Sorry if you got like 50 million posts on your Google Reader. Long story. Anyway. I haven’t done flash fiction in a while, so to make up for it, I’m going to post a fiction short every day for a week. I wrote the first four last week during spring break. So welcome to the…
The meteorologist wasn’t kidding, we thought, standing at the station and stripping off our windbreakers. The day was much warmer than usual. The inversion layer had descended so low that the bellies of the clouds were touching asphalt. We could hear slight sizzlings when the sky and road met, and sometimes we could see a diminutive wisp of steam suddenly leaping off the ground as though hurt.
The train was late. The train is always late, we agree. The train is always late and the timetable board never tells us why. We contemplate the potential addition of a column beside Train number, Destination, Platform, and Time, an extra column like Notes or Details or Explanation of Anticipated Tardiness. What would today’s explanation be, we ask each other. Cloud cover inhibiting visibility. Passengers held hostage by modern-day kerchiefed bandit. Train has sprouted wings, plans to try luck on moon.
No one else is on the platform. We find this bizarre. It is an afternoon train. No one else is leaving work early to take the train south? No one else is fleeing, sparrowlike, to more temperate temperate zones?
We imagine the kerchiefed bandit atop the rushing caboose, undaunted by the screaming wind. Would he have knives or pistols, we debate, a suede or leather jacket, steel toes or spurs or both. We smile because we do not truly believe our delayed train has been delayed by a heist. If anything it is someone’s lost ticket. Someone’s pollen allergy activated into asthma attacks. Someone’s increasingly irate complaints and subsequent accompaniment from the car.
The clouds are quite heavy now. Moisture collects on our brows and collarbones. We clear our throats and discreetly wipe our upper lips on our sleeves. Soon it feels as though we are crying because our eyeballs are damp, but we know it is just the atmosphere pressing itself obscenely upon our retinas. We blink but it does not abate. So we close our eyes and listen for the onset of our climate controlled escape but the clouds fill our ears, our nostrils, it climbs into the spaces between our fingertips and fingernails. It is not unpleasant, we concur. Its tendrils, white and grey, twist into our bloodstreams and spiral about our hearts, cuddling us, spooning us from the inside. The train comes and goes, but we sink into heaven, indifferent at last.
