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Start or end your story with someone looking out a car or train window.

Posted in Dramatic on Mar 7, 2025

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✍️ 91 stories

Angry Highway

Submitted to Contest #293

ANGRY HIGHWAYBy Stephen Scott “Get the hell out of the way!” Jerry made sure to honk twice at the fellow in the fast lane. The car moved over … slowly. He moved closer to the man’s bumper and flashed his headlights. “Come on! Stupid jerk.”           David clutched his armrest, trying to hide his fright. “Jerry. Calm down.”           He sped past the car, glancing over at the elderly man. “What? You ...

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The Seeds of Dominion

Submitted to Contest #293

1I always knew the world was constructed on lies. Not minor falsehoods or innocent misunderstandings, but carefully cultivated fabrications designed to shape reality. From my earliest memories, even before my parents disappeared, I sensed that truth was not something freely given—it was deliberately hidden, erased, and rewritten.My parents were among the first to resist. They stood against the Dominion when resistance still felt possible, believing knowledge was a right worth risking everything to protect. They vanished when I was six, quiet...

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Keeping a Handle on Things

Submitted to Contest #293

10 year old Pete sat in the passenger side of his father's dingy green nova and looked out the window while his father drove along the interstate. The orange street lamps seem to float by his eyes, each one acting like a beacon that told him he was going far away from home.The sickly green interior seemed to match how Peter felt inside this mobile prison. The air inside the nova felt heavy, almost suffocating with a stench of old motor oil soaking the inside, while the headliner drooped downward like a deflated balloon.He dared not look...

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The View Out The Window

Submitted to Contest #293

Is our perception of life simply our view out the window of a train? Kalvin Carlyle “KC” Jones, like all the others in the passenger car, looked out the window of the fast-moving locomotive, but the view didn’t interest him. All he could think about was Julie. He thought about how they had met. He was a junior account executive at an advertising agency working on a proposal for Amtrak. His idea was to promote the vistas available only by rail travel, and Julie was a freelance photographer with an impressive portfolio of landsc...

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"Gridlock of the Mind"

Submitted to Contest #293

The 405 stretched endlessly before me, a vein of asphalt pulsing with the dull monotony of brake lights. Every morning, I merged into the current of half-conscious souls, each of us trapped in the same routine, inching forward to destinations we resented. My corporate job barely paid my bills, and my spirit eroded with each passing day. Yet, like a prisoner resigned to their cell, I got into my car every morning, hoping—futilely—that something, anything, would change.Today felt no different. The same stifling air, the same murmur of the radi...

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Merit Badge

Submitted to Contest #293

The thing about the rifle shooting merit badge is the target practice. To earn the badge a boy scout needs to hit the bullseye five out of five times in a single round. The bullseye is a black spot about the size of a quarter on a white paper target. The target is tacked to a wooden board fifty feet from the firing range. Jimmy was losing his race against time. He knew it and it bothered him as he lay on the thin nylon mat sweating in August heat. His armpits were damp with body odor. The endless buzzing of cicadas rose and fell throughout t...

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A New Life

Submitted to Contest #293

It’s like I’m starting over again, James thought to himself as he gazed out of the car window. I am Sisyphus. But I reached the top of the mountain only to find another that reaches steeper and higher. What then? What will happen when I reach the top? Will I ever see the view?“James? You still with us, buddy?” David asked as he tapped James on the forehead. “Huh? Oh yeah, I was just thinking,” James replied as he continued to gaze out of the window. The trees lining the sides of the road blurred if he didn’t focus on them. As the car zo...

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The Conductor and the Bear

Submitted to Contest #293

My engineer, Mark, scarfed down his peanut butter and jelly sandwich while operating the train—a necessary skill acquired by seasoned railroaders. His greasy hands stained the Wonder Bread black, but he didn’t seem to mind. He even licked his fingers clean when he finished, then hammer-fisted the whistle button as we went over a crossing. Long, long, short, long was supposed to be the sequence, but he gave one long horn blast instead.  “Yellow for forty,” I said, pointing out the yellow flag north of the tracks. (A yellow flag means a s...

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Reflections Unseen

Submitted to Contest #293

Lena sat on the train, the rhythmic clatter of the wheels lulling her into a trance. The blurred landscape outside mirrored her restless mind, formless shapes rushing past, never still enough to grasp. She traced the faint outline of her reflection in the window, noting the shadows beneath her eyes, the tightness around her mouth that hadn't been there five years ago. She'd hoped the motion would bring clarity, but with each passing mile, understanding felt further away.For years, Lena had run from the emptiness that followed her divorce, be...

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The Silent Car

Submitted to Contest #293

Sarah slid through the closing subway doors just in time, glancing through the windows at the platform, happy to be heading home. The soft chime alerted the passengers that the train was leaving her stop. She sunk into the closest seat, feeling the cold plastic chill her legs through her jeans, sighing as she rubbed at her tired eyes with her palms. It felt good to finally sit down after such a long day. Her body lurched gently as she was transported through the underground tunnel. She had a long ride, even with the trains running express af...

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The Thing with Feathers

Submitted to Contest #293

Nadia hated train stations almost as much as she hated airports—too many people. She pressed her forehead against the window, watching the commotion on the platform as passengers waited to board the solar sky train. Two identical toddlers zig-zagged through the boarding line until their mother retrieved them. An elderly man blew his nose into a tissue, then tossed it to the ground before holding up his wrist band for the conductor to scan.  “Freaking millennials,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes. A soft voice interrupted her musings....

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Sitting with Broken Glass

Submitted to Contest #293

Sandra pressed her forehead against the cracked glass, watching as raindrops raced each other down the window. The blurred past, this manifestation of her reflection in the cracks, but she barely registered it. Ten years of her life, gone. Just like that. As the train rocked gently beneath her, Sandra's mind drifted to those pivotal moments, the ones that had shaped their decade together. Some were bright flashes of joy, others quiet revelations, and some were fractures that could never quite be repaired. Looking in these splinters were like...

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The Crab of Harpers Ferry

Submitted to Contest #293

I always kept my head pressed against the window on the trip to Harpers Ferry. I liked the way the overgrown forests sailed past as dad let off the pedal and coasted down the hill toward the Potomac River and the Harpers Bridge. It always felt like a valve; the only way in and the only way out. The only thing that separated the untamed wilderness of West Virginia and its hollers and country folk from the civilized concrete fields and heavy development of Maryland. That bridge was the only thing separating the ancient realities of our contine...

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The Misprint

Submitted to Contest #293

All I could see through the window was the erroneous result printed by a giant printer. Had it really been malfunctioning for a while? As for our car, it was no longer just a car—it had turned into a suitcase on wheels. Or maybe that’s what all cars really are. But my face reflected on the car window against a green-brown background looked disappointed yet full of hope.As I look out the window, I see everything moving, and I, too, am in motion, like a snail carrying its house on its back, minus the speed. But not because I was in a car that ...

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It Goes by Too Fast

Submitted to Contest #293

Red peered out the driver’s side window. The cool mountain air brushed his cheek and fluttered his hair. He extended his arm out the window, slowly turned his hand, and rode the cool mountain air. It lifted his hand but lifted his spirit higher.The radio played Red’s favorite song—the familiar strum of the guitar, the unmistakable folksy twang of Robert Earl Keen’s voice. He sang along with a kind of righteous hubris that only one’s favorite song can summon. His fingers, earnestly drumming on the steering wheel, worked in rhythmic harmony wi...

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