Just to stick something on here, really.

An assignment for my course. No mark back yet though...



On the Last Day.

Another dreary day. It’s raining; drab little flecks of wetness land with dull thuds on the ground. Evening, so it’s dark, but the kind of darkness you only get with thousands of electric lamps shooting fake yellow lights into the sky. It’s a darkness you can see in, and you really don’t want to see.
The train platform is bathed in yellow, an insubstantial, odourless colour. It’s clinical, and almost cancels out what unpleasant smells do snake in the surrounding air. But sometimes unpleasantness is just what you need to feel, something. Bring on the stench.
A light on the ticket office flickers, tapping on and off, Morse code in its own, distinct language. It creates a little rave area to my left; I imagine mice and rats getting together when we’re gone and dancing the night away under it’s blinking glare.
I imagine allot when I’m alone on a platform waiting for a train. When I’m not alone, I imagine more. Listening in on other people’s conversations can add some excitement to a long wait for a missing-in-action train. You can embellish, edit, make them more attractive in your mind than they really are. They’re suddenly witty, thoughtful; movie versions of human beings.
But the World is dank today, and I don’t feel that anything is worthy of embellishment; I want to revel in my miserable, boring Friday evening.
I stand here everyday, or so it seems, and it never gets any better. You always hope that something exciting will happen, an anecdote for future coffee breaks. They re-paint the benches; thick green globs clogging up the once intricate patterning. They trace around the original grandeur of the bygone age of steam, then lace black wires up and down the posts to feed screens that don’t work and speakers that hiss at you. The old clock is still here, ticking away, too loud and ancient. When you’re alone on this platform, it’s all you can hear.
Someone joins me, just as I decide to ignore the World, and sits, no, slumps into the over painted bench closest to me. I lean more nonchalantly against the platform post; she’s very pretty. We’re both at the far end of the station, where the head of the train will stop.
Her face is fresh, her skin flustered with the windy night. Icicles of hair hang over her face, an absent hand fighting against them, but they still return to shield her cold, blue eyes. I can’t help but stare at her, and it seems that she can’t help but ignore me. A thick, woollen coat wraps the woman so tightly that I can still make out the delicate shape of her. Bare legs freeze below it, dangling childlike over the bench. I look away and at the screen that should be telling me when the next train’s in, but instead it just shows me snow. I don’t want snow. I consider moving to the bench, offering her my coat for her legs, something gentlemanly; but all my thoughts cast me as a Mr Hide character, leaning over her with dripping saliva while rubbing my hands. And she looks so sad, not just the cold, miserable English weather sad, but a deep, cut through sadness, and I’m no one to cheer anyone up. So I leave her.
Ten minutes, long, long, minutes, and finally an crackling announcement. The train is delayed, an accident, clearing the tracks. The worst thing about these announcements is that nobody is ever surprised; there’s just an all round tut and eye roll.
Another person joins us in time to miss the announcement. He strolls on, I never see people stroll these days; he should be holding a brolly. Not umbrella, a brolly.
He looks up at the static mess on the screen, ‘oh, right, have I missed it?’ he says out to the World.
‘Er, it’s delayed,’ I say. I too could use some editing.
‘Typical,’ he says, still not to me but to the air, himself, everyone. Then he looks at the girl disappearing into the bench. He smiles, and now I somehow know what Mr Hide truly looks like. ‘Well, missed the 5:45 anyway then?’ he says to her.
You can tell that she’s trying to ignore him, but an involuntary move of the neck brings him into her eye-line. She looks away just as quickly. He chuckles.
‘Thought you might, bit pointless running out, wasn’t it?’ Condescending is a good word to use here.
She sinks lower. The redness of her cheeks increases, and I realise that it’s probably more than weather that coloured them.
Silence for a moment, and the ticking clock is all I hear.
‘Why so melodramatic? You know you’ll be back Monday! Last day, indeed!’ He has a chipper air about him, and seems completely oblivious that the girl is now crying. He looks at me, ‘don’t you hate melodrama, such a waste! All that exertion, for what? She’ll be back, bright and early Monday morning, all sheepish like last time.’ he laughs, a jolly sound, like Mr Hide after ripping out a heart or two.
The girl won’t look at me, and suddenly all I want is her gaze. The redder her face becomes the prettier she is. I just want to catch her eye and smile and let her know that it’s all ok and she’ll smile back at me and I’ll know it too.
‘I suppose this one will be full, bustling it’s way from London.’ He says, this time to the air again.
I feel obliged to answer; eye contact with a person does that to you. ‘Oh, yes, it’s normally full. It always seems worse coming back, doesn’t it? Businessmen, all that; spilling the big macs their wives won’t let them eat. Talking too loud, clicking away at terribly important keyboards.’ I want to stop but I can’t; all the time the image of his suit pulses at me. The laptop-bag hits me in the face with every syllable. ‘Don’t normally see you here?’ I say with a questioning lilt that comes out in a squeak.
‘I’m normally on the later train but I thought I should try to catch her,’ he nods his head at the girl, whose stopped crying and is sitting very still, serene almost, and staring out towards the tracks.
‘Oh.’ I say, wanting to know every inch of her life story.
‘Yes, you’re a silly girl, Kate, like it matters, and you won’t throw it all in just because it’s not going your way!’ he snorts. Yes, snorts.
‘Um, what?’ I say quietly, hoping to move in on her on the train with some ammunition and sympathy.
The man rolls his eyes, ‘Things not going her way, well it’s not our fault is it? It’s all very sad, the death of a child, but what’s it got to do with the Company?’
I feel my entire body, mind and soul back away, but I’m not sure if it’s from the girl or to her. The clock seems set on drowning out every other sound. ‘Really?’ I say.
‘You try for sympathy, don’t you? You give them paid holiday, but really, you can’t skulk around the office for months.’ He’s speaking quite loudly now.
I’m very aware of the ticking clock and the flashing lights and the electricity of it all. I look at the girl, because I know she can hear. She’s not moved from her stare at the railroad tracks. The ticking becomes louder, the flashes more intense. She looks like she’s sitting on a set, a movie where the director’s showing off his post-modernist vision of hell.
All I want is to touch her, for some reason I want to grab her face and twist it to me. Make her eyes burrow into mine, make her understand. But that’s where it all falls apart; how can I make anyone understand when I don’t know what matters? I don’t understand. And she won’t look at me. The clock is everything, the tick is hurting me. It’s like a Hitchcock bomb becoming louder and louder and ready to blow.
‘Ah!’ Mr Hide makes a sound of elation and exclamation marks, ‘there it is!’
The train can be seen. A couple more people have joined us at the other end of the platform, and we all march towards the yellow line. The train is deafening, and finally the clock is silenced.
She stands just ahead of me, the man is moving down the platform, to avoid her carriage, I suppose. Good, I will have her to myself, we shall have to stand together by the door, I’ll smile, she’ll have to look, and we’ll talk and I’ll help her and I’ll be a good person at last.
As I think this I look at her, and she’s looking at me, and I feel my heart start, I feel the arteries pump, I feel that it will all be alright.
‘It is the last day,’ she says into a silence that envelopes me now, and she smiles at me at last, as the train comes in and she disappears into it’s path.