KEPOMPONG

MIDNITE TRAIN

Travelling on the midnite train has been her passion. Somehow, she failed to find the schedule that fit her destination. The midnite train that brought her alive the living memory from the past.
It was a spacious house with a big yard, constructed sometimes during the Dutch Colony. The house has floor-to ceiling windows that look out over an empty deserted land. A couple hundred meters away on the uninhabited land run the sturdy train tracks. Two bars of the longest iron cutting across the land, like twin giant glossy snakes moving in parallel.
At night when the darkness had fallen onto the lap of the earth, she waited for the signal to come. Ting…tong….ting…tong….ting….tong, the midnite train was approaching to pass. She kept her eyes half open. As the train was passing by, she felt a sense of sublime and anxiety brewing in her heart, stimulating her mind to unravel the enigma of the destination of the midnite train. The minute the train had gone, she felt part of her went away with it to a place she would die to know. As she woke up the following morning, she would throw a glance to the railways as she hold the belief that they would bring her to the answer.
On one morning she decided to skip school and embarked on a journey to solve the haunting enigma. She decided to follow the train tracks that would lead her to the destination. In the beginning, the journey was so fascinating for the attraction of the mystery of the midnite train was too extensive. Along the way, she found many exotic objects, such as colorful pebbles, broken painted glass, a piece of magnet and put them all in her weather beaten bag pack. As the sun reached the peak of the day, the horrendous heat and sores that bit her feet drove the claw of despair to grip her tightly. She was suffocated for the end of the track ways was absurd.
She arrived home in the afternoon with a tattered mind. The destination of the midnite train remained a mystery. She was so tired on that particular night and failed to notice the midnite train for the first time.
As she woke up the following morning, she was clear in her mind that the day would be hers and the mystery would be solved. She went to the window to know what the invisible hand had to offer her. As the sun rose in the east, the glossy surface of the train tracks were glimmering and glittering before it petered out in the horizon, like a stairway to heaven. She ran to her mom and announced her discovery with a glowing triumphant smile: “Mom, now I know, the midnite train takes all the passengers to heaven.”