January 21

It was another one of those days. 

The rain was pouring down like iron sheets, the train had come half an hour late, and I had lost my wallet in the station bathroom. In moments like these, you truly wonder whether a higher power was out to get you. 

When the train finally pulled up at half past one, I glared it down. Most people would’ve been blown away by the pristine white sheen, the unnatural silence of the engine, or the blast of subzero aircon that streamed out of the open doors. But not me. Twenty-one years of life had taught me enough about the world. 

I trudged onto the carriage at the end and plopped myself down on the backmost seat. If I had been just ten years younger - no, even two months younger - I might have enjoyed the richness of the leather or the antique smell of the wooden armrests. But I wasn’t the young fool that I once was. 

As we slowly pulled out of the gloomy building, I finally let out the breath I had been holding in all day. I knew where I was going, of course. I knew what I was going to do. Even without the map pasted on the chair in front of me, I knew the name of my destination in my bones: Sunset Station. Where my path ended. 

I closed my eyes, listening to the rain platter against the window like bullets. The last lullaby I’d ever enjoy, I supposed. I fiddled with a golden chain strung around my neck. 

Not even a minute passed by when someone tapped my shoulder. “Is this seat taken?”

I prised my eyes open and felt my heart skip a beat. 

She had flawless skin, about a shade darker than sandstone. Her jet-black hair cascaded down in smooth waterfalls, gently brushing against her lower back. They formed a loose curtain over her chocolate eyes, which glittered like galaxies. A burgundy jacket was draped over her shoulders, the velvet seeming softer than cat fur. Her nails were dabbed with a light layer of wine nail polish, complementing her lips.

Something about her seemed oddly familiar to me, even though I’d never met her before. 

“Is it taken?” she repeated. Her voice was a soft jingle, a quiet chortle. 

I blinked. “No.”

I let out a tiny groan when she plopped herself down, the smell of vanilla following her. The one thing I didn’t want to do was engage in conversation on the tail end of my journey, so of course it was the first thing that happened.

We sat in silence for a while, the pinging of the bullets of rain making the only sound in the carriage. I glanced out the window and heaved a sigh. The same flooded fields, dreary hills, the same ashen sky. I guess it wasn’t much to miss. 

The speakers crackled to life, interrupting my train of thought. “Welcome on board the Destiny Line. The next stop is Sunset Station, where this service ends.”

Sunset, Sunset, Sunset…

“Are you going to Sunset Station?” the woman asked. 

I started and silently cursed myself. “Oh…yes, I am. Didn’t mean to disturb you.” I chanced a glance at her face again. Where had I seen her before?

A wide grin spread flashed across her rose lips. “That’s splendid,” she purred, blatantly ignoring all of the subtle hints I was dropping. As if on cue, she swivelled towards me. “I heard there’s a beautiful, ethereal wooden bridge there that overlooks a waterfall! You planning on going?”

“My journey ends there.” I didn’t bother elaborating. 

She tilted her head, studying me as if I were a helpless guinea pig. I hated that, the way her brown eyes drilled right through me and came out the other side. There was something off about her; I just couldn’t place my finger on what it was. Why did it all seem so eerily familiar?

“So you have gone there before,” she pressed, her breath the sickening smell of peppermint. “Surely you must’ve gone there with someone else!”

“Yes.” The word slipped out of my mouth like an eel slipping out of wet hands. 

“How delightful!” she exclaimed with a sharp giggle. “I did too! Who did you go with?”

The question was a wrecking ball. Who, who, who…Her voice was a gong, the words the beats ringing in my mind. 

“My fiancée.” Her stare was like a magnet, drawing out the words from my lips. “Or, at least, she was.” My voice was dark and bitter. “What business do you have with my life?”

“I’m only interested in my own life.” She stared at her palms. “At least, I hope I am. Something happened to me, and I need your help in making sense of it.” That struck a chord with me. “I’m sure you loved her, as I once did to my boyfriend?”

“She was the fire to my ice, the black to my white, the day to my night, the sun to my moon, the joy to my grief, the good to my evil, the hope to my grief, the solace to my rage, the life to my death. We were worlds and eons apart, but we were perfect together. Every second I spent with her was an hour of paradise. The ground she stepped on was kissed by God. She was my Polaris when I was sailing across the ocean of my life.” A single teardrop crept down my cheek: the hot scar of the past. “She’s dead now.”

“Since when?”

“Since two months ago. Died in a tragic accident.” I coughed and started fiddling with the chain again. 

Something flashed in the woman’s eyes. “Car crash. Shattered spine.” Her voice sounded like an autumn breeze, hiding the cold of winter in the warmth of summer. “Dead in the night of the 21st of January.” Each word she spoke sent flashes of red across my vision. “Grey Malibu. Came out of nowhere.”

“Yeah.” I narrowed my eyes at the woman. “How did you know?”

“My boyfriend knew someone who died on the 21st in a car crash as well.” She cleared her throat. “How did you meet her?”

“At a university. We both majored in criminology. We matched each other’s cautiousness and prudence. And you studied in…?”

“Criminology as well. Met him when I was an undergraduate. It’s funny, really, how similar our two stories are.” It truly was. She turned to me again, scanning me up and down. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“What do I have to tell you? The real question is, what aren’t you telling me?”

Sighing, she murmured, “I’m trying to find out why my life took a turn for the worse two months ago and now, suddenly, this morning I woke up to find that no one knew me and the world’s colours were bleached. So please, I need your help.”

Her lips were truly interesting, the way they pursed. They were perfectly arched like Cupid’s bow. Where had I seen them before?

“What do you need my help with?”

“On the day of the accident, what were you feeling?”

“Grief.”

“Are you sure?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course, I was!”

“Again, are you sure?”

“What are you implying here?” I spat, clenching my fists. I hated her so much then, the way she never flicked her eyes off of me for one second. 

“What I’m saying,” she continued, “is that you and I both know that you felt something else that night: guilt.”

Her voice was the buzz of a beehive. I doubt most people would’ve liked it. I swear, though, I heard it somewhere before. 

In the distance, the train began to whistle. I chanced a glance out the window. The rainy plains had been blotted out by a black tunnel. The Stygian wall was a nice reflection of my mind, I suppose. All aboard the destiny express.

“Yes,” I snarled. “I felt guilty. I felt guilty because we’d been arguing right before she ran out of the house. I tried to call her back. She didn’t even look before she dashed across the road.”

Something clicked inside my head. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

Goosebumps spread across my arm when she nodded. The hazy puzzle was slowly getting clearer. 

“What were you arguing about?”

“Why would I -”

“I think it would be better for both of us if you stop hiding the truth,” she interrupted. “So I’m going to ask again. What were you quarrelling about?”

I’m sorry, those deep, brown eyes weren’t galaxies. That was my mistake. They were black holes, sucking in everything. 

“I was confronting her about what I saw that afternoon.” My voice was black ice. “I came home early, and I discovered that there were two other people in the house, being intimate with each other. The man, I still don’t know who. The woman, well…needless to say, I did know who it was.”

I shuddered. 

She nodded again, slower this time. “What did she say to you when you confronted her?”

“That I didn’t really love her, that I never really did, that I was exploiting her for money.”

“Were you?”

“Well, I filched the occasional penny or two.” I winced under her glare. “Fine, I forced her to pay for my tuition fees. She has so much money that she doesn’t know what to do with it anyhow. Might as well put it to good use.” I toyed with my golden chain again. 

The woman didn’t seem to agree with me, but she moved on. “All right, I think you’ve helped me clear up a lot of problems now.” Before I could heave a sigh of relief, she continued, “But there’s still one last question I want to ask you.”

“What could that be?” I started rubbing my fingers against the golden chain. The chain had the dull, tingling smell of iron. Just like something else. Something dark red. 

“Where were you at the moment of the accident?” Shadows gathered around her eyes.

“I told you already.”

“Which is where, again?”

Steel hands gripped my lungs. “I was calling out to her, trying to stop her from recklessly dashing. She didn’t listen to me.”

Was I imagining things? Or was there a flicker somewhere on her face? No, her neck was flickering! It was slowly bending, slowly becoming deformed. Or was I imagining things?

She spoke two words: “You’re lying.”

The temperature seemed to plummet. “Wh-what?”

“You’re. Lying. You know it in your heart. You’ve known for two months.”

Oh my, death is a lie. No, no, no, it couldn’t be happening. But it was staring right back at me. The truth clicked, like the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle fitting in. I knew now. I knew everything.

“Fine! Fine! Fine! I admit it! I wasn’t running after her. I wasn’t calling out to her. I wasn’t trying to stop her. No, I’m a double-faced liar. Yes, that’s what I am: a psychopath. My fiancée did not die in an accident; I killed her! I killed her, I killed her, I killed her! I dragged her out of the house. I threw her in front of a speeding grey Malibu. Oh, I watched her die! I knew it in my bones! Oh, then what are you? How are you here? Haunting me, to my very last day? Why have you come back? Why, why, why? Are you even real?”

“That,” she whispered, “you will never know. You have lived two months in anguish. Because I never truly left you. Every hour of your life has felt like a tortured second crawling by. Just look at what’s hanging from your neck.”

The golden mark of Cain. I tore it off the chain and pressed it against my face. 

“No! Forgive me, please!” Tears streamed down my face, a waterfall of guilt. “I’ll do anything!”

The train came to a stop at the station. Sunset. The end of the line. 

Oh, her smile, I hated her smile, the way they were draped over the fury within her. She glanced out the window, out of the station, out of the world. I followed her gaze at the bridge overlooking the waterfall. Where it all began. 

“There’s always a way out.” She stood up. How horrible she looked, the way her head was tilted to the side! Almost as if her spine was broken. “I trust you’ll know what to do. Goodbye, Daegel.”

She stepped off the train.