When the queen of clean saw the mote on the carpet floor, it grew to the size of a cockroach within a second. Ugly appendages sprang from the carcass of a disease-infested intruder, breaking and entering her sterilized utopia like some burglar in a casino. Hastily she retrieved a towel, the sanitizer, and her hand-held vacuum for good measure. It would probably annoy her husband again, but oh well, half the time he raved at the mind-numbing drone of the vacuum as the kids followed suit. What awful cacophonies of appliances were to him was music to her ears, symphonies of soapy bliss in an impervious theater. The mote's transformation erased, a familiar calm settled over her, the dopamine spike that pampers the death of a germ, serene as sedated scrollings through a social media feed. Her war against bacteria was a holy campaign that raised her to sainthood as the savior of her home, at least according to her.
She cleaned and cleaned and it gave her great pleasure to do so. She cleaned every stray hair she found that had drifted to the floor; she cleaned dust off devices that hadn't even been touched; she cleaned laundry, dishes, and toys, inevitability of contamination threatening all she saw; she cleaned the entrance every time someone came in, with or without shoes; she cleaned every drip of sweat, every harmless crumb, every drop of water that escaped from hiding; she caught every bug; polished away every fingerprint; disinfected every smear that distorted her vision, the keenest for spills that anyone could have imagined. They thought it was a sixth sense, her eye for the smallest spec, that lingered under everyone else's notice except hers, she the human dirt detector.
One day, after cleaning the whole house, she found a spot that would not wipe away. She phoned her husband to tell him she was feeling some anxiety, that she could always get a stain out but for some reason not this one. He agreed that she should just throw a towel over it, leave it alone, and find a way later. He asked her to take the afternoon off so he could watch the kids. But she wouldn't- the sting was too heavy on her mind. It gnawed at her like a rodent sharpening its teeth for the evening hunt, getting ready for the kill that would satiate its nerves.
Days passed and the stain would not come out. Her children played with the towel she left, testing her patience, until finally, she had enough and locked herself in the bedroom, crying for relief. We'll just have to get new carpet, she thought. That was when she heard a sound coming from a hatch the led to the crawl space under the house. What sounded like Christmas bells and a choo choo train startled her at first, but not enough to obstruct her interest. She opened the hatch, finding to her amusement that it did not lead to a crawl space, but a white new world of snow and wind. She could hear the bells more clearly, so the sound was definitely coming from there. All she had to do was jump to escape her world, her life, and her kids. No, not her kids. She needed to take them with her. She closed the hatch and tried to ignore it.
The sounds kept coming through, and they got louder. It was as if her inability to clean the stain gained this delusional momentum, until finally she had no choice but to go. With her husband at work, she put on some warm clothes and got the kids ready for the mysterious world under the hatch. The eldest, a 4-year-old named Wally, protested, saying he was scared, so she waited until he was ready, wondering if this new place would at least distract him from bothering her so much. Often she felt alone in her chore of raising kids, for she'd left her home country to be with her husband, and the only person from his family who lived close enough to help was her busy mother-in-law.
Once they were ready, they dropped into the hatch, landing on soft billowy snow in an environment that wasn't as cold as she'd expected... The wind howled through the evergreens. The snow, soft as a pillow, caressed Wally's boots while the other, an infant of only 10 months named Tyler, found himself entranced by the strange new setting. Lights could be seen in the distance, vague hues of diaphanous pudding in the sky, a gelatin complex shifting through the blizzard. Then they heard the train, churning slowly through the mountains that looked like inverted icicles, making its way to a station in their immediate vicinity. Wally, pleading to go on the train, pulled her leather coat, causing her to nearly fumble the baby. Okay okay she said, knowing that each time she gave into his demands, it made him that much more resilient. But this was too exciting to pass up anyways. A train in the hatch under the house, traveling through a wintry world full of mystery? Nobody in the real world whatever believe her.
The conductor wore his shiny pork pie hat stretching tall like the chimney beside him. His fancy suit lit up the blustery air as if parting a sea of smoke. A deep and genuine smile crept over his face as he surveyed the family, handing the little ones candy canes before bowing before the pretty housewife. He invited them on board at no charge, which the housewife was reluctant to do, but couldn't resist her child's intrigue. They ambled to the passenger car, a toasty cabin full of presents that they were advised not to touch. The older child wanted to but he was rather good at following the directions of strangers, allowing him to contain himself at the appropriate time.
Another freight car was being loaded with ice cream and other frozen treats; another with clockwork toys and puzzles that the infant ogled that; another held prehistoric creatures in cages that the housewife was sure didn't exist in the real world; another was decorated with starry stickers, from which a strange golden substance was being extracted; and the caboose, holding a crew of penguins that maintained the train. Each car held one wonder after another, and while the family wanted to see them all, they were feeling rather cold, so the mother opted to sit in the passenger cabin where they could get warm.
The train took them through the icicle mountains, where those grandiose colors in the sky turned out to be generated by electricity running through them. To the mother it looked like inverted lightning, starting from under the ground, Illuminating the transparent mountains of ice before ejecting skyward. She couldn't tell if the clouds were receiving it, or something else entirely- something in the sky that could create such electric potential. When the storm lifted, she hoped to find out.
Wally was visibly scared, so she held him as the train elevated over an icy pass. She was surprised it didn't slip and fall off the edge; the train had the miraculous ability to gain traction on ice. Where are we going? She asked the conductor when he came to check on them. Where all things in Vistaland go, he responded, Snowflake City! It sounded like a beautiful place, if they could get through the mountains. All around them the atmospheric glow of the lightning shifted colors prolifically, like they were in a surrealist hallucination that was also quite lovely once you got used to it. Perhaps the city would be just as breathtaking.
The infant Tyler had drifted off to sleep, and the mother felt like doing the same. He was a precious gem in her arms, the stuff that sweetness was made from. Wally was also getting drowsy, so she pulled him close. The train ride was a dream come true for him, as he'd never been on a real one before. But the excitement had worn off as the lightning storm scared him. Now he just wanted to be away, perhaps back home in his warm and safe home. As the mother drifted off back into unconsciousness, she wondered if she'd made a mistake.
It was built on water smooth as glass, static bubbles of marbled opal supporting the structure, towers of quartz sprouting from them, headed to a dead end in the sky, connected by icicles up there which seemed to mirror the ones they traveled through. Along the towers sprang triangles of beams that held together a superstructure of snowflakes, like raindrops on a spider web. There was no hint of dawn light, only an awareness that it was day suggested by the enhanced visibility compared to when they slept. Along the beams traveled a network of vehicles, giving it the appearance of a city, unfathomably pristine. All was clean in the bright white heights, sparkling with spotless perfection, the denuded ribbons of an unraveled sweater, lost among the cycles of a washing machine, and the mother thought that she had died and gone to heaven.
Everywhere they were cleaning, little swans that hung vertically or walked sideways with ease, polishing any vacant piece of ice that could find. The child asked if he could take one home, a gleaming in his eyes, so freshly innocent that it sustained the melting of her heart and drove it home. No, honey, we must leave our friends here, these very clean friends; I wonder if they can get out my stain! The conductor stopped the train at the base of one of the towers, crawling with brittle escalators that would take them up higher than they could see. It didn't seem to sink into the water, only hovered over it like it had done on the ice. The wheels are water repellent, explained the conductor.
They ride to the top with a penguin.
Dusty rain starts falling, the swans can't keep up.
Among the presents in the train is a bullduster (or the gold substance, train gains traction on ice, electricity comes from underground), given to the mother by the penguin
She takes it home with her to get the stain out of the carpet
