Flash Fiction: Cheaper than a Movie

She can ride the train from Greensboro to Burlington and back for the same amount of money as it costs to take herself to a matinee. Today she was bored, so she would do just that.

She got to the station half an hour early to pick up her ticket–she felt like a double feature, so she bought one for all the way to Durham. Then she sat quietly in the waiting area. This was like the previews; sitting on the wooden benches that seemed golden where the sunlight slanting in from the windows above struck them. She didn’t let her eyes focus on certain details that felt anachronistic–the glossy ads, the computerized departures board–so she could pretend she was in the era the station acted like it existed in.The anticipation built and she caught snippets of the conversation around her. She figured out which stories the snippets would form if she was watching their movie, instead of simply overhearing them while waiting for the movie that was her train ride to begin.

Eventually the previews, the bits of disjointed story without a framework, were over, and it was time to board the train. She took the first open window seat she could find. The window was important. It was the screen.

A middle-aged white woman sat down next to her just as the train began to glide along the tracks. Apparently today’s screening had a protagonist.

“Where are you going?” the woman asked.

“Durham.”

“Oh, that’s not far at all now, is it? No reason to look so glum. I’m going all the way up to New York. It’s gonna be a long ride for me, but I’m going to visit my sister. We’re going to have a girls’ weekend. It’ll be worth a little boredom.”

“Sounds like fun.” She doesn’t point out that this isn’t boring at all, that there’s a whole story outside the window if the woman would look. She doesn’t look at the woman, either. If she doesn’t look at the woman she’ll stay a narrator instead of becoming a character. She likes it better that way.

Already Greensboro’s skyline, the three buildings that rise above the rest of the city’s houses and stores, have disappeared behind her. The image on the screen pans. Shifting the scene from a work place screwball comedy of people scurrying about downtown to a flashback of one of the women running errands for her exacting boss. It’s a family drama bordering on exploitation flick set among low lying houses with wall-less structures beside them to protect cars that haven’t moved in years.

“We grew up down here, my sister and I,” the narrator says. “Then she moved away. Thought that if she moved somewhere glamorous she could trick herself into thinking she was someone better than she was. I knew better though. I stuck around here, where you don’t ever think you’re better than you are. That’s why she asks me to visit, and why I do, to remind her that we can’t ever be anything other than we are.

A man comes down the aisle scanning tickets. She hands hers over without taking her eyes off the screen. She’s never seen one of these ticket scanning men who isn’t an old man with white hair. By now she doesn’t feel the need to double check that this man is like the rest of his colleagues.

Now the movie, after a brief death scene in the form of a graveyard, has become pastoral in tone. Trees swallow up the screen, leaving no room for exploited houses. It’s calming, proving that new beginnings are possible and harmony will always prevail in the end, if one struggles to overcome adverse surroundings. Everyone loves a story with a hopeful ending.

When the train stops in Burlington there’s a crowd scene. New characters are introduced, and some disappear from the film. She wonders if they’ve died without the narrative mentioning it. That can’t be the case though. This scene is a celebration of life, that promised happy ending. The narrator explains it.

“My sister’s going to have a baby. That’s why I’m going up there. This is her first baby and I’ve got to teach her some things. What else are big sisters for? I’ve got three of my own and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. She’s so lucky to be having her first.”

When the train reaches Durham she disembarks and watches it roll away, feeling the people on the other side of the windows looking at her. Now she’s in the movie. She wonders if it has the same narrator.