The Seat Beside Me

BY WAQID ALI . pk

The Seat Beside Me

The train arrived at 7:42 a.m. every weekday without fail. Same screech of metal, same rush of tired bodies, same cold air trapped inside steel walls. For Elena, routine was comfort. Predictable. Safe.

She always chose the same seat—second row from the door, window side. And she always kept the seat beside her empty.

People noticed.

Some frowned. Some sighed. A few asked politely if the seat was taken. Elena always gave the same answer with a soft smile.

“Yes. It is.”

No one ever argued.

Elena never explained that the seat wasn’t empty to her. Not really.

Every morning, she felt it—the subtle shift in weight, the faint warmth beside her, the pressure of presence without form. She never looked. Looking made it feel wrong, like acknowledging it would break something fragile. Whatever sat there had been with her since the accident two years ago. Since the night rain swallowed the road and the car spun too fast.

After that night, the seat beside her was never empty again.

Until one morning, everything changed.

The train was unusually crowded. People stood shoulder to shoulder, breath fogging the glass. Elena took her usual seat and angled her bag toward the empty space beside her, shielding it out of habit.

At the next stop, a man stepped on.

He was ordinary—mid-thirties, dark coat, tired eyes. Without hesitation, he sat down in the seat beside her.

Elena’s heart dropped.

She stared at the space. Her breath caught. The familiar pressure was gone.

“There’s—” she began, then stopped.

The man smiled politely. “Sorry. Was someone sitting here?”

Elena looked around.

No one reacted. No gasps. No confusion. No one noticed anything wrong.

She shook her head slowly. “No. It’s… fine.”

But it wasn’t.

The train moved, and Elena’s hands trembled. She felt cold on that side. Hollow. Like a limb she’d lost without realizing it.

At the next station, something stranger happened.

People started staring.

Not at Elena.

At the empty air beside her.

Whispers rippled through the car.

“Is she… seeing it?”

“Why isn’t she reacting?”

“Does she not know?”

Elena swallowed. “Seeing what?”

The man beside her turned pale. “You don’t see him?”

Her pulse thundered. “See who?”

The man stood abruptly. “I—I need to move.”

He stumbled away, eyes wide with fear.

A woman across the aisle leaned forward, voice shaking. “Miss… the seat beside you—it’s occupied.”

The world tilted.

“By who?” Elena asked.

Silence.

Then, slowly, someone answered.

“By you.”

The train seemed to freeze.

They described her perfectly—the same coat, the same scar on her wrist, the same tired eyes. Sitting beside her. Watching her. Never speaking.

Always there.

Elena’s chest tightened as memories flooded back. The rain. The headlights. The scream she never remembered making.

She finally turned her head.

The seat beside her was still empty.

But she understood.

She had survived the crash.

A part of her hadn’t.

The thing that sat beside her every morning wasn’t a ghost haunting her. It was the version of herself that never left the train. The part frozen between before and after. The self that absorbed the shock so the rest of her could keep living.

And now—now it was gone.

That morning, someone else had taken the seat.

The train slowed to her stop. Elena stood, legs weak. As she stepped off, she felt lighter. Lonelier. Whole in a way that hurt.

Behind her, the train doors closed.

No one saved the seat anymore.

And for the first time in two years, Elena rode alone—carrying only herself forward.