Whispers of Yesterday, the Train That Took Me Home

Emma's heels clicked against the cracked floor of the abandoned station, each echo swallowed by the heavy, unnatural fog. The timetable above flickered once before going dark — all trains canceled, except one.

The Last Train to Yesterday.

No schedule. No announcements. Only a single, gleaming black engine breathing steam like a sleeping beast.

Something in her chest twisted — instinct warning her to run. Yet her feet moved forward, pulled by a force older than fear.

A uniformed conductor waited by the door, his face shadowed under a wide hat. He didn’t ask for a ticket. Just nodded solemnly as she boarded.

Inside, the train hummed with a strange life. Velvet seats. Golden chandeliers. Windows that showed not the outside world — but memories.

Through one, she saw her childhood bedroom, frozen in warm afternoon light. Through another, her father's laugh echoed across a dusty guitar. Every window, every scene, pieces of herself she'd long since buried.

A cold voice whispered from nowhere:

"The past is a comfortable prison."

Emma moved cautiously, heart pounding. In the next carriage, she spotted Jack — the boy she had loved and left behind. He sat by a window, staring directly at her, as if he had known she'd come.

"Emma," Jack said softly, "you finally made it."

Tears blurred her vision. She reached out instinctively — and the moment her fingers brushed his, the train shuddered violently.

The lights above flared blood-red.

Somewhere deep in the train, a clock began to toll — slow, heavy, relentless.

Dong. Dong. Dong.

Jack's grip tightened like iron. His smile twisted, sad and desperate. "Stay with me," he begged. "Forget everything else."

Emma felt herself sinking — memories wrapping around her like vines. Every regret, every lost chance, tugging her backwards.

But above the noise, a second voice cut through, sharp and urgent:

"If you stay, you’ll be trapped forever."

The train's walls seemed to melt, dripping shadows. Faces from her past peered out — some laughing, some crying, all beckoning her to surrender.

Emma wrenched herself free, stumbling back into the corridor. The conductor now stood at the far end, his eyes glowing faintly.

"You have minutes," he said. "Choose."

The final doors loomed ahead — pulsing with golden light, barely holding back the rushing dark beyond.

Emma ran.

Behind her, the train screamed — a sound not mechanical, but human, the collective grief of every soul who chose memory over life.

She crashed through the last door just as the final bell rang out.

The night air hit her like a slap. When she turned, the train had vanished, leaving only silence and a single feather of mist curling into the stars.

Emma dropped to her knees, gasping, the weight of her past lifting from her shoulders like chains cut loose.

In the distance, the horizon blushed with the first kiss of sunrise.

She smiled through the tears.

The past was beautiful.

But it was over.

And she — she had a future to chase.



-