Train

Whoo woo ah ooo. A train whistles like a minor chord on a grand piano, muffled over the distance by the fog and snow.

There’s a body laying across the train track. Drunk and dramatic.

“You hear that sound? That’s seriously a train. Get up, you idiot, they come a lot faster than you think.”

The idiot stiffens his arms and legs a little more, if that’s even possible. He looks like a cartoon, like a cardboard cutout. It would be funny, if it weren’t for that minor detail.

“O. M. G. Are you kidding me?” A flurry of agitated kicking stirs clouds of snow that settle over his face. His eyes are closed, and he flinches, shakes his head, flails his arms and as the kicked snow continues, finally sits up, shaking snow out of his hair.

“Ok, okay, relax. It’s not like I’m going to really . . .”

Whaooorrr thundered out a sound, and there was nothing musical about it this time, it was like the groan of a beast before time, before the kill. Panic, and roll, and the screech of metal wheels on metal rails and the vibration of the ground and the draft sucking in. And even after that monumenteous organ grinds by, a thin echo of its shriek keeps playing in his ears.

Or maybe it was just her, because she’s kneeling next to him, mouth wide, and the screams merge into words, “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod are you all right, are you all right, are you all right?”

Yeah. He’s all right. She’s hugging him now, calling him a fucking idiot, is she crying or is that just snow melting on her face? It was all right. Sometimes you just had to force life to feel it.

Photo Prompt Mag 267