I woke up to the sound of glass shattering. I jolted up and quickly shielded myself to ensure that only my ears would be pierced by the remains of a breakfast glass. Naturally, I rolled over my wrist to check the time. Half-past seven… or was it six? The hands blended in with the face of the watch, and it did not help that two-thirds of the numbers were absent from the face. Maybe a real Rolex would have been a better choice, but it would have been off my wrist already judging by the people on this train.
The atmosphere of the train made me lightheaded. I was pretty convinced the two people in front of me would be entirely unable to move their necks after waking from their undoubtedly disturbed dreams. The woman on the left was leaned forward onto the chair in front of her, with her long, frizzy hair spreading all over the fortunately vacant seat. Her partner made sure he would not by outdone by resting his face on the air conditioning vent to his right. The blades of the vent dug sharply into the side of his face, which made me wonder how he ever got into the position in the first place. To make matters worse, saliva oozed out of his half-open mouth, and the gruesome smell was blown throughout the cabin.

The churning in my stomach became unbearable. I could not fall back sleep, and the scenic view out the window failed to calm my body. I decided to lift myself from the hard seats. The padding underneath was so thin I could not imagine it providing any function other than decoration, even before hundreds of people compressed it to the point where the holes in the fabric became more unique than the pattern itself. I had imagined it would be a relief to stand up, but I was dizzy beyond belief, as if I was just released from the seat of a roller coaster. I made my way up to the front of the car to the breakfast bar.

My small order of eggs, sausage, and orange juice set me back over $10. I sat back down into my seat, and carefully placed my oversized read tray on the seat to my left, doing my best to save the staff from cleaning up another shattered glass. My vision had cleared up, but the organs in my stomach had intensified their war inside of me. Intending to appease the war, I stabbed both my greasy eggs and sausage and stuffed them into my mouth.
The stagnant air created an unbearable situation as my breakfast had failed to settle the war, so I reached for the small window to my right. Hoping to reduce my chance of embarrassing myself, I carefully observed the woman a few rows in front of me open her window. The metal pieces of the window were surprisingly warm, which soothed my fingers for the brief moment I was in contact with them. The loud shatter of the window gave all the passengers a jolt, waking a few of the light sleepers. I fell back into my seat, almost tripping over my bags on the floor.
The wind rushing in pushed a sheet of paper onto my chest. I picked it up and did not even have to read the large, bold red letters before feeling my breakfast coming back up. I quickly stood up and prepared to nourish the pristine forest with my eggs and sausage. Surely a little orange juice can’t harm anything. But I didn’t have time to think. I had just barely stood up to the window when I undoubtedly woke up every single person on the train — even the old lady in the back who required the young workers to repeat themselves four times when asking her for a refill.
The sight was actually quite impressive. It was like the white rain of fertilizer that pours out of a low-flying plane over a field of greens. Yet it was a vibrant shade of yellow that would make a fantastic “orange juice and eggs” crayon, sprinkled with the brown color undercooked sausage. The soothing aroma of the evergreen forest was scathed as the overpriced breakfast defied all physics, spewing back to the car behind, spattering on the closed windows. I turned my head to the right, hoping none of the windows behind were open. Before I could see anything, it was all gone. My world turned to black as I felt my body fall onto the window. The screams of the people all around me intensified, as if my breakfast was more than just figuratively explosive.
Unable to withstand my weight, the lower part of the open window shattered, sending glass into the air, as if the passengers behind me were begging for more debris to slam into the window. Still unable to move, I was unable to prevent the now crushed metal frame of the window from piercing through my stomach. My pain in my lower abdomen was quickly diminished by the blood-stopping squeeze around my ankles. I tried to lift my chest up to get a view of who had gotten a hold of me, but every muscle in my body refused to follow my commands. The hands began to violently tug on my ankles, dragging my body on the window. Was this person actually trying to help me? The cool breeze gave me a distraction from the tugs. Three, four, five pulls on my legs that seemed to be getting nowhere. I felt my right shoe slip, first off the back of my heel, then all the way around. The death grip disappeared as well, almost simultaneously as the shoe left my foot.
The jolt of forward acceleration sent my body shooting out of the window. I cleared the arched wooden bridge and flew down, headed into the icy depths of the lake below.