The Train Never Comes
A short story
The last time you called I was in a crowded church service. I fell asleep, tired from working two jobs, in the little lobby with the vending machines. When I woke up your number was splashed across my screen. I held you on the other end and decided not to answer. It was evening. You were usually drunk those nights.
I went to a friend’s and slept on her gray couch. I was always tired in those days from working. Always working. I woke up to another number, a family member who didn’t call much, and I hit Ignore, the bright red button, and let it go to voicemail. I needed sleep. When I woke up and made my way to my car it was still early morning. No one else was around.
I found out you were dead in a voicemail, cool metal held to my face while I listened. Her voice was quiet on the other line, recorded an hour before. You had slipped away in your sleep. Later I would find out it was pain killers and vodka, a combination you liked, but this time it ended you.
Have you ever heard of visitation dreams? I read about them a few nights ago. It’s when the dead come to you in a dream. Tell you something you need to know. Say goodbye one last time.
I don’t know if it was you who came, but I dreamed after you died. I was standing at a railroad track. The lines stretched on in either direction for infinity. The sky was sickly, acidic. Like Salvador Dali’s paintings. We were in the desert alone, not another soul at the station, waiting for a train that would never come. You told me that.
“The train never comes.”
I never knew what that meant, but if you were here I could ask you, and you might have a hunch about it. You were spiritual after all. I wait sometimes, all these years later, thinking I’ll make sense of your life somehow. Think you back into existence to ask you questions. Bring meaning to the pain of it all.
But the train never comes.
This is writing that the reader can relate to in ways that evoke emotion around their own losses. It certainly did me. I lost my childhood friend in the summer of 2017 and am tormented by the fact that I was with him 2 days before his suicide and never picked up on the signs that I'm sure were present. As with your character in the first person, I am left with the emptiness of unanswered qstns. But alas, that train never comes.
Wonderfully written, Shaina, and cathartic to many of us.
This piece is some fine writing for sure, and as always leaves me wanting. It is a foretelling for some and unfinished memories for others, all with regrets for which there is no solace!