My Randoms

Writing Prompt #3

When you are coasting through life without any goal or interest in the world or people around you, you begin to be careless.   

He was a simple boy.  He grew up, raised by normal parents who provided what he needed to survive.  He attended school, made some friends, passed each grade with average marks.  As the years passed by, the more hollow it felt.  His grades kept dropping, a percentage each year, in unison with the friends that slipped away.   

The most tragic fact at these occurrences was the fact he didn't care.  He allowed himself to slack off despite knowing he could have done better, could have been someone in the twisted society before him.  He didn't see the worth and isolated himself from the world that was boring.  What else could a man with no ambition do?

He was barely able to graduate, but he did it even with minimum effort.  

What was the point of ambition when it could only lead you so far or broke you down completely?  Why did people want money, or power or even love?   What was with all these silly notions of perfection, of reaching the top, of a happiness in a world that tore it all away?  

He was a mindless drone in the hivemind of the workforce.  Working day in and day out.  The same routine, the basic people.  No stimulates, no sparks of excitement, dull and gray was the life he viewed.   Never changing to the point where he gave up on living.  

Except, on one day it did change.  

Waiting for his usual train, standing among dozens of people just like him.  He'd been doing this every day for the last 6 years.  He knew that in a minute the speaker would go off, speaking about something no one could really understand and then two minutes after that a train would fly past and another couple minutes their train would arrive. 

He wasn't thinking of anything, just counting the seconds until the train would arrive.  He had nothing better to do.  Until, something caught his eye, which was something that never had happened before.   It was then when he saw her.  A flicker of sunlight in the gray world he lived in, bringing the first real taste of sunlight to his life.  She was weaving through the crowd of people to the front and passed him to the far side of the track.  

He had never believed in love at first sight.  It was a foolish notion spread by desperate people who only knew how to follow their lustful desires.  However, seeing that girl, standing by the edge of the platform, a golden beam of sunshine changed his opinion in an instant.   The only thing he could be feeling right now was love.  

Desperate to know, the see if there was something in his life that had meaning, he found his feet moving towards her.  He moved unaware, finding himself closing in the gap until he was almost an arm's length away.  He opened his mouth to say something, to say anything when she suddenly turned around and their eyes locked.  He'd never seen such eyes before.  A brown colour but they looked lifeless yet content.    The girl gave him a beaming smile as if she'd been granted the wish she'd always wanted. 

"You're not him," she said just as the tracks rattled with the sound of the approaching train but it was hard to hear over the sound of his heart-shattering.  Who was him?

"Leave," she told him, just loud enough to be heard, the smile slipping from her face and he found himself stumbling back.  What was happening to him?  Was this rejection?  He didn't even say anything to her. 

Before he could do anything else, she suddenly flung herself back over the edge and he watched in horror as the train flew past, taking her body along with it. 

His legs gave out from under him, causing him to collapse onto the cold, damp and dirty ground.  He thought he'd found the one thing that could give meaning to his existence.  If only he knew it would instead be the last ray of hope being torn from his grasp. 

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Alternate: 

"Who was she?"  He asked the doctor, looking at the little girl that laid dead in the other room.  

"She was your daughter."