FMR RWS- Short Story Collection

Sleeping Beauty.

CONTENT WARNING: This story contains body horror, themes of despair and abandonment, strong language, and heavy emotions. More sensitive readers may be disturbed.

Montferrand was lucky, in some respects. After the War ended in 1977, most steam engines were on death row. Diesels imported from America became cheaper, the railway downsized, and steam was incredibly unfashionable by then- all of that meaning that the last mainline engines, the best of the best, were cut up or, at best, sidelined by the early 1980s. And he was in no way the best of the best, not anymore. He was somewhere along the... other end of that same scale.

But he was lucky. For when the nation began to rebuild, and things began to come back together, he was bought for practically pocket change by Brunswick Steel, located in the North of the country. He'd never been before, but it was better than scrap, so he gladly accepted it. (He'd later learn that was the same steel mill that had ordered Alexia, so many years ago.) He arrived in 1980, and he'd remain there, taking iron ore and coal to the blast furnace, shunting steel pipes and coils and beams for the main line engines to take away from the yard, and generally being worked harder than he had in his life, until the mill closed in 2008.

~

He hadn't known the mill was going to close. They were facing hard times, yes- but they'd been facing hard times for years. They'd been minutes away from their doors closing since the middle of the 90s, and he saw no reason to believe it would suddenly come true. Nobody did. He wasn't particularly hopeful, though... if the work under the National Railway wasn't enough, if being worked to the bone every day and receiving hardly any maintenance didn't do it, then the sheer fact that he had to sleep next to the stripped-out Number 11, the engine before him at the mill, drove the point home.

He was going to die here.

Number 11 was made by the same works he was, so many years ago. That meant many of her parts were shared with him. So every time he broke down, she got a little smaller.

He often wondered what her name actually was. Surely it wasn't just Number 11- all engines had names, either official or unofficial. Once he asked her, but all she could do was stare with hollow, forlorn eyes. She couldn't speak. Not anymore.

They had worked alongside each other for the first few years. She was old and worn, but they made a good team, and she taught him the little tricks he couldn't have known without her decades of experience there. Then, in 1983, she was in an accident. Monty won't ever say it out loud, but it was his fault. He was pushing a load of steel coils on flatcars, didn't see her ahead, and pushed the flatcars right into her at some speed. Her frame was badly bent.

She went into the shed and never came back out. That was when the part-salvaging started. They couldn't afford her repairs. That was the most distraught he'd ever been in his life.

When he had a crash- in 1993- he was terrified. Clearly now it was his turn to go into the shed and never come out. But the damage was minimal- only to his tender- and the mill by that point couldn't afford to replace him. So he got an emotional chewing-out from his foreman, and spent the rest of his time there with his tender constantly crabbing from side to side as its twisted frame tried to find a footing.

He was sure he was going to die there.

~

April 18, 2008.

Friday.

As the mill wound down for the weekend, it didn't seem to be any worse than most evenings. Montferrand, Brunswick Steel #12, was parked for the weekend in his shed like usual. His fire was doused, his ashpan emptied, and then all the humans left. He looked over to #11- her eyes had long since gone motionless, he didn't know why he still did it- and then back to the doors as they were closed. He didn't know that it was for the last time.