Lost in Time: The Train That Stops Nowhere

The Day I Boarded the Train

It happened on a foggy Tuesday evening. I remember the way the mist curled around the platform, swallowing the edges of the station until it felt like I was standing inside a dream.

I wasn’t supposed to be there. I had missed my usual train home, and in my impatience, I decided to hop on the next one that pulled in. The train had no number, no destination sign. The doors opened silently, and without thinking, I stepped inside.

It wasn’t crowded, but the few passengers there sat with a strange stillness — not reading, not talking, just gazing out the windows at the endless curtain of fog. I took a seat near the middle, expecting the usual jolt forward.

Instead, the movement was so smooth I barely noticed we had left the station.

The View Outside

For a while, I tried to track where we were going, but the view never changed. No cities. No countryside. Just rolling waves of mist that seemed to glow faintly, as if the moon was hidden somewhere inside them.

Time passed — or at least, it felt like it did — but my watch had stopped. The hands were stuck at 6:47.

I turned to the older man seated across from me.

“Do you know where this train is headed?” I asked.

He smiled, a slow, knowing smile.

“Nowhere,” he said softly. “That’s the point.”

The Passengers

Over the next hour — or maybe it was a day, maybe a week — I noticed more about the people on board.

There was a young woman holding a letter, the paper worn and creased from being read too many times. She stared at it like she was trying to memorize the words all over again.

A middle-aged man sat with his eyes closed, his fingers lightly tracing the outline of a wedding ring.

At the far end, a child leaned against the window, drawing invisible pictures on the glass with her fingertip.

Nobody looked rushed. Nobody checked their phones. It was as if the urgency of life had been left on the platform.

Conversations That Changed Me

I spoke to the old man again. He told me he had boarded the train years ago — or maybe minutes ago — and that here, there was no past to regret, no future to fear.

“You can’t change where you’ve been,” he said, “but you can let it stop hurting you. That’s what this place is for.”

I asked the young woman with the letter why she was here. She said she was reading a goodbye she had never been able to accept. “But here,” she whispered, “it doesn’t feel final. It just… exists.”

I realized then that this train wasn’t about traveling through space. It was about traveling through moments — the ones we carry too heavily, the ones that weigh us down.

Losing Track of Time

At some point, I stopped wondering when I would get home. The stillness of the ride felt comforting, like a long exhale after years of holding my breath.

I thought about the mistakes I’d made, the people I’d lost, the words I wished I’d said. And instead of replaying them with pain, I just let them be.

The train hummed softly, almost like it was breathing with us. Outside, the fog began to thin, revealing brief flashes of sunlight, then shadows, then stars. It was like we were gliding through every hour of the day at once.

The Stop That Isn’t a Stop

Eventually, the train slowed. I thought we had reached a station, but when I looked out, there was only an empty platform floating in the mist.

“This is where I leave,” the old man said, standing up. “You’ll know when it’s your turn.”

He stepped out into the fog, disappearing instantly.

One by one, the others left too — the woman with the letter, the man with the wedding ring, the child with her invisible drawings.

I sat alone, unsure if I wanted to leave yet.

Coming Back

When the doors opened again, I found myself back at my original station, as if no time had passed at all. My watch still read 6:47, but the air was clear, and the streets outside glowed with the warm lights of evening.

I walked home that night with a lighter heart. I didn’t know if the train had been real or just a strange daydream, but I knew one thing: I had left something heavy behind in that fog.

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Thank you for reading

Best Regards: Habib