Is This Our Stop?

All that could be heard across the wide concrete expanse of the platform was the ticking. Levon looked up. Why give sound to a clock? The indefinable beauty of the movement of time could not be reduced to the tally of a short, sharp noise. Does sunlight need centimetres? Does outer space require scales? The tick, tick, tick of the station’s clock gave no indication as to which particular second had passed or which specific minute had gone by. No meaningful value to this monotony. Levon closed his weak eye and shot a glare at the loud time machine with his good eye. The clock stopped. It got the message.

He shifted his weight back further on the smooth oak bench and rested his attention on the only other living presence. A six-year-old girl on the opposite platform in a red dress with white buttons down the front.

"You don’t look like a runaway," he said quietly. She hadn’t noticed him yet, she was moving something with her foot, all her focus trained on a task that wiped the rest of the universe away. Levon whispered something else under his breath and the girl stopped what she was doing and looked around her. Eventually, she turned her face to him, the elderly man in an old-fashioned suit on the only other populated platform. The child put her hands above her eyes to shield them from the harsh sunlight. Squinting at the man, she suddenly dropped her arms to her sides and they bounced, like a rag doll. She started to open her mouth to say something to him then closed it quickly shut, turned and ran to the staircase and left the platform in the peace he required. Levon nodded. "That’s right."

Far away, a signal locked into position and metal and flesh and a whistle and voices and wheels and intentions all switched track and began their reassigned journey to Platform 6. Levon’s ear twitched, catching a gasping sliver of a screech from the train wheels not yet in sight.

The midday heat pressed upon every surface, only the bench with the old man was in the shade, a solitary darker place on this bright landscape. Any surface capable of the task now took its opportunity to shine. Steel rails that could glint, dusty windows that could reflect, metal poles further along the platform holding dried up plants took a moment to dazzle. At the right angle, each wielded the power to cast momentary blindness to anyone around, had there been any witnesses.

The flap of wings near the ground and a cooing sound. A feathered stranger looking for lunch, daring to visit the bleak place, hoping that someone was travelling today. Levon took something round from his pocket and leaned painfully down to the ground and rolled it towards the pigeon. The bird fluttered up and away a little, untrusting but curious. The item ceased its journey and fell to one side and the pigeon walked in fitful zigzags towards it, pecking the ground near it, then the thing itself. The beak picked it up, dropped it with a little squawk and tried again. Successful this time, the creature flew away, further from the man, in case he wanted his prize back.

The dusty air made Levon’s breath harder to draw but now he could hear the humming on the tracks and he shifted himself to rise to a standing position. Taller than the average man, he bent and picked up the leather case, brown like his suit. He fancied he heard crickets this time but that must be another lifetime catching up with him. The night time Memphis of his early summers. The train was now visible, an unsteady vision as the heat made it dance and wobble, a veritable mirage in a desert. Levon stepped forward. Slow, careful movements. He had all the time in every world for this. Six steps and he was there, just inside the line that denoted safety.

The train grew larger, slowing down as it did, but still moving faster than he could run. He lifted his chin like a judge defiantly bringing sentence down on all the wrongdoers. He swung his case a little, almost jovial, the empty contents making it light in his frail hand. A hot gush of air intensified as the train bellowed past his face and then halted. A black metal door opened exactly in front of him.

Further down the platform, the driver had already jumped out and was shouting something as the crowd poured from the belly of the train. The faraway man leapt back on the train, as though the platform itself was a melting ground too hot to stand on. A bell sounded. Levon was pushed from either side as the new arrivals of all ages and sizes and nationalities jostled to embrace the anticipated fruits of their destination. "Going home," thought some, "a well-deserved rest," thought others, "seeing old friends and loved ones," others still, "the holiday of a lifetime," still others. Levon stepped onto the train as the last of them crowded onto the platform, all noise and kerfuffle. The train doors hummed shut and it pulled away immediately.

One of the people who was yelling and pushing to find space on the overcrowded platform stepped on something squishy and groaned to find it was a dead bird. What kind of place was this? And then silence began to creep over them, because someone shushed the people closest and it flowed like a ‘pass it on’ message.

"Shush! Can you hear that?" Everyone wanted to hear. They ceased thinking about where they were going, they just wanted to hear it, too. The feet stopped moving, the shuffling abated, the mouths stilled and the ears strained. Blinking and the darting of eyeballs were the only movements. Some were caught with limbs in mid-air, like a child’s game of musical chairs. And then they all heard it. The ticking. Not of the clock that Levon stopped. The ticking from under the bench where he left the goods. And then the ticking stopped too and everything was bright light and blazing heat and everything stopped.