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Make a train station an important part of your story.

Posted in Narrative on Nov 1, 2022

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✍️ 74 stories

Far Away and Fast

Shortlisted for Contest #168 ⭐️

There were too many of us, Lizzy thought, tucking herself behind a door jamb.Her father smoked in stony silence in front of a television, while her mother swatted her brothers who snatched fingerfuls of mashed potatoes from a large bowl on the dining room table. In various sizes, her brothers pushed and yelled, whining about being hungry, complaining about being late for football or wrestling practice, asking if there were any more chocolate doughnuts from the bakery.As usual, her mother was cross, but she never yelled. She would slam c...

78 likes 57 comments 57
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Pursuit of Truth

Submitted to Contest #168

+371 daysThe key to the case was the distraught old man with the cabbie hat and the bouquet of roses – but Detective Ben Rainer didn’t realize it until long after he was no longer a detective.“Let it go, Ben,” said Laszlo, his onetime partner, over the phone. “It’s been a year. What do you even want out of it?”Ben cradled his cell against his shoulder and rifled through the papers strewn on his kitchen table until he found one with some free space. He grabbed a pen too.“I want the truth,” he said. “All I need is a name.” He clicked his pen. ...

44 likes 44 comments 44
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One Day in October

Shortlisted for Contest #168 ⭐️

I’d like to think I would recognize an October sky without the Gregorian calendar telling me to expect one. There is an unmistakable ambience in the air, offered by its clouds and the clear blue sky and the aging leaves pointing their fingers up at the daylight moon. Especially here in California, where the seasons are subtle. We have to be more aware of the details, because that’s all we get. It is a slow shift. There’s no massive exodus of green leaves, and no snowstorm announcing Jack Frost’s pending arrival.There’s just October.And that ...

39 likes 39 comments 39
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Stories on a Train - Xinjiang 1995

Submitted to Contest #168

As I stand on a crowded train platform in Beijing, baking in the summer heat waiting for a train that hasn't arrived for an alarmingly long time, a very tall Western male with shaggy gray hair approaches.“We should travel together, it’s safer that way,” he says with a strong Australian accent. I had never met an Australian before.“What do you mean?” I stall and try to figure out who he is and why I would need to travel with this widly exotic individual. But I also might be lost and don’t speak the local language. “My train should have left 2...

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By The Withernsea

Shortlisted for Contest #168 ⭐️

“What thee mean, you’re closing down our station?” Ernest Claybourn protested almost inaudibly, as he stood on his station’s platform under a torrential Yorkshire Autumn downpour. “Well, I’ll go t’foot of our stairs – if I had any. That’s how gobsmacked I am.” Charles Fotherington-Clarke stood opposite Ernest, drenched from head to foot. Moments prior, he had been enjoying the warmth and comfort of a first-class carriage on the Hull to Withernsea steam train. Disembarking amid Yorkshire’s wettest October on record, the elements provided him ...

26 likes 16 comments 16
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Love on the Rails

Submitted to Contest #168

Cairn tied his cart to the flatbed train car. Melanie tied hers alongside it. Her horse, Samwise, was enjoying a rest in the stable car, towards the front of the train.             “It’s an odd pilgrimage to make,” she said. Her bronze-coloured hand reached out for his.             Cairn, still unsure of their limits as a new couple, placed his pale hand in hers. “I suppose it’s important to remember why the world is the wa...

24 likes 5 comments 5
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Night Trained

Submitted to Contest #168

Crouching down to try to calm his dog, Simon’s eyes were as wide as they could get while staring at the figures in the underpass praying they hadn’t heard Annie’s bark. Usually walking the dog in the very early hours was a calming and event free activity. Not today. Annie continued to growl even though the squirrel that set her off had scarpered up a tree straight away. The group stopped what they were doing and all turned to face in the direction of Simon and Annie. Everything told him to run but Simon knew his current hiding position could...

24 likes 1 comment 1
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It Won't Be Like This Always

Submitted to Contest #168

The train to Oliver Junction is never late. Not once has it ever been late. Something to be proud of if you’re a train. Or a conductor. Whoever is in charge of all that. You can set your watch by it. We put your grandfather on that train. When we did, he was in much worse shape than you are now. They say some things skip a generation. I suppose that could be so. I thought I got lucky. Anytime you think you’re lucky, you’re blind. That’s how life goes for people like us. We live by the water and the shine from the sun gets in our eyes. Hurts ...

19 likes 14 comments 14
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The Platform

Submitted to Contest #168

Back and forth. The train and then the people. Another train and some more people. The sound of suitcase wheels on rough pavement. Sit, stand, pace. Looking at tickets, squinting at tickets, squinting at the sun. Suitcase wheels on rough pavement.  One catches and flips, it’s owner tries to right it, sighs with frustration. A woman, she must be with her—there’s an intimacy there—steps in and wipes the other's shoulders, rubbing off the stress, rubbing in the love and then she kisses her on red lips.  I look away and down the tr...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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I Spy

Submitted to Contest #168

My Dad says I’m paranoid. I think that’s like someone who’s connected to the paranormal. Like on my favorite shows. I like sci-fi. Those stories are so interesting. They feel real. Not like day-to-day life, which gets kind of tedious sometimes. And boring. You never know what adventure will happen in sci-fi. Add a splash of fantasy and all bets are off. Literally, what’s going to come through that door? For instance, you can’t believe where I am right now. Sometimes Dad takes me on business trips with him. Every few weeks he travels from New...

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Sheila Bagh

Submitted to Contest #168

Khushiya boarded the Jaffar Express from Lahore. Usually, six people would easily fit in a compartment, but these days only four were allowed, because of the pandemic. The family of six had a split. His adolescent children and wife took over one compartment, while he settled in another with his companions; the luggage.It was his habit to scrutinize everything closely. He had been keeping in touch with the events happening in Balochistan, the notorious habitat of Quetta Shura of the Taliban. Because of cross-border infiltration from Afghanist...

16 likes 4 comments 4
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Flawless Fasting

Submitted to Contest #168

Some artists sang, some danced, some performed magic for the fawning crowds, the man in the cage starved.Behind thin metal bars, tall enough for him to stand up, and just wide enough for him to lay down, a man sat cross-legged on a folded mat. He was in conversation with several of the spectators, quietly talking, and then after a comment was made, laughed, along with many of the people. A clock was in the corner, with an extra hand, tracking along with minutes and hours, the days. It read 14 days, 12 hours and 57 minutes. The smal...

13 likes 7 comments 7
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This Train Terminates...

Submitted to Contest #168

“It should have been here by now!” This from an angry commuter stood at the very edge of the platform as though breaking the rules and taking an unnecessary risk by standing well beyond the line would prompt the late train to make its arrival now challenged to an unequal game of chicken, or perhaps the man fancied himself a matador. There were murmurs of agreement. People might not have liked the man standing there, puffed up with his own self-importance, a legend in his own lunchtime, but they agreed with the sentiment. The train was lo...

11 likes 0 comments 0
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The Station

Submitted to Contest #168

The Station was falling apart, and there was nothing Shyla could do about it. The battered walls did little to protect from the cold. It was an old train station, really only a rectangular box with one open wall. Even with her multiple warm layers, the chill would sneak its way through her shoes, freezing her toes until they went numb. More often than not, she and the other survivors would huddle in the corner least damaged, waiting out the night. The sun didn’t shine bright enough to pierce through the ever-present clouds, but with the day ...

11 likes 9 comments 9
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Danny Boy

Submitted to Contest #168

You shall be taken to a place henceforth and hanged by your neck till you are dead!The judge solemnly placed a black cap on his head to pronounce the awful words. My sentence was almost a blessed relief in comparison; Transportation for seven years.From my heavenly rest, cradled in a comfy hammock slung between cumulus clouds, this is my story.I’m Danny Boy, the Bastard son of a housemaid employed by a wealthy family, in Scotland. Delivering me in a hayloft on a soft day in the Spring of 1825, give or take a decade, I never heard of nor saw ...

10 likes 15 comments 15
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