The Train of Abaddon

The constant sound of rumbling in the distance isn’t what awakened Lexi, nor was it the sun rays that made her see the pink behind her eyelids as she started to grow conscious. It was the bumping of her head against the hard floorboards. The lack of voices in the room.

Having lived in a house full of countless children over the past few years, awaking in silence only meant one thing: trouble. Only, this was a different kind of trouble, Lexi realised, as she finally opened her eyes and slowly looked around. The room was quite huge and long and made entirely of wood from the looks of it. It was dark, except for the sliver of sunlight that filtered in from a gap in one of the walls.

And it smelt – a mixture of faeces, urine, and sweat.

She forced herself to sit up while her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and it wasn’t long before she realised with shock that she wasn’t at all alone. Six others were in the room with her, and it was in that moment that the ground beneath her jolted and caused her to almost topple sideways that she realised something jarring-

“It’s a train.” Someone’s voice broke the silence, which caused her head to snap to the left where an older man sat against one of the walls as he watched her; eyebrows drawn, shoulders slumped. “The train.”

Without him needing to explain, she already knew exactly what he was eluding at.

The Train of Abaddon. A legendary train that picked people up at random for reasons nobody knew. A train that nobody has seen in hundreds of years – let alone survived.

“You’re lying,” Lexi croaked out, throat dry. The man only gives her an empty stare, the lines on his face seemingly getting deeper, as if he was aging before her very eyes. “Abaddon is just a folklore. A myth to scare children from wandering too far from home.”

“You are the youngest they’ve picked up in the five years I’ve been here.” Is all the man stated, sadly almost. He was like a statue, the way he sat; unmoving and still; as if all the fight in his body had left completely.

She ignored the five set of eyes that watched the interaction intensely from other areas of the room and narrowed her eyes at the older man.

“How could you have possibly survived here for five years? There’s nothing.”

“They give us food and water every two days. It’s not so bad.”

Lexi looked around the room to see the other people’s reactions, but they all looked away and decided to whisper between themselves. Her heart started to speed up. They were crazy – all of them.

This had to be some kind of sick joke. After all, just last night she… wait, what did she do?

As fear started to sink its claws into her back and force its way inside of her head, she stood up only to be thrown back abruptly by the moving room she was in.

It sounded like a train, and it felt like a train, sure, but this was not Abaddon – she told herself – it can’t be.

Ignoring the dull ache in her back, she stood up again and grabbed the wall for support before finally lunging to one end of the wooden room. There was no door. She strolled back to the other side, ignoring the eyes that followed her, only to find that the man she was speaking to was actually sitting beside the door in the same position. Legs sprawled, shoulders slumped, a resigned but interested look on his face.

She ignored him, too, and started slamming on the door with her fists.

“Let me out you sickos!” She screamed. “I don’t know who you are, but you will regret putting me in here! Let me out!”

“The door only opens when they want it to open. No one is on the other side. Don’t bother.”

Instead of hitting the man out of frustration, Lexi ignored him again and continued to pound and kick at the door. Over and over and over until – “Sit down, kid. You’re giving me a headache.”

She stopped, not because she felt bad for the man but because her hands and wrists were now burning in pain. She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slow and softly, before she finally turned to the man beside her and noticed he now had his eyes closed and his head tilted back against the wall.

Resting and peaceful despite the circumstances.

“This train has to stop eventually, right? Perhaps when it stops I can find a way out and-”

“It doesn’t stop. In all the five years of being in here, this train has never stopped.”

She stared at him, gobsmacked, and then couldn’t help but be outraged all of a sudden, even though he didn’t deign to look at her. “How can you just sit here in this place so comfortably? People kidnap you from your previous life – your home – and all you can do is just sit there?”

“You’ve heard the stories about this train, haven’t you?” a higher pitched voice questioned from the other side of the room.

Lexi turned to look at a woman who looked equally as tired and ragged as the man beside her.

“Yes, but they’re just stories. Myths and legends passed down and around. This could just be some sick experiment for all we know and you’re all just going to accept it?”

“Better to be in the hell you know than the hell you don’t know.” The man beside her quipped, finally opening his eyes again. When she meets his gaze, she finally shuts her mouth as she realised yet another fact: these people weren’t old and tired, they were resigned. They had given up. No matter what she said or did, they wouldn’t dare leave this room… this cage.

Better to be in the hell you know than the hell you don’t know, his voice echoed in her head as she finally sat back down in the same place she had awoken.

“You said that they gave you food and water,” Lexi remembered out loud, “Who’s they?”

The man shrugs, but even that singular motion was almost unnoticeable. It was almost as if it hurt to move at all. She wondered briefly if he sat there the entire five years.

“The Shadow People. The food appears when we’re all asleep, and then they wake us by ringing a bell. I‘ve never seen them before – no one has.”

“You’re insane,” she muttered under her breath as she pulled her legs up and hugged them against her chest.

“Soon you will be, too. And if you leave this room it will only get worse.”

She didn’t believe him, but then he looked at her with an expression that said he knew too much, his eyes so blank and empty that she almost wished she hadn’t said a thing.

So, she didn’t say another word.

And, like the man, she didn’t move from her spot except for when she needed to urinate in a designated corner a few hours later. Lexi stayed sitting, back against the wooden wall and eyes glued to the door to her left. She didn’t sleep, even when the smallest crack of light disappeared and plunged them into complete darkness. She didn’t even dare to yawn, not even when the sound of the others’ soft snoring met her ears.

It wasn’t until she heard the sound of a handbell ringing did she realise that she had stupidly dozed off. People scurried across the room to what looked to be a small plate of food and before she could even shake off her exhaustion, she forced herself up and ran to the door, almost slamming her body into it out of panic.

“Let me out!” She screamed as she banged hard on the door again. “Open this stupid door and let me out!”

The high-pitched sound of the handbell stops abruptly and a voice much louder than she was expecting almost caused her to trip backwards in shock.

“What is your name, little girl?” the voice didn’t sound like it came from behind the door, nor did it sound like it came from a speaker.

“Lexi Ardent.”

“Lexi Ardent…” they echoed, the voice nothing more than a taunting hiss in her head.

Violating.

Inhuman.

“And what will you give me in return, Lexi Ardent, if I let you pass through this door?”

A shudder forced its way down her spine as the voice slithered inside of her head, scraping at her ears and skull. She almost took a step away from the door at the intensity and strangeness of it all, but the dread of staying in this room – with these people who were happy to live in darkness and fear, and the smell of their own faecal matter – made her stay put and not back down.

She would not get left in a desolate place like this – not again.

“My phone. It’s the only valuable thing I have on me.” Albeit it didn’t work for some reason, no matter how many times she had smacked it or turned it off and on again. It would just blink at her.

“Try again, little girl,” the voice hissed. “I have little need for phones.”

“I have nothing else on me. No money or expensive clothes. All I have is my-” ring, she cut herself off as her right hand went straight to her left, almost as if to hide the only thing that mattered to her. A ring she had worn since she was eleven years old.

“Give me the ring and you may pass, Lexi Ardent.” The voice turned dark and cynical – amused, almost, at the sudden dread that enveloped Lexi. It was almost pitched black, so whoever she spoke to couldn’t have known she had a ring on. Could they have been watching her the entire time she’d been in the room?

She swallowed, but her throat was so dry she could barely even speak.

“This ring is worth nothing,” she stated – and she was right. It was merely made of steel with two letters engraved terribly on the inside. It was the kind of ring that couldn’t even buy a person some food off the street.

The sound of a snake hiss made her flinch as the voice said lowly; “I grow tired of this conversation, little girl. Either give me what you value, or stay. Decide.”

With the fingers on her right hand, she squeezed the ring and shut her eyes as she blurted out her answer, heart rate skyrocketing.

“Take the ring.”

“Don’t-!” someone called out from behind her, but before she could even turn to look, a white light all but blinded her when she opened her eyes, and the sound of gushing wind almost deafened her. What felt like hands clawed at every part of her; her clothes, her arms, her legs, her hair. It was like she was blind folded and trapped, yanked at every which way.

What felt like minutes but could only have been a few seconds passed because, by the time she opened her mouth to scream, the bright light faded and her ears cleared.

What she saw in front of her was something she’d never seen in her life. A scene that she never could have even dreamed of.

As Lexi took everything in with an equal amount of horror and exhilaration, she couldn’t help but think of what that man in the other train carriage had said. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she should’ve stayed in the place of darkness and melancholy, at least there was the comfort of knowing what she was up against.

But comfort was never something that Lexi really looked for, not really.

What she wanted in life Before the Train, and especially now that she was on this forsaken train, was freedom.

And there was no way in hell she was going to let some mythical train full of secrets and Shadow People stop her from getting what she wanted the most.

*** PICTURE AND VIDEO ATTACHED ARE NOT MINE. I DO NOT OWN THE COPYRIGHTS TO THEM AND FOUND THEM ON GOOGLE UPON SEARCHING "SCIFI TRAIN INSIDE".

The story, however, was written by me and I own all copyrights to it. I hope you enjoyed this short story. I may or may not turn it into a book if it gets enough reads ;) ***