SomeWhere On... (BXB)

...Leeman Road

Murph doesn't talk to me. He's more interested watching the shit outside the window and I'm bored beyond all fucking hell. It's a long train ride from London to York, but he makes it feel like the longest fucking thing ever, anywhere. I bet even the Eurostar's more bearable than traveling with him, and half of that shit's in a tunnel.

But we get off at York, and he leads the way. Because I don't know where the fuck I'm going. Murph's bouncing as he walks. We're not touching.

I try not to think about King's Cross. What happened.

We get to a brick building. There's a white hallway and Murph talks to someone and everything happens so fucking fast. Before I know it, we're in this huge room full of trains. Goods and passenger cars, steam trains, electric, foreign. One spins on the far side of the room.

Murph lights up. More than King's Cross. More than anything I've ever seen. He's been waiting for this moment for God knows how long. He gasps and bounces in places. He's just...so excited.

Like a puppy going to the park for the first time.

He gasps again. This one's bigger and breathier. If that makes sense. And it's that kind of sound that someone makes when they're about to die. "It's the Shinkansen," he whispers, and reaches out to touch a white train with blue on it. It looks like an airplane. He doesn't touch it, though. Then he whines and trots over to this big blue train with yellow stripes. "It's the Deltic." He does this for all of them around the one spinning train. Meanwhile I'm just following after him, because fuck if I know why all these trains are here.

My tour guide's seriously the fucking worst.

After an hour and a half of aggressive mumbling, taking pictures, squatting to look through the wheels, and circling the entire room, Murph looks at me, wide-eyed and still chuffed.

I'm walking like a fucking zombie. I'm done here. I don't know what's happening anymore.

"Did you see that?" he asks. Murph points to something, but I don't have the strength to turn my head.

"Yeeeees."

"Did you see this?" he asks. Murph's pointing to a dark red locomotive with gold lines that make me think it'll be able to blow through the fucking wall and speed away. "That's Duchess of Hamilton. I said that already, right?"

I don't know. "Yeeeees," I moan.

"Come on. Don't you think this is interesting?" he asks, putting downhis phone. "Like, over a hundred years of transportation and engineering innovation and design are all under one roof."

Okay, the way he says it makes me interested. But I still say, "I don know shit about this. My tour guide fucking sucks at explaining stuff."

"Oh," is all he says. Murph's eyes drop down to the floor and then he takes my wrist, grinning broadly. "Well..."

"...well, what?"

"I guess we have to start all over," Murph says. He's about three seconds away from looking like the Cheshire cat in creepiness. He's excited.

I'm fucking scared and tired. Mostly because I don't want to go through this shit again.

Murph drags me over to a train that looks like a barrel on a cart. It's yellow and the white chimney thing is almost as tall as me. He lets go of my hand and gestures to the train. "This is the Rocket. It isn't the first steam locomotive, but it was the first successful one."

"Why?" It just looks like a brewery on wheels.

That's a good idea.

Wait, no. Explosions. Probably.