Weekly Story Writing Contest – Week 3 / The last train that was waiting for

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It was 1:00 a.m. at the station.

The approaching train was to make its commencement at 12:45, though on this evening the train was still standing there with its dull light shining in the thin fog which was drifting over the deserted platform.

Scarcely a soul was creating any disturbance at the station.

Some buzzing lamp flickering. Somewhere in the wind some distance away it was being beaten with a piece of metal and not screwed up. An old man was sitting on one of the benches and looked weakly and possessively wrapped up in an old coat. It was a long and sluggish breathing and every breath felt like bringing years with him.

In his trembling fingers he was clutching a small envelope with ragged brown edges.

The loudspeaker bursted into sudden motion with a snap of a loudspeaker.

One more is now a passenger to be taken to this train.

The voice faded into static.

There was something wrong about the announcement though.

Everything had already been packed into the train. And this was what the station master had informed me. Not even a ticket was left.

The primitive man slowly picked him up.

His tired eyes lingered slowly round the bare stage. The empty tracks. The red flashing lights which had been waving on the fog.

He already knew.

The announcement made it known to him.

His fingers had hold of the envelope.

"Still waiting..." he whispered to no one.

This was a live station that was in existence 50 years ago.

It was as licking as thieves, it was, hastened, and grabbed, and said, and walked out, and other side screamed, and grabbed.

And in pledging could never be achieved.

Her name was Meera.

When they were young, when they believed that love is everything that can unite a new life.

They had planned everything. On one rainy night they could even get on the last train and they would never see the city again. No expectations. No family pressure. The two and a future somewhere away out there.

She had been smiling that evening with rainwater that was plaguing her hair.

I await at Platform Three, which he had said to her.

But he never came.

Fear had held him back.

Again his disapproval was in his head, through his family. Doubts crept into his heart. His conscience, duty and responsibility haunted him and could not give the answers till after midnight.

Of heart it was timely untimely.

The train had already left.

And Meera and it... and life that they were to live.

Years rolled by.

The emotion of regret was sinking deeper and deeper in him, like a wound which was not stitched.

And his legs had brought him to the station to-night, and he did not know why.

He had been directed by memory most likely.

Perhaps something else.

The loudspeaker broke again.

This train has one other passenger.

The savage man lifted slowly out of the bench.

his heart first began to be overwrought in his breast, as a warning-bell which had never rung in thirty years.

He proceeded slowly towards the train.

The door was opened silently.

There in the carriage was a little stuffy against the outside with a sickly silver mist.

And there she was.

Meera.

The window that she had thirty years had it.

Her eyes were gentle. One of her smiles received by him was as warm as he had been in her thought fifty years.

"You're late," she said softly.

The old man wept through his cheeks.

"I know," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

Her hand rose and her hand was stretched out.

"The train waited," she said.

The fog had lost sight of the silent station.

On one occasion the train began to move at 1:02 a.m.

The next day, as the employees were reporting to a station to work in it, they saw that the bench in the station was empty.

No one had ever seen the old man walk away.

No, it was just a little envelope that he had been sitting on.

In it was a lapsed railroad ticket, of paper so weak in years that it was 50 years old.

And a scared voice brought words to say:

They cannot be carried on board all the trains.

They are waiting for courage."

Thanks for reading my post I'm inviting @bela90, @pea07 and @emmy01 to participate .