KZ's and Dragoln's Short Stories [2022 EDITION]

Alone on the Infinity Train

18.9.22

She went to the toilet and on her way back, opened the wrong door.

The train was endless, the number of carriages it held, infinite. The capacity of each one was unknown. 

Harper's number was at 98 and she had no denizens come to help her on the way. That made the whole process of finding her exit a lot slower though that's how she liked it. Supposedly, she was trying to search for the door to the next carriage and her luck drifted off elsewhere for the last two hours.

But when she'd finished using the loo, the doors in front of her multiplied. She didn't remember which one she touched before.

She felt a keen gust of air shove her backward and peered into the abyss ahead of her. A speck of white was lying on the other side. Was this another cart? 

Harper leisurely placed her foot down onto the floor. She couldn't quite see it, her eyes unable to make out if there were any walls, grooves, or items placed in the carriage. 

By now, her whole entity was inside the new cart and the door abruptly closed behind her. The gold hinges turned a stiff 180° altogether locking the red door. She was now fully plunged into the darkness.

More sense was knocked into her now that she was surrounded by pitch black. The white dot at the end of the cart comparable to a snowflake was the train's exit!

Was it really though? 

After all, she did still have the glowing emerald number glued to her palm. 

There were two ways. She could let her curiosity engulf her and plough on to see if the thing on the other side was what she was thinking. But, she could turn back and continue her trial and error with the puzzling doors. Never mind, there were three since Harper revelled in the darkness alone. Moreover, she could wait until her fate in that one cart. That was what she was thinking in the other carriages. There were a million ways she could die before this incident and many more afterward. 

Harper treaded the empty floor, constantly fearing that she'd make the wrong step and slip right through. 

Then it got up to the point where the unsuspecting passenger saw what the light contained. She saw her home. She saw the easy way out. Her number was still high so there was no telling what she still had to do to bring it down to zero. But she didn't have to do that. Her house, her isolating room, was right at the very end of the cart.

The passenger wanted off this train. She took off into a sprint accelerating rapidly, her heart racing in sync with her steps. Her arms and legs began to pump and all her mind focused on was the relieving feeling of shutting everything out again, resting where nothing would be coming at her. She was so close!

There was a catch. There was always a catch. The train was made for those who needed change to happen, for those who have spent so long trying to fix other things in their lives that they toss themselves aside.

Flashing all around her were pictures. Snapshots of past times blared in her face. And Harper stopped to bear the pain of each and every one of them again.

There were a countless amount of parties she sat out.

She was the school's freak, the one no one ever talked to.

Her mother and father were relentlessly banging at the door to her locked room.

Her hands fumbled restlessly with each other until they bled.

The girl's hood was pulled down so low that people came to think she was faceless.

Her friends-

Well, she didn't have any.

Fresh waves of excruciation drowned her in an instant. Every step closer she got to the exit, the next memory would blink and play its sequence carelessly, each more painful than the last.

So that by the time it got to the memory of the bridge, she wept.

And she didn't realize that the portal to her home was only a few metres away.

Still, Harper's organs were twisting and spasming inside of her. She surrendered and the exit's bright light started retreating every second.

There were no shortcuts to exits. The number was there for a reason. She had hopped onto that train for a reason. 

As a result of facing her worst fears, her number fell, the green glow flickering before the figures on display flipped from 98 to 73. 

~

Author's note

I am a sorry guys. Yesterday was a super busy day for me and I had to drag down Dragoln with me.

So oops. You should be expecting a double where I post two short stories in a day.

Also, this story was not entirely created from scratch. It was inspired by Cartoon Network's and HBO Max's Infinity Train! So yeah, go check that out (it's actually awesome I'm telling you).

That's all for now!

See you in the next chapter :)