The Last Train

THE

LAST

TRAIN

Catch the last train on your last night

When the lights go out

Sandra looked at her watch, the last train was coming any minute she knew she had to leave but her mark in the conversation about bugs she was having with a male acquaintance at her sisters party was hard to get out of; especially when he kept repeating the word ‘and, did I tell you’ which meant this boring individual had yet more to say.

Looking outside at the cold crisp air and lights of New York City that Sandra saw through the window, that felt like one of those horror movies of the woman trapped behind a window forever being tormented by a monster that wouldn't let her go, ever.

‘This has been great, but I really have to go, sorry’ and with that she got up and left with her pride still intact and the acquaintance bewildered beyond belief.

Her sister caught her just as she approached the door and was ready to leave her little sisters big ‘move in’ party.

‘Oh so you’re just going to leave are you now?’ said her sister with a little humour in her twang.

‘Oh, I... Its just’ while looking at the male her sister set her up to talked-to-death with and sliding her eyes toward to door handle, the route to her escape.

‘I get it, last train right to you’re place, and I get it. But you know you could have just spent the night if you wanted’

‘I know, but I’m up early tomorrow and I got this work thing tomorrow, I wanna get a jump start on it and I think you’re friend I was talking to gave me a little inspiration’

Sandra said this knowing she was lying through her teeth while thinking her big meeting is actually just typing up her story she reported on a couple of days ago about the water hydrant that literally blew its lid yesterday and by including the bug man she was talking to made her sister feel that the set up was a good thing

Her sister smiled and Sandra grabbed the door handle and twisted with great force and finally set herself free. ‘See you later sweetie’ said her sister watching her big sister leave into the dark of the hallway. ‘Bye. I’ll see you next week, Dinner, Cafe Central, 12pm, don’t be late’

Her sister smiles always knowing her sister will lookout for her no matter what.

Sandra reached the station just outside the building and ran down the steps quickly not wasting any time in missing the last train.

Her heels bounced off the last step and shattered fast when she started walking on the flat ground.

She scoffed and got on with taking off both her shoes and walking barefoot on the white tiled pasty brown wetness of the floor, not caring about that and her black tights not being able to protect her soft feet from the disgustingness of the floor.

Sandra ran from corridor to corridor, through one little white tunnel to the next, her feet were aching and dirty beyond belief from the trail she made through the muck and horribleness.

Around the next corner she saw her platform where her train was to stop at she was glad she made it.

She looked around and saw no one within her sight, she raised her eyebrow and coughed providing an echo she didn’t want which revealed how alone she really was. 

She looked at the time the train was due, and at her watch it was 11:55pm, her train was three minutes early yet so she had a little time to kill.

Sandra kicked a can she saw on the floor and made a play of it for about a minute of playful banter.

The next minute com piled of thoughts about cleaning her feet and mending her shoes or throwing them away if they are beyond repair.

Then she heard something, a raspy rattling that came from a distance, she felt startled and unnerved by the thoughts that captivated her mind; black and evil like.

Screeching was then heard quickly revealed to be the train that Sandra wanted to see so badly. She walked further down to the end of the platform and jumped on quicker than when her childhood cat jumped out of a reversing car’s wheels of certain death.

She sat on the left side and turned toward the platform, she saw a piece of rubbish moving against the wind that blew from the outside, she saw a magazine’s pages flip faster than her heel took to break from its stitching and detach from its home of the shoe.

It went cold and bleak, Sandra shook her body at the coldness that swept her, and she kept looking unwillingly outside.

A shadow that approached the platform and made her second blink and shudder unnerved her. She turned and tried to ignore it and blamed her imagination on the four vodka martini’s she ingested at the party.

She looked back and saw nothing and the wind that was once blowing wasn’t, it faded and died as the train’s engine started again and the doors shut, Sandra was sat forward and watched the light of the platform fade away as she descended into the dark tunnel that lied ahead.

The last train

Sandra couldn’t believe her luck to catch the last train of the night, however the shadow she thought she saw was playing on her mind like a hamster on a wheel constantly spinning round and round.

She looked at her heel and the shoe it broke from; there was no way it could even be glued back together.

She tossed it across the floor and proceeded to clean her feet with some tissue from her shoulder bag, she used three pieces before giving up completely and slouching further into her seat.

She watched the outside darkness move and started to count the seconds it took before she saw a light on the wall outside, every three seconds she saw a light making her squint at the brightness of it.

She kept on seeing the lights when it stopped no light flashed through the window, she was curious as to why it had stop and she stood and looked closer through the window, placing her hands on the window and breathing heavily steaming up the window.

She watched carefully for lights but instead saw something else; eyes that stared into hers and reached into the depth of her soul and thrashed it around.

The fear she felt, the horror she witnessed, the weirdness and amazement of this struck her in new ways of being scared witless.

She knew what she saw, she moved from the window but kept looking at the eyes before her, never blinking and never losing focus from her eyes.

They glimmered and shone pure red, as evil and as demented as she could see, Sandra got her shoes and separated herself from the gaze of evil she was latched onto.

She started banging on the drivers door but there was no answer. It made a screeching and squelching sound that cut into Sandra’s mind and made her cringe and freeze in fear and fright.

She ran towards the next train carriage and looked back, checking that it wasn’t following her.

She kept running from carriage to carriage looking behind her for any sign of the darkness she was sure was lurking around her.

As Sandra reached the end of the carriage the train stopped a stop early from what it was suppose to terminate at, she tried banging on the door to grab the attention of the driver but there was no answer.

She tried to pry open the door to jump out onto the platform, she used the heel from her broken shoe, jamming it into the gap was trying but she got the ends of the doors and pulled rigorously.

Sandra dove out onto the platform and witnessed the lights in the first carriage go out, then the second, then the thirds and so on until it reached her way. She stood quick and stared intently into the darkness, she heard breathing coming from the dark that got heavier with every breath it took. Sandra shook her head and began to run towards the passage way, dropping her shoulder bag in the process.

She looked back and saw the shadow emerge from the dark of the train, being birthed to the platform and wreaking its parasite across the floor.

As she got to the passage she looked back once more as the shadow became whole and made one more move from the train.

She didn’t look to see whatever it was step into her view, she just kept moving further from it.

Darkness

Sandra ran further away from the plight she knew was behind her, coming for her, hunting her like prey.

As she ran her blonde hair scooting from side to side, her cheeks blood red from her drastic run her sharp finger nails digging into her soft palm from the tightness of her clenched fist.

She was wearing down she wanted to stop and desist in this dangerous game of cat and mouse.

She stopped and leaned back against the wall, she looked back and couldn’t see anything apart from the light flickering at the end of the corridor which made the darkness seem like an entity that would never back down and never depart from the light that flashed so heavenly and was devoured by the dark entity that began to spread as the next light became part of the darkness.

The entity that was the darkness was evaporating the lights on and off until it overcame the lights and they stopped fighting and deceased. Sandra walked backwards slowly never losing sight of the dark in front of her.

Her face was tense with fear and strain, her legs and was shaking and sweaty as the fright crept further around her whole of her body sweeping across like the sea that never stops moving.

She turned and walked away fast and tried not to turn her head and see the evil unfolding behind her.

Sandra walked down the next corridor and considered screaming for help, however knew that at 12:20 there would be no one around which then begged the question will the exit still be open, she hoped.

She looked back hoping to see a light survive through the madness of the overwhelming dark that spread its fast growing entity so full of rage and blackness that devoured the lights pure energy.

She saw nothing, just the blackness of nothingness, an empty crowd of nothing that held something cold and evil.

She knew its shadow was in there lurking and prying for her attention, feeding of her fear and anguish.

It emerged from the dark, the shadow returned birthed from the dark and back into Sandra’s gaze once again, something she was hoping so much that she wouldn’t see again and hoped was part of her imagination.

It was no imagination, nothing about this was fake, and it was before her eyes and real. Soon she witness the shadow take its true form into a bulky figure that stood covered in darkness, it stepped forward to the light more.

She saw this figure more formed and more real second by second, clenched fisted that the light showed to be digging deep, in black overalls, with a cap on top, nothing but black was seen for his face, nothing was in colour just black, just like his soul and Sandra didn’t want to see no more of this.

‘Who are you, why are you doing this?’ she asked intent on wanting an answer. It didn’t speak ‘Did you hear me!’ she was more direct and forward this time, her approach aggressive, she wanted to secure her safety, she needed clarity.

She ran further down the corridor and down another tunnel that lead to escalators. She ran up and saw the closed gates and locked exit. Sandra screamed out in a flurry of anger and desperation, but to no prevail, she turned and saw another corridor on her right.

She looked down the escalators, the lights at the bottom died and she backed away more and more, she saw a chance down the corridor and took it.

The figure approached the bottom of the escalators; she saw and didn’t stick around to see it get any closer.

Sandra ran down the corridor lights blacking out around her, everything was becoming deceased; Sandra knew that the only things now live and alert were she and the figure she now knew was real and coming for her.

No way out

As Sandra emerged from the end of the corridor and onto another, she wondered how her escape from this game of cat and mouse would be resolved when the police interrogate her and ask her questions such as ‘But what were you even doing out at that time’ and ‘It was all your imagination probably, so we’ve just wasted our time’ because what if this haunting figure escapes and makes it seem as though its all in her head.

As she walked all these problems were circulating through her, she looked to the lights ahead that kept flickering and saw them disperse into the darkness that overcast her.

Rattling was heard from behind her, Sandra’s shoulder trembled and Goosebumps made their way up her arm and her hairs stand on end, as they were targeted by scare tactics.

She began to walk slower and feel her way across the wall to make her way to the end of the corridor, as she did she began to feel her way across to the wall in front of her.

Alone in the middle of the nothingness, her breathing became heavy and her hands that were pointing out into the unknown were jittery, her body felt distorted like it was wanting to immerse itself every which way to find out what was safe and what wasn’t.

She reached the wall and dragged herself across to another passage way, she was reluctant at first but found herself drifting down this next corridor to yet more of the strange malevolent unknown.

When she reached the end of the corridor she saw a glimmer of hope as a light faded in and out of the purging battle from the darkness and heard volts of electricity running through what she assumed was a track system.

She looked under the light at the wall and saw a map, on it she saw she was next to the way out, if the gates weren’t already locked.

However just when her hope was lost and crushed she saw a vent system on the tracks, the vent had ladders on the side of the track, just inside the dark start of the tunnel, the ladders then lead up to the surface.

Sandra drifted fast onto the platform and crept slowly down onto the tracks watching her footing not touching the dangerous volts, she walked to the end till she saw just about the start of the tunnel and then smiled.

She felt her way to the ladders hoping the feel of cold wet bars to climb up and bring her to safety would release her of her nerve shredding torment.

A sudden rattle of a empty can as if it were kicked made Sandra lose focus, her pain and dread was surfacing, she just wanted out and end of this torment.

She moved quicker and found the start of the ladders, relieved as she was she headed rapidly up them to stop her frightful night and end the torture she had endured for what felt like was an eternity.

She climbed and climbed not listening to the emerging footsteps or the raspy sounds of ruthless voice breathing and creepily laughing to itself. Her ears however could not block out these sounds much longer and the noises came closer.

The more she climbed the more the voice grew, spreading faster than a sneeze landing on the floor and spreading its germ.

Sandra stopped hoping the sounds would stop too, as the sounds continued she held on to the bars for dear life as she hoped the sounds would stop.

The sounds died, just as her breathing stopped from escalating to a high level of panic attack scenario.

She climbed some more and quietly made her way further to the top, she could smell her freedom already.

As she neared the top she heard a rattle on the tracks, a train was approaching at high speed, and she rushed to the top banging on the grate to open.

As the rattle grew louder rapidly the vibrations began taking over everything even her body, she tried screaming but the sound of the train was too magnificent for her weak cries for help. Sandra banged again on the grate and it moved allowing little air to find its way in, she gasped relief and happiness.

Sandra felt something touch her leg, cold and malevolent it wrapped its self around her leg and forced her to hold on for her life. The sound of the train passing drowning out her cries for help reached its peak as it dragged her off the ladder and forced her to let go of her life and fall completely down into the darkness and into its clutches

The train passed by leaving behind it the sound of its ear bursting rattling and powerful sharp glide on the tracks. What was left in the tunnel was the reminiscence of the night before closed, isolated and empty just as it should be and just as it always will be, waiting for the morning and then the night to start its cycle again.  

BY SCOTT COBURN