The Iron Confession

The rhythm of the rails. That's what gets you. Not the click-clack, not even the grinding steel, but the steady, relentless push forward. Each jolt a small, sharp reminder that you’re moving, that you chose this, that there's no going back. The car was empty. Practically empty. Just me, hunched over a window streaked with rain and grime, and some old man snoring two rows back, his face hidden by a newspaper from yesterday. Or maybe the day before. Doesn't matter. He wasn't looking at me. Nobody was.

Good. I didn't want anyone looking. Didn't want anyone to see the tremor in my hands, the way my knuckles were white where they gripped the cheap vinyl seat. Didn't want them to see the sweat still prickling my hairline, even though the heating in this old relic was barely working. It was cold, inside and out. Always cold, these days. A chill that went bone-deep, something no coat could fix.

I'm on the last train to nowhere. That's what they called it, the late night run out of the city, through the forgotten towns, into the kind of country where the sky swallowed the light whole. The kind of place you went when you had nowhere else to be. Or when you had to be anywhere but where you were. That's my story. Had to be anywhere but home.

Home. The word tasted like ash. Eleanor. Her cough. That rattling in her chest that started quiet, like a whisper, and then grew louder, a persistent, ugly sound that drilled into my skull. Three months. That's how long the doctors gave her. Three months for the cancer to finish its work, to take her from me. Three months for me to watch it happen, to sit there, pretending to be strong, pretending to care.

God, I did care. Or I used to. Years ago. Before the sickness took her sparkle, before it hollowed out her eyes, before every conversation became about symptoms, about pain, about the inevitable. I tried. I swear to Christ, I tried. I bought the medicines, I cooked the bland food, I sat by the bed and held her clammy hand. But inside, something was shriveling up. Something was dying in me, too. A kind of hope, a kind of… patience.

She'd look at me, those eyes, so wide and sad now. "You tired, Arthur?" she'd ask, her voice thin, barely a thread. And I'd lie. "No, sweetheart. Never. Just thinking." But I wasn't thinking. I was calculating. Counting the hours, the days. Feeling the walls close in. The smell of the sickroom clinging to my clothes, to my skin. It got into my nose, my throat, my very soul. A stench of decay, of slow, creeping death.

The night I left, the rain was coming down in sheets, just like tonight. She was asleep. A fitful sleep, punctuated by those ragged breaths. I'd been watching her for hours, the lamp turned low. Watching the rise and fall of her chest, thinking about how I used to love to watch her sleep, back when she was vibrant, back when her hair fanned out on the pillow like a dark halo. Not now. Now it was just a countdown.

I pulled on my boots. Didn't pack a bag. What was there to take? Her picture on the nightstand. I looked at it, the young Eleanor, smiling wide, before the shadow came. I didn't touch it. Didn't take it. Just looked. Felt nothing but the cold, hard weight of a choice. A terrible, rotten choice that had been festering in me for weeks, maybe months.

I wrote a note. Just a few lines. 'I can't. I'm sorry.' A coward's exit. I slid it under the sugar bowl on the kitchen counter, knowing she wouldn't see it until morning. Or maybe the home nurse would find it. Didn't matter who. Didn't want to explain. Didn't want to see the accusation in her eyes. Or worse, the understanding. That would've been worse, I think. Knowing she knew exactly what kind of man I was.

Stepped out the door, into the slashing rain. Didn't look back. Just walked. My shoes sucking at the pavement, the water soaking through my cheap jacket. Walked until I hit the station, bought a ticket for the furthest stop on this line. The one that nobody really goes to. The one where the tracks just kind of… end. And now I'm here. On this train. Confessing it all to the empty seat across from me, to the blurring landscape, to the iron heart of this machine.

Every jolt, every squeal of the brakes, it's a judgment. I feel it in my gut. A sickness that's not the flu, not even fear. Just a hollow, aching dread. What happens when the train stops? Where do I go? Nowhere, I suppose. Just get off and stand there, in the cold, in the dark, with nothing but the rain and the knowledge of what I did. And the damn tracks, stretching out behind me, a path paved with my own goddamn failures, carrying me further and further away, just like I wanted.