The Last Train to Nowhere

It’s not the rattling, metallic grind of the wheels that wakes me up these nights, not anymore. It’s the silence. That particular kind of dead quiet you only get after the last carriage has rumbled out of sight, leaving you standing on a platform that feels suddenly too big, too empty. And then the cold seeps into your bones, deeper than any winter wind. That’s what I hear.

Twenty years. Twenty long, goddamn years, and I can still see her face. Not clear, not like a photograph. More like a smear against the grime-streaked window of the train, distorted by the speed and the rain that had started to fall, hard. A kid, no older than five, clutching a ragged doll, her eyes wide and wet. Her mother, a thin, hunched shadow beside her, pleading with her hands, not words, not anymore. Just hands, reaching.

The station was a ruin then, bombed out maybe, or just left to rot. Hard to tell the difference in those days. The signs were mostly gone, the roof had holes in it, and the air smelled of wet ash and something else, something metallic and burnt, a smell you learn to hate. We’d been told, shouted at, that this was the last one. The last train out. To *somewhere*. Nobody knew where exactly. Just away. Away from the dust and the hunger and the endless, whining sirens.

I had a spot. A small, cramped space on a bench made of splintered wood, between a man who coughed wetly into a handkerchief and a woman who stared straight ahead, a vacant look in her eyes like she’d already arrived at nowhere. My stomach churned with fear and an awful, acidic hunger. I had half a loaf of stale bread wrapped in a grimy cloth, a canteen of water I’d found in a ditch, and a ticket. One ticket. For me.

The whistle shrieked, a raw, tearing sound that echoed through the skeletal remains of the station. A signal. Get on or be left behind. People shoved, cursed, climbed over each other. Animals, all of us. Just trying to breathe another day. That’s when I saw them, the mother and the kid, standing right there at the edge of the platform, looking up at my window. Her hand went up, a slow, desperate arc.

My heart was pounding, a drum in my ears. I knew what she wanted. I knew what they all wanted. A hand up. A shared space. A sliver of hope. But there wasn’t any hope left, not really. Not enough for three people, not enough for two, maybe not even enough for one. I’d fought too hard for this spot. Stepped on too many hands. Heard too many screams just to get to this goddamn train.

The train lurched. Started to move, slowly at first, a heavy, grinding sigh. Their faces slid past. The little girl’s eyes. They weren’t accusing. Not yet. Just… pleading. I could’ve moved. Could’ve opened the window, pushed my arm out. Even just shouted a word. A lie, even. Something. Anything to acknowledge they were real. That I saw them.

But I didn’t. My hands were clamped around the stale bread, knuckles white. My gaze fixed on the dirty floorboards. The rhythm of the wheels picked up, faster now. The light outside, dim and grey, flickered past the window. The sound of their footsteps on the platform, running alongside for a second, then fading. Gone.

I kept my head down for what felt like hours. Couldn’t look up. Couldn’t face the other faces in the carriage, even though I knew they hadn’t seen. They hadn't seen *me* turning away. They were too busy burying their own ghosts, running from their own demons. But I saw me. I still do. Every single night, when the silence comes.

That train took me to some shitty, forgotten corner of the world. I survived. I built a life. A quiet one, a solitary one. Never had much. Never wanted much. The bread in my hand, the water in my canteen, it got me through. But it also damned me. Every bite since, every sip, it tastes like ash. Like the burnt metal of that station. It tastes like those wet, pleading eyes.

I tell myself it was survival. Pure instinct. Any man would’ve done the same. But some part of me, the quiet, persistent part that never shuts up, knows it’s a lie. Knows it was fear. Raw, ugly fear. And cowardice. That’s the truth, the whole, rotten truth. The last train to nowhere wasn’t just a journey out of a place; it was a journey into a specific kind of hell. One I built for myself, piece by piece, on a cold, rain-swept platform, watching two desperate souls disappear into the night.