This was a piece written for class. We had to go from the normal to the weird.
The train left Stowmarket bang on time, and
began to pick up speed; they’d be in Diss within the half hour. The rain lashed
one side of the train, while the sun caressed the other and a rainbow arced
across the sky.
“Run over your garden before it vanishes,”
Marty said to himself counting the colours of the spectrum. The quiet coach was
deathly silent, just like libraries used to be before they became community hubs.
Marty stared out of the window, half
looking forward to getting to Diss, half wishing he could stay on this train
forever. The clouds were growing darker now, the rainbow had vanished and the
rain was as heavy as Marty’s eyelids. There was a smell of pertichor in the
air. A fork of lightning slashed through the sky and hail rattled off the
windows. Trees bent in the wind waving their branches in their air like they
just didn’t care. The train lights flickered off and on and the train seemed to
increase speed.
He jumped as something hit the window. It
could only be rain or a branch, but he felt like they’d bashed through a swing
door. He looked down at the book he was
reading, but he couldn’t concentrate. As he looked up he saw a face outside his
window, white, scabby, distorted, then it was gone. Marty shook his head. The
weather was playing tricks with his tired mind. Another clatter on the window,
like another door. Now it was pitch black outside. It felt like he was in a
tunnel but there were none on this stretch of track. Marty checked his watch,
it was only three thirty, it looked like midnight. He could see nothing but his
own reflection and was there another face? A shadow of his own? It’s just the
way the reflections works, he told himself, but somehow this new face seemed
older, tireder if it was a reflection then it was a reflection from the future.
It slid away.
Lightning ripped across the pitch black
exterior. He could see a man lurching across the field. Just a beet picker
Marty told himself, but he didn’t look like any beat picker. It was a haggard
figure, crouching, slouching, heading towards the tracks. The train screeched
to a halt, a smell of burning filled the carriage. Marty sat listening to his own
heart. Lightning forked, crackling across the sky and Marty briefly saw the
figure, it was closer now its ugly face crying for help.
The lights flickered again, flash off,
flash on, flash off. Darkness. One of Marty’s fellow passengers laughed, a true
horror laugh. Marty shivered and clenched his fists, digging his nails into his
palms, willing the train to move.
The elements lit up the sky and the figure
was now at the window. Large eyes pleading with him, a mouth stretched in pain.
He lifted a dirty hand ready to smash the window.
The train jumped, spluttered and moved, the
lights slowly illuminating the carriage. It picked up speed, running now,
trying to make up for lost time. the train battered and clattered the track,
bursting through the darkness. Faces appeared at the window out of nowhere and
then disappeared in seconds. Marty clung hold of the arm rests. They seemed to
be heading downhill fast, Marty left his stomach behind. This was crazy, trains
didn’t go up and down steep hills and anyway, this was East Anglia, there were
no hills.
“Ladies and Gentleman we will shortly be
arriving in Diss,” the train announcer’s words coincided with a dramatic lurch
to the left and then to the right. It was like they were flying through the
storm, not on a train.
“Passengers leaving us at Diss, please
check you have all your personal belongings and mind the gap between the train
and the platform edge.”
Marty grabbed his coat and bag as the train
slowed and headed for the door. He had all his personal belongings, but he was
leaving a little of his sanity on that train.
Great story
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