consecutive hours I spent huddled in the same spot, the more reality began to waver.
The first one was a giant playground, one much bigger than any other I’d ever seen before. The tram rode past it for almost an entire minute. I saw a giant climbing frame that rose high into the sky, and an entire small town comprising nothing but wooden forts, ladders, and slides. It was nothing short of surreal. Even stranger, now, at night, the place was still populated by an enormous amount of kids. A shiver went down my spine as I watched the going-ons out there.
At one point, I spied something akin to an altar. On it, I saw another child, but one much, much bigger than any child or human should be. Its head slowly turned, and I found it focusing on the tram. When the giant’s eyes met mine, an icy shiver went down my spine, and I couldn’t help but shuffle in my seat. With each moment, I grew more nervous, but thankfully, we soon left the place behind.
I saw the next unreal location, or un-location, as I came to call them, about an hour later. The tram made its way through the alternative part of town and rode past bars and clubs before it eventually approached a building I’d never seen before. While sipping from my bottle of vodka, I stared at it in fascination. The place was exclusively lit by red lights. They were so strong, they felt almost like a physical sensation, bathing the interior of the tram in nothing but purest red.
A wild assortment of signs covered the building’s front, proclaiming it the ‘Destination of Dreams,’ or ‘The Place to be for the Night.’ Above it all, the name ‘Club Red’ sprouted from the wall in giant, neon letters. The entire building was filled to the brim with people, even on a Thursday evening.
As we drove past it, loud music blasted against the side of the tram. It was so loud, I could hear it reverberating inside my head. Yet it wasn’t just any type of music, it was a strangely warped, droning type of music, one you might call psychedelic, but it felt almost too random for that. It was nothing but an assortment of sounds, something trying to have a melody, but not able to by design.
As I continued staring at the building, my eyes began to hurt. At first, I thought it was because of the bright red light, but the longer I focused on it, the more I realized it was the building itself. Things just… didn’t add up.
It’s hard to explain, but the layout made no sense. I stared at the windows, one after another, but there were too many, too many to fit the front of the building. It was the strangest sensation. Imagine a building whose ground floor comprises nothing but four giant windows. Now imagine the floor above has seven windows of exactly the same size, and equally spaced out as the ones below. It shouldn’t work, should be impossible, but they were there.
It was the strangest, optical illusion I ever came upon. While I saw it, my brain couldn’t handle it, couldn’t understand this warping of the laws of physics.
In all those windows, I saw people. They were pushing and shoving against each other. Some were dancing, others leaning outward, and here and there, I even saw them sitting on the window sills.
The building’s size, too, made no sense. It wasn’t big, comprising nothing more than a handful of floors. At least, I thought so at first. The moment we were closer, and I stared upward, I always found another floor above the one I was currently looking at. Each one of them became more and more surreal, bigger and covered in more details, sprouting more windows. I saw balconies, bridges connecting different parts of the building, and staircases that snaked around the building’s outer wall, leading up and down, in and out. It was an amalgamation of architectural madness.
The people seemed normal at first, but the longer I watched the stranger, and the more warped they and their behavior became. At first, they were all just partying, but then… I saw strange figures doing it right there in front of windows and balconies, their forms as twisted as the building they were in. I saw too many heads, too many appendages, bodies that were stretched out or stunted, or seemed to be entirely random. At one point, I even saw some sort of ghastly ritual or sacrifice, performed by beings that could barely even called human anymore.
Finally, I came upon rows and rows of seats, chiseled into the building’s front, reminding me of a concert hall or stadium. It was packed to the brim with similarly distorted people. They were all watching the street below, the tram, and even… me. They were going crazy about it, applauding, laughing and pointing as we rode by.
Each time we rounded a corner, I thought that was it, and we’d leave this impossibility of a place behind, but we never did. Every corner greeted me with yet another part of it, another building front, each one stranger than the last, and in each one more twisted and deprived things were happening; a never-ending menagerie of the insane. After we’d rounded more than a dozen corners, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. My head hurt too much. Instead, I focused on the other side of the road. All the while, the building’s bright red light still flooded the tram, and its ghastly droning music reverberated inside my head.
And then, in the blink of an eye, it was over. The red light vanished, as did the music, and the tram continued on its normal course. I turned around and stared back, but all I saw was a long, straight road that led past well-known clubs and bars. I know I should’ve been unsettled, should’ve been freaking out, but I was fascinated. It almost seemed like I was getting used to the strangeness of these un-locations, and they’d become a… normal part of my nights.
Or maybe I was just getting way too drunk.
A few minutes later, I took out my phone, and looked for a place called ‘Club Red,’ but I already knew what I’d find: nothing. There was no sign of any such club ever having existed in my city, and to be honest, I was more than happy about it.
Finally, I settled down in my seat, turned up my music, and took another sip of vodka before I drifted off to sleep.
When I awoke, I felt slightly hungover, but still pleasantly buzzed. My neck, however, was in terrible pain yet again. I cursed, rubbed it for a good minute, before I shrugged and had another sip of vodka. Who knows, maybe it would numb the pain and help me go to sleep again.
It was only when I’d opened the bottle that I realized the tram wasn’t empty anymore. No, it was packed. As if this wasn’t strange enough, the tram was entirely quiet. No one was speaking. No one was moving. Everyone was just sitting in their seats, unmoving, and staring straight ahead. Even the sounds of the tram itself were barely audible, and seemed strangely muffled.
I instantly knew something was wrong. Even though I felt cold, sweat broke out all over my body. For a moment, I just sat there, trying to hide my presence, but after a while, drunk curiosity won over far.
I turned my head to see the person sitting in the row next to mine. What I saw made me freeze. Not normal. This was not a normal person! Their face was undescriptive. It looked almost like a… blank slate, as if someone had forgotten to add all the characteristics and details that made someone a real human being.
The person was only about a meter from me away, yet I couldn’t tell if they were a man or a woman, or if they were human at all. My drunk eyes wandered over the rest of the passengers near me, and they were all exactly the same. All of them were… empty, for lack of a better word. As I focused on one of them, I noticed they were not only unmoving, but they weren’t doing anything. No blinking, no breathing, nothing at all.
Even in my drunk state, after downing almost an entire bottle of vodka over the course of the night, fear washed over me in heavy waves. Seeing these weird, surreal things outside was one thing. You felt strangely safe inside the tram, protected by its mighty steel chassis, but now, now it was happening inside as well!
I felt very, very vulnerable, and was terrified. I began to shudder uncontrollably, and had to will myself to be quiet, to not move. What the hell were those things, and why were they here?
Once more, my eyes darted around before I told myself to stop. Do nothing. Just sit here and wait till they are gone. Don’t let them notice you. If they do, if they realize you’re here, they might- No, stop! Calm down!
I put one of hands on my knee to stop my legs from shaking, while I clutched onto the vodka bottle with the other like it was a safety anchor, and continued drinking, hoping to numb my brain.
Then I turned to look outside, to distract myself by watching the city pass by. The be honest, I’d expected to find another un-location outside, the place these things originated from, but this time, the outside was just… empty. There was no city. All I saw was uniform, shapeless terrain and a dark sky. It was as empty as the people around me. Another undescriptive blank slate. Where the hell was I? How’d I ended up in a place like this?
When I saw the tram approaching a tunnel, I started shaking again. I almost lost it and freaked the hell out. This didn’t feel like the other un-locations I’d seen before. This felt different.
So far, there was one thing that had always stayed the same. The tram was always outdoors, no matter how much its surroundings had changed. But now, now… I wondered if this was the end, the actual end. If this tunnel would just swallow me up, never to return.
I cursed at myself to stop once more. Just go back to sleep or wait till morning. And yet, I couldn’t. All I could do was to watch the tunnel’s dark walls pass by me.
Then, after long minutes, the tram left the tunnel behind and we arrived at a station, if you can call it that. It was a quiet, unrefined place. There were no lights, no details, no maps or departure schedules. It was nothing but a single, empty platform.
The moment the tram stopped and opened its doors, all these strange, blank people got to their feet, and in unison filled out of the tram. The air that wafted into the tram differed from any I’d ever encountered. At first, I didn’t know what was wrong with it, before I realized there was absolutely nothing to it. It was the weirdest sensation, for there was no sensation at all. No cold or warm feeling, no smell, simply an absence of… anything.
After only a single minute, I was all alone. I stared outside, and watched as the people just walked away, and soon vanished in the dark of the night.
It wasn’t long before the tram’s driver, a different one than the one I’d spoken to before, approached me. He hurried through the tram car, his face distorted by a mixture of fear and confusion.
“We’ve made it, sir,” he said in a shaken voice. “This is the end. You’ve got to get off. You’ve reached your destination.”
For a moment, I just stared at him, then towards the tram doors and the dark, featureless plain outside, and shivered.
“N-no, I can’t! I’ve got to get back to the city. Whatever this place is, I don’t belong here!” I almost screamed at him in my drunken state.
When he heard my voice, his eyes grew wide, and he stumbled back. He measured me up and down, saw my backpack and the bottle I was holding. He opened his mouth, about to say something, but then closed it again. A few seconds later, he just nodded, and without another word, he headed back to the driver’s cabin.
We stayed at this strange location for a while longer, and I could feel the driver watching me via the tram’s security camera. I don’t know what this place was. I don’t know how I ended up there, but I knew I shouldn’t have. It was place not on any map, a place that couldn’t be reached, yet somehow I was there. It was a place, I felt, even further detached from reality than all those other un-locations I’d come upon before.
Eventually, I opened up bottle number two, took a long sip, and settled back in my seat, and like clockwork, the tram’s doors closed and we drove on. After only ten minutes, we were back in the regular city. It was an instantaneous change, one I missed entirely. One moment, I was staring at the same shapeless terrain outside, the next, I stared at a normal street in my city.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and yet, every once in a while, a strange feeling washed over me, and I could’ve sworn I saw something that shouldn’t be there. I never caught on to these warpings, and they were only ever there for the blink of an eye, but I knew something was changing.
Even in my drunk, tired state, I realized this. And yet, what was it exactly that was changing? Was it the world, reality, or was it… me?
