Phantom Infrastructure

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For years and years and years I have always been fascinated by the idea of falling asleep on a bus or a train and waking up in a ghost world.

Imagine, you’re heading home after a long day, and you’re the last stop on the line, so you nod off on the train, knowing they’ll wake you at the final station. (Not a pleasant experience in real life, trust me.)

But instead of being woken up by an Amtrak employee screaming in your face, you wake up on your own. And you look around and recognize none of your surroundings.

Sure, you’re still on the train, but the other passengers are no longer human. They’re all manner of demon and phantom and imp and ghost, all just getting to where they have to go. And the train has gone well past the final stop on the corporeal line, but you notice you can see a whole new map overlaid on the routes you’re used to, stopping at graveyards, swamps, and all sorts of metaphysical places on the way.

This is life (or death, or undeath, or unlife) as usual for all these other beings, but a fluke of your sleep patterns pulled the veil back for you on this world, and now there’s no going back to normal. But to them, you’re just one more weirdo on public transit, one more visitor to Night World about to get lost between what’s known and what’s really out there.

Once, when I was half-asleep on the elevated train in Chicago, I could’ve sworn I heard the announcer say, “hidden passengers: please do not lean on the regular customers.”

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Buy this: Redbubble / Society6

Thank you.