Final Call

I lied.

I lied to the person I trusted most.

They didn’t see it coming. I didn’t see it coming.

I lied.

And now I’m here.

How or why though, I’m not entirely sure.

I think a person with any sense wouldn’t be entirely sure why they chose the last train out of the station. And then proceeded to fall asleep on it.

The ghost train they call it.

Where everyone is a former shadow of themselves. Time has passed since their drunken peak. Even longer since they were sober. Now crashing down from the injection of energy that barely sustains a night.

And here we all are on the last call from the streets of London. Back to the quiet villages. The safe havens. The mortgaged houses. Away from the mess and chaos.

I look around.

Everyone is completely clueless.

Glazed over eyes.

But an air of invincibility still lingers.

It’s sad in a way. They can’t see themselves in their self-inflicted state. Thinking, no, expecting they are going to make it home. The arrogance.

It infuriates me that people can just waltz onto a carriage and stumble back safely to their destination.

I almost wish their stupidity of getting this drunk comes back to haunt them.

That their false sense of confidence leads them down the wrong street, at the wrong time, and they just so happen to come across the wrong person.

Or the phone on show gets stolen from their limp hands as they lay passed out, only for them to wake up to nothing. No one to call. No way of getting home.

That’d teach them, I think.

They’re oblivious. Not invincible.

A drunken man approaches and sits in the empty seat next to me.

He’s swigging from a bottle of cheap rosé. The smell of it wafting over to me with each sip. Every outbreath, I tense up in frustration.

Please don’t speak to me, I think.

Too late.

“I know why you’re here” he says.

“I know what you did.”

Bit odd, this man doesn’t even know who I am. Must be the drinking that’s got to him.

I suppose he’s got a point though. I’ve been plunged into this situation without really knowing how.

It’s a terrible turn of events to be on the last train back to somewhere. Never my intention. I don’t even have my ticket to prove the actual time of train I was supposed to be getting initially.

That’s a point, where is my ticket? The man in HR will have a field day otherwise when I return to the office tomorrow. Yapping my ear off about company policy and how he’s now going to have to endure manually putting it into the system. I never liked him.

The ticket can wait though, more importantly: WHY am I here?

Actually no. Stop overthinking it. He’s getting inside your head. He’s drunk. He’s trying to provoke a reaction. He’s trying to get you to engage with him. He doesn’t know what’s coming out of his mouth, only that there’s horrible wine going into it. Best to leave him to it. Ignore him. You’re fine. You’re the sober one here. You’re the only one on this train who has any sense.

He turns his head away from me and out to the isle, then reaches to the top of the seat in front and pulls himself up. He starts heading to, what I can only assume is the nearest toilet. Most likely to throw up the cheap contents of that terrible rosé.

My eyes are transfixed on the back of him as he walks along the isle, making sure he isn’t going to change his mind and turnaround.

Safe in the knowledge that he’s out of view, my focus diverts to a children’s book that's been discarded on the floor, near the carriage doors.

I angle my head to see what the book is.

It’s a cartoon about a ghost.

The front cover is of a ghost looking into a mirror but no reflection.

My eyes then head over to the priority seats near the carriage doors. I see two women. Probably mid to late twenties. Heels off, blisters out, slumped against each other. Completely out of it. Perhaps asleep, perhaps unconscious. Definitely a priority. A priority for all of humanity to be saved from themselves.

I hear shouting coming from a table seat a few rows behind me. I turn around to see a group of younger guys. Probably on their first legal night out. They're showing off their matches on dating apps. Leaning over each other and rating the poor women that the algorithm chucks in front of these hideous excuses for the next generation.

That algorithm is a death sentence.

I turn back, facing forward again and I lean my head on the window. Trying to shut my eyes. Trying to shut out what is going on.

It’s no good. I’m struggling to get back to sleep. Especially with all these horrendous people around.

I try an alternative way of blocking out my surroundings by facing outside.

And so, I turn. Looking out into the pitch black of night’s sky.

At first, I don’t clock it.

I’m too busy staring into the abyss.

But as my eyes refocus.

I realise.

I don’t see myself.

I blink, thinking it must be a sleepy daze.

Still nothing.

That’s a bit strange.

Just pitch black.

Then it dawns on me.

The ghost. The ghost with no reflection.

I look around. All of these people don’t have reflections either.

Hmmm must just be the windows or something.

I look at the girls. For longer this time.

What I originally thought was the terrible pattern of the train seats they were sitting on, turns out to be patches of blood. There’s bleeding coming from each head.

I turn to the group of boys; they are still looking at their phones on the table. Each one is still on the same photos as the girls before. I focus in even closer. They are moving their fingers, but nothing’s happening. Their fingers can’t touch the screens.

The drunken man is stumbling back from the toilet.

He spots me again.

Recognises from the expression on my face and senses that I have woken up to something.

He stops in the isle and stands over me.

“You know” he says

“You know now, don’t you?”

“Yes, what you are thinking is right.”

“They are indeed dead. We all are. We have died from drunken mistakes. You included.”

I’m on the ghost train. The literal ghost train.

“The train isn’t stopping” he continues.

“There’s no ticket. No getting off. This is your final call.”

So that’s how I lied to the person I trusted most.

I lied that I could jump off the scaffolding and be completely fine.

I lied that I would never touch another drink again.

I lied to my sober self.

I lied that I was invincible.