Going Nowhere Train

Platform

A/N: This is my first story, so please be nice about it. Feel free to comment suggestions about what should happen next or ideas you have: I want this to be your story as well as mine. Enjoy the story!

You could tell what people were thinking. I could almost taste the feelings dripping off the person next to me, like sweat. I took one glance at his pale face and I could see it all. The pain, the regret and most of all the fear. Causing an alarming contrast, the three girls next to him were laughing, however it only took one of my glances to guess that, like all of us, they were acting with an overstated confidence because, in a few minutes, they were leaving the past years of their lives behind. And how would they want their last seconds to be spent? Naturally, as if nothing was going to happen. If you block out the murmurs, the whimpers and the creaking stairs, you could be anywhere. And right now, anywhere was a great place to be. Or more specifically, anywhere other than a train platform over flowing with hundreds of trembling children.

I try this for a few seconds, and it almost works, until the rattling of our train brings me back to reality. Like a ripple through a pond, the familiar sound brings on a dizzy rush of nostalgia. The children around me start to cry, or laugh, but always with the same melancholy tune. The rush of memories that sweeps me sends my mind whirling. All those times I stood, staring at the announcement board, willing time to go faster. Now all I want to do is slow it down, stretch my minutes left in London out as thinly as possibly, like elastic. But the moment that sends me stumbling backwards physically is the memory of the people I was with. The people I have lost.

The steady rattling of the train surfs closer and closer. Once again, the sight of such a familiar symbol, a train carriage with faded fabric seats, freezes and numbs me. As soon as the doors open, masses of kids pile inside, smirking as they reach a seat, then grumbling as they are forced to share it. I'm one of the last few to board, barely cramming inside before the doors slide shut. My body is pressed against the doors, but this is intentional: now, I get my final glances of my home undisturbed. The London eye slides away from me first, then the Houses of Parliament, and finally the uneven pavements turn to grass. Well, that was it. Goodbye life.