One of the pieces I chose is one I wrote a while ago. I'm kind of proud of it, so I thought I'd throw it up here. Hope you enjoy it.
The Train
The consistent ticking of the wheels over the sleepers made it hard to focus. He had considered trying to sleep, but rather than relaxed he felt agitated. No matter how he sat there was a discomfort in his muscles he couldn’t shake.
He dragged his eyes back to the top of the page, but after two sentences he snapped the book shut and flung it to the floor. He sighed, and turned his face to the warm sunlight drifting through the carriage window. The desert outside rushed past, cooking under its heat, but the conditioned air inside the train was cool. He closed his eyes and, taking a deep breath, attempted to relax.
“Excuse me.”
His eyes flung open. The breath caught in his chest as he felt fear jolt through his body. Slowly he turned, his face a mask of dread, to the source of the voice. Standing awkwardly in the aisle, looking not a day over 19, was a red haired girl.
He didn’t have a weapon.
Jammed in his seat, he was completely at her mercy; any move he made would be easily countered. Every muscle in his body was tensed in preparation for her first strike. Unmoving, they stared at each other. Seconds thick with apprehension dragged by.
Then, she spoke.
“Could I sit with you?”
He said nothing. Every instinct he had was telling him to kill her.
She beckoned to the seat between them. “May I?” she asked.
She sounded British. He remained silent.
She sat.
His eyes darted to the only other passengers he could see through the high-backed seats; an elderly man and his granddaughter, on the opposite side of the aisle. He knew there were at least a dozen other people in the carriage.
“We don’t have to do this here,” he said. His words were deliberate and even.
She responded calmly, “I’m not going to make a scene, especially with people around.”
“Oh, you’re worried about them, are you?” he asked.
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yes,” he said firmly.
He glanced around the carriage uneasily. He had almost no understanding of what was happening, but he knew that he couldn’t provoke her. He needed to avoid violence as long as possible, at least until she gave him an opening.
“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” she said plainly.
He wasn’t sure he believed her; she had to be there for a reason.
“What is it you want?” he asked her.
“To die.”
It took him several seconds to process this.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“I want to die.” She spoke as much to the seat in front of her as to him. “When I get off this train I will walk into the middle of the desert, and out there I will end my life.”
He didn’t know how to respond. Experience told him not to trust her, but if she had wanted to attack him she easily could have by now. With him boxed against the window she still had the advantage, but she’d conceded a great deal of it by sitting down.
“So what do you want from me?” he asked cautiously.
“A conversation,” she answered simply.
“There are plenty of people here.”
“I thought you might understand better, considering our... common experience.”
Their commonality was exactly why he wanted to be nowhere near her.
“You’re hoping I’ll talk you out of it?”
“I don’t think I can be talked out of it,” she replied, “and I don’t think I want to be. I just want to have another conversation before I die.”
He tried to subtly examine her as they spoke. She didn’t seem too strong, but since she had him cornered that hardly mattered. Her pale skin seemed almost translucent, and her straight, nearly fluorescent hair hung below her shoulders. He made a note of it; hair that long could be exploited in a fight. She moved to brush a strand from her face, and he saw a glint under the sleeve of her thin grey hoodie. Wrapped around her delicate wrist was fine chain necklace, and from it hung a silver cross.
“Why the desert?” he asked.
“There would be a symmetry to it, I suppose. I was born out here.”
He knew what she meant.
“I wasn’t out here long,” she continued, “it was maybe a year?”
“You sound British.”
“I spent a lot of time in England,” she replied simply, “You sound like you’re from here.”
“The UK, originally. I moved here quite early.”
She smiled. He knew why; there was a symmetry to it.
It was endearing, and despite his caution he found himself becoming comfortable with her. He was aware that this could be an act, but he didn’t feel like he was in immediate danger. The more he spoke to her, the more false his initial apprehensions seemed.
“It’s rare to find someone who’s really stayed in one place,” she said, “We tend to move around a lot.”
He was curious. “You’ve run into a lot of us?”
“More than I can count.”
“And how many walked away?” he continued casually.
“Including you?” she asked, “It would make a big difference, proportionally.”
He saw the humour in the statement, despite its gravity. “We’re not really the conversational type, are we?”
“No,” she said, gravely, “we aren’t.”
She slid down in her seat. He realised suddenly how tired she seemed, as though they had talked through an entire night. She looked young, but seemed old. This was nothing unusual; they were all that way. She looked particularly young, though, and he didn’t know why this was. Perhaps it was simply her appearance, but he thought there was something more to it. It might have been the way she held herself; she possessed a strange docility.
He was reminded of why they were talking at all.
“Why do you want to die?”
She turned to look at him, her expression blank.
“Do you really have to ask?”
He supposed he didn’t.
This was the first time he’d really looked at her face. Her eyes were grey, that silvery grey that could cut a person in half. He couldn’t help but notice how attractive she was. He felt his eyes slide over her.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, puzzled.
“Your neck,” he said, honestly.
“Why?”
She sounded as though she genuinely didn’t know.
“I was noticing how pale you are.”
There was a pause. Her eyes didn’t leave his.
“Would you fuck me?” she asked passively.
It sounded raw coming from her. He couldn’t have imagined her saying it before she did. A word he used a dozen times a day from her had so much power. Immediately he thought of his hands tangled in her hair, and the coarse moan she would make as he slid into her.
He spoke calmly, “You’re about to kill yourself; I don’t think it would be appropriate.”
“And if I wasn’t about to kill myself?”
“If you weren’t about to kill yourself, you and I would have inflicted a great deal of violence upon each other.”
She didn’t respond. He could see how obvious it was to her that he’d avoided the question.
“Do you know why I wanted to talk to you?” she asked, “Even though I knew how it would probably end?”
He looked at her expectantly.
“I thought you might be a sign.”
She almost seemed embarrassed. His eyes went back to the cross on her wrist.
“After everything that’s brought you to this point, you still...”
“Yes.”
She wasn’t defensive. She said it plainly, like it was a simple, knowable fact.
“So... where do you think you’re going?”
“Nowhere,” she replied.
He didn’t understand.
“There’s nowhere to go,” she explained, “I believe in a creator, not an afterlife. If there was somewhere to go, I know exactly where it would be, and suicide wouldn’t make a lot of sense, then. I’m not going anywhere; I’m just going to stop.”
It was the first time he’d heard her say the word “suicide”. Somehow, the clinical term made him terribly uncomfortable.
“So that’s it, is it? You think that you’ll just ‘stop,’ and you won’t feel any more, what, remorse?”
“That’s not the right word for it,” she said quietly, “There is no word for how I feel about the things I’ve seen, and the things I’ve done.”
“You never thought to try and repair any of it? To try and undo some of them?”
“Some things can’t be undone.”
“So instead you’ll do nothing. You’ll die?”
“All I’ve ever done is harm. When I look at my life, it’s like it’s defined by the harm I’ve caused, like it’s the only reason I exist. I can’t get away from that. You can’t understand what it’s like to know, really know, that you are evil. I want to be free of it, I want to be free before God.”
“There is no fucking God,” he said, his voice thick with finality.
She was silent. His words hung in the air.
They felt the inertia pull them forward as the train began to slowly decelerate. They were approaching the station.
She spoke, with the slightest waver in her voice.
“This is my stop.”
She stood, and entered the aisle. She looked back at him, but said nothing. He remained in his seat, staring back at her. She gave a short nod, and began to walk to the end of the carriage.
“Wait.”
She stopped.
He slid out of his seat, and approached her in the aisle. He stood for a moment in front of her.
“I would fuck you and I don’t want you to kill yourself.”
He was sure that the other passengers heard him, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about how sexist he felt, and he didn’t care about the risk to his life. He didn’t care about the pain she’d caused or the people she’d slaughtered; he didn’t want this girl to die.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t think I can be talked out of this.”
She looked into his face. Her silver eyes were wet, but no tears fell from them. The look she gave was unlike any he had ever been given. It was a look of regret and heartache and tranquility and loss. It was a look of gratitude, of fear, of longing and fatigue. It was a look of life, and a look of death. It was a look of acceptance.
He realised in that moment why she looked so young. In that look he could see her soul, aged and frayed, worn thin. It was a bedraggled, weary, exhausted thing. It had lived far too much, and when seen through her youthful face it’s age was even more stark. She looked so unbelievably young because, within, she was so unfathomably old.
This moment of terrible, crushing empathy made him want to save her all the more, but now he couldn’t. Now he understood, or rather he accepted how little he understood. Next to her, he was like a child. Knowing that, he couldn’t say a word; he didn’t have the right.
The train stopped.
She slowly dropped her gaze, and walked towards the carriage door. She looked back to him, a faint smile on her face, and stepped out into the desert.
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