“Hurry!” Phil and Sara call to me from the train as the doors begin to close. I make it on just in time.
The crowd swallows me, and I feel I can barely breathe. People are pushing me on all sides. Phil has disappeared into the crowd, presumably to the other side of the train. I can see Sara through the crowd, but there are several people in between us.
Close by, a friendly-looking man gestures toward an open space in front of him.
I could stay where I am, but I can feel my anxiety rising; I don’t do well when I’m separated from my group in crowds.
On a Train in Turkey is a hypertext fiction that explores the experience of sexual assault in a foreign country. The work uses the reader’s limited agency as a formal device, engaging linking structures as both diegetic choices and extra-diegetic connections formed in the minds of the reader to convey the powerlessness and post-traumatic stress experienced by the protagonist.
