I woke up to the metallic squeals of the braking train.
For years, as a Commuter Line loyal passenger, I have never missed my stop. I should have been very tired during the trip—so all the lurches and sways didn't stop me from getting a sound sleep on the train seat that night. Bleary-eyed, I looked around. Not a single soul but me in the car. Cisauk was my destination—judging from the lack of remaining passengers, I may be carried to stations far away from it already. I looked at my watch, 2.15 AM. No wonder there was nobody. I began to trace back my trip: I departed from Sudirman at 10 PM, then transferred to a train bound for Rangkasbitung in Tanah Abang, probably half an hour later. I knew it only took around two hours to reach Rangkasbitung, I should have reached it around midnight. So, where am I?
The train had made a complete stop, I noticed. I was waiting for the announcements on the PA when the sound of the car's doors opening—louder than I expected—startled me. It was pitch dark outside. I rose to my feet, I could feel my neck was stiff from the sleep, and realized I was still so tired. I've slept less than four hours a day in the last five days. I genuinely thought that being sick would be the ultimate outcome of that kind of lifestyle (when I was in college, I skipped sleeps for three days straight due to my thesis, I woke up in the hospital in the fourth day), but turned out it led me to be stranded in the utterly wrong place during the post-midnight hours. Surely, it was not my choice to be sleep deprived, it was my boss'. He thought working 14 hours a day everyday was a run-of-the-mill job. Well, maybe it was if you rented an apartment located five minutes’ walk from the office (like he did), but it absolutely wasn't for people who live in Jakarta's satellite city like me; it took me a total of five hours just to commute every day.
I walked out of the train's car. The only illumination were the train's dazzling light and the silvery dim moonlight. I looked around and shivered—It was so cold I could see my breath—and started to be astounded by the nothingness that was presented on the location where the train stop. There was no platform, no sign boards, no tap in-tap out gates, and most surprisingly, no buildings around the station—bushes and dark trees were all I can see. Maybe the train stop on its route due to some problems, my own train of thought started to unnerve me, but why did they open the doors?
From a distance, I could hear indistinct footsteps. I could see some people, though dimly, stepped out from the cars behind mine, then started walking toward me. At least, my worries were lightened a bit, knowing there were some people I could talk to. Just before I started to walk toward them, my eyes captured some things that were out of ordinary. I could not describe it in a simple way, but I glimpsed some kinds of deformity: their longer-than-usual arms drooping in a peculiar way beside their body, their way of walk which were as slouchy as a frail elderly person, their uncannily short pair of legs, and their absurd body size: nearly twice mine. Then there were the misshapen heads—the countenance, the colour, and the features were all wrong. My feet were frozen with fright as my mind reasoned that maybe they were not human after all. Fortunately, the horror ended when those people—six in total, I observed—stopped their steps midway when they see me, and then, in a bizarre way, turned around and scurried away. Eventually, they were gone to the dark of the night, leaving me mouth agape with incredulity.
For the second time, I was startled by the doors—they were closing. In an instant, I regretted my action to step out of the train. Also, I was upset on the nonexistence of announcement, it was so unlike the Commuter Line I knew. The train started to move, but not eastbound toward Tanah Abang, which left me wonder whether there were still stations ahead. Or maybe the train was going for the depot and call it a night. Dumbfounded, I stared helplessly on the accelerating trains and could not help but to notice that the train were completely empty, there were no passengers nor officers. Strange.