Fatigue dulls shock. Fatigue blurs your vision and slugs your movements. Fatigue snaps your brain-box shut the moment your body rests in a semi-comfortable distortion. So in the Brupass train of northern Belgium, packed with a mild rush-hour crowd crush, a sliver of serenity seemed to shine down upon me as I blinked inversely, eyelids languid, cozy in the blue fabric seat and my tour group of twenty students just barely visible across the aisle. They all stood squished, surrounded by the tall Belgians, and I barely had consciousness to pray my thanks of a seat before I relented to overwhelming darkness. They’d wake me up.
They did not wake me up. A shake did, from an old lady who seemed to suspect that I was not where I was supposed to be. My eyes, still tired, tried to adjust to the bright environment—it was still the train—and still rush-hour—and still foreign language talking all around me—and still my tour group—tour group?
Tour group?
Shit.
I bolted up onto my feet, feeling as if I’d downed a dozen Red Bulls, and yet my additional 3 feet of vision didn’t scan a single familiar face. My phone, dead. My watch, dead. What time was it? Where the hell was I? At that moment, the train stopped at the Brussels Airport, and I frantically shouted my excuse me’s in a crowd of pardon’s as I pushed through arms and legs and beer bellies and tumbled out the double door. I was met with an empty echoing tunnel of gray tiles—less than five people had gotten off with me—and the clock read 3:40 PM, more than 20 minutes past the estimated arrival time of our stop back to the hotel. And I couldn’t remember the name of our town.
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Prompt from Daily Themes Week 7: Schemes and Surprises
Write a theme about something that surprises or has surprised you. By any formal means we’ve discussed this semester, try to reconstitute the surprise for your reader, versus just telling them you were surprised.