My curiosity got the better of me though and I found myself hurriedly putting on my blue jeans and throwing my T-shirt on. Before climbing into the top bunk of the small sleeper a few hours earlier I had rolled up my jeans with my wallet stuffed inside the pocket and had used it for a pillow, so even in the dark I found myself dressed in a matter of moments. There was some sort of light present in the room coming from around the edges of the door from where the curtains didn’t quite match up which shifted ever so slightly rocking with the train, and that combined with the eerie silence of the middle of the night sent shivers up my back.

Since I was awake and I had this feeling that something was terribly wrong I decided to check whatever it was out. I figured I would walk down the carriage to the far end and then turn around and walk all the way to the other end where the bathroom was. I needed to take a piss anyway so I unlocked the door to my compartment and eased it open careful not to disturb my roommates for the night, and before I knew it I was outside in the hall.

I quietly shut the door behind me and found immediately that the light wasn’t much better out in the hall - what few bulbs there were didn’t work. The uneasiness I had felt before was increasing, probably due to that damned constant swaying of the train, but there was a nagging feeling that there was certainly something more than that. Something very wrong.

I walked down the car to the end and looked outside and saw stretches of track disappear into the pitch black - I was in the last car of the train. Outside there was only a sliver of a waxing moon and in such darkness there was only my reflection staring back at me. Less lighting out there even than the flickering inside.

The train went around a turn, and the thump-thump, thump-thump was exaggerated as I started back to the other end of the car. The late night undertaking had become spooky beyond belief, but I’d really had to go to the bathroom since I first thought of it a few minutes before. The adventure, however, was about over, a quick piss and I would climb back into bed. It’s cold anyway. I’m about halfway back across the car when a glint of some kind catches my eye. I make the biggest mistake of my life when I stop dead in my tracks and go back to see what it was.

Curtains in train cars are not of the highest quality, and they rarely if ever meet up in the center or seal off the view from either end where they start and finish. This curtain though, was perfectly closed in the center (too perfectly) I could even see the overlap and there was actually a bag laid to rest against it as well to ensure a perfectly closed seam. Secured like you would seal a shower curtain to guard against the slightest leak of water. And at one end where the curtain was pulled to was just as equally and thoroughly closed tight. Interesting. It suddenly dawned on me that I shared my room with an older couple and what I guessed was their grandson, and it would have looked ridiculous for either of us to have closed our curtains as effectively as the people in this compartment had.

But at the other end, the one where the curtain began, there was just the faintest sliver of a flickering light coming through it. Almost like a candle blowing slightly in the breeze. I crept back and repositioned myself for an opportunity to look in. Nothing.

Wait, there was something. A candle. And movement. The opening, which was at most a quarter-inch where I was trying to look through was probably twice as much further up at the top of the window, but that was a foot and a half above where I could stretch. Oh well, even though I’m curious to death to witness the show, I leave my voyeur inspirations for another time and continue up the hallway to the bathroom. It’s a phone booth type of door and it is open, and there right in front of me is a trash can about a foot around, and more importantly about a foot high. There are a couple of tissues inside the can so I put them in the toilet and turn to go. Turning it upside down will make a perfect step and take care of what is really the central focus in my mind: just what is in that room?

I balance my bulk on the can and nestle myself against the window and peer inside. Fortunately the trashcan is made of metal, and light, as it is it will barely support my weight. I was right, there is a candle, and there is movement as well. My eyes, already accustomed to the lack of light, pick up the motion immediately. There is a woman sitting astride a man and rocking effortlessly. Passionately.

I have to admit I was mesmerized by the view, unable or maybe just unwilling to move. The eroticism of the situation, compounded by the surroundings in the middle of the night made it all the more exciting. I’ve caught them - standing on a trash can on a swaying train and watching away wondering if I’ll get caught next.

I hear another yelp and I wonder if that’s what I heard before, and it appears that she’s about to finish. She’s straddling him rocking wildly and she arches her back way, way backwards, and her head follows, beautiful dark hair dangling behind her. All the while he has one of her breasts in his mouth. Her head is bent so far backwards in ecstasy I dare not even blink. She reaches her climax with a shudder and a terrific moan and doesn’t even see what happens next.

The man below her plunges a thin, steel knife, like the shivs you see in prison in the old movies, under her rib cage deep into her heart.

At that very second the gasp that left my mouth exactly matched the final gasp that would ever escape from her lips. I jerked involuntarily and slipped down a fraction against the window, and the man, sensing something in my direction, looked over. My blood chilled as we made eye contact.

What did I just see? I stumbled down off the trashcan and my mind clamped shut. Where to go? My compartment was almost directly opposite his, and running into there would only get me killed as well.

But he had work to do as well. The heart is a messy creature, pumping blood every second round the clock. And a knife wound, even from a long, thin needle would only serve as an exit point for a ton of blood to travel outwards from. Kind of a stupid way to kill a person unless the entire point of it was related to the tremendous mess it causes.

I tore down the carriage to the end and pressed myself against the wall and peered towards his room. His door stayed shut. He obviously had to take care of some sort of business before he could come out. I figured he would at least wipe some of the blood off himself and throw on a pair of pants before he came out to take care of me. He couldn’t get caught out in the hall by anyone else or things would get way too complicated. I also figured that I had about thirty seconds or so to hide before I had to deal with that blade of his.

My mind was barely starting to function again - I wasn’t about to risk running back past his room and hide in the bathroom or better yet to keep going and leave the compartment and flee down the train through the cars looking for some form of authority. Shit, bad luck that I happened to head to the wrong end of the train. I looked outside the back window to the countryside passing away and made a decision not to jump off the train. I had my wallet on me but not my passport, and considering the circumstances I had a crystal clear fearful thought: the police would probably think that the foreigner was the murderer if the real killer escaped and I was later found hopping off the train.

All of the sudden, my poor decision to head to the short end of the train luck turned out to be a Godsend. The answer presented itself right in front of me. There was a door from an empty compartment left ajar and the small night-light illuminated the room. I had just enough time to slip inside and look for some sort of weapon to defend myself with. Of course there was nothing to use, but at least I could hide inside the room and get the jump on my pursuer. I even decided to leave the door ajar like it originally was so I could maybe take him by surprise. No way he would ever expect me hiding in an open-doored room.

It didn’t take long to find out. My back was pressed tightly against the wall next to the door and I heard his own door down the hall slide open and close. I knew he would be in one hell of a quandary - he would have to assume that I headed straight down the hall for help. But I didn’t hear the doors connecting the cars together open. He was going to check out this car first. The son of a bitch.

Too late, it finally dawned on me that the killer would know that I was in this last car. Shit, how obvious, who would leave their own car and walk down to the end car to go spying at this hour in the morning, it had to be someone from his own car. The realization that I was trapped was horrific. Of course all of the damned doors would already be locked. My best bet would be to lock this one and hope that someone in a room he checked before me would scream bloody murder and force him to jump before he got to me.

Once again, too late, I changed my mind. I would lock the door after all. I slowly moved towards the door in order to slide it ever so gently shut when I heard the shuffling of his feet right outside. I froze and waited for the inevitable. Obviously he would start with the easy places to check and then systematically check the compartments before possibly jumping off the train himself.

I heard the door on its tracks slowly slide towards me, opening. His upper body broke through the plane of the opening and I saw his shoulders and then the same knife poised in his right hand. He looked in the direction opposite where I was standing and before I knew it, I reacted. I jumped at him, slamming my hand down on his right arm and heard the knife fall to the floor. I was determined to not let him have even a second to react or respond. I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him inside the room without letting go. He grabbed back, powerful arms, and we twisted around and his feet gave out from underneath him.

He went down, punching me in the face as he fell, and I drove my knee into his face while pulling his hair and his head. We went down together with a gigantic thud and I spent a second looking for the knife, and not finding it I ran out of the room. I figured he would be out for at least a couple of minutes and decided to tear back to my room and hide there with the family. He wouldn’t dare continue the search after all that racket. Besides, it had been dark the entire time and I was sure that he couldn’t identify me.

I staggered down the car and headed across to my own room. I slipped as I slowed to get into my room and went down hard. I stayed down for a couple of seconds and shook my head to clear it and got back up and moved towards my room and started to fall again. Just like a damned horror film where the dumb blond can’t quite seem to escape. I must have banged my head earlier when we went down together. That lucid thought actually comforted me and a minute or so went by and I limped into my own room. I imagined that the entire incident took a total of ten minutes. Feeling very woozy, I climbed up into the top bunk with my clothes still on and passed out.

I drifted in and out of conscientiousness and didn’t fully realize until it was too late that the door had opened and he was standing on the lower bunk leaning over with his face in mine. A hand appeared, a knife? He was shaking me and I felt exactly what it means to be too afraid to even scream for your life. But he didn’t kill me. For some reason he continued to shake me.

I finally woke completely up and the murderer was shaking me and asking to see my passport and ticket.

Such are the dreams traveling by yourself on a lonely train in lonely, Eastern Europe.