SERIAL FICTION

PLATFORM SIX — The Last Train in the Rain —Episode 5

Some journeys begin with hope—the ones that make us change have a decision

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The newspaper even prophesied my death. It was not what I was scared of.

The most frightening thing was the fellow who was standing next to my body.

My brother.

The brother who I had buried ten years ago. He did not even want to save me,and he was awaiting me.

The newspaper came out of my hands and fell into a shallow puddle. Rain covered the page until my picture was smudged by the water. I came out even more distorted. Police tape had been over the station entrance. The wet pavement was streaked with blue and red emergency lights. The headline was sharp.

LOCAL MAN SLAINed at Station Disaster.

I could not look at it for long.

Instead, my eyes came upon Daniel.

He was a few feet away, over there beyond the flashing lights, his hands in the pockets of the same dark jacket in which I last saw him alive. He was more mature than the picture that I had had for so many years, and still certainly himself.

He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t grieving. He was a man who had resigned to a conclusion which he could never upset.

“Why, I do not know,” I said.

The lady sitting next to me saw the newspaper and folded it before the rain would have completely removed the ink.

"You will."

The rails under our feet started humming. It began as a boring sound, almost under the platform, and swelled to a higher-pitched soun or a slow beat of a far-off heart. The noise passed along the walls of the station until not one of the lights above it trembled.

There was another train on the way.

It was not announced.

No timetable.

No destination board.

Only rain.

I should have run.

In every instinct I knew I must quit the station and abandon the impossible ticket, and keep the remainder of my life wishing that none of this had occurred.

Rather, I recalled the last voice note of Daniel.

Don't let them remember you.

I had thought days that he was telling me to mind my death.

So there I was, with the rain getting into my coat, and the paper lying against my bosom, when it struck me there was another possibility.

Perhaps he was not even telling me that I was going to die.

Perhaps he was telling me I was going to become what I would have become were I not letting go.

The woman gave me the folded paper.

"Come with me."

"Where?"

"Home."

She wasn't speaking about my apartment.

She was referring to the yellow ticket that was lying in my pocket.

HOMEBOUND.

One Way.

No Return.

The words were even heavier than ever.

Not that the paper was different.

Since I was now aware that no traveling was without cost, it tells you where you will go.

The train four came without noise through the rain.

Nothing showed in its windows.

No logo, no route number, no indication that it was a part of the world beyond Platform Six was fastened to its metal sides.

The doors opened. The woman was the only one who took a step.

Once she turned behind her.

Yet still, I may have some questions to ask, said she, now-- this is the last place they will be answered.

I followed her. There was no one in the carriage.

Rows of worn seats stretched beneath dim yellow lights. There was a weak scent of rainwater and stale paper in the air. Farther down the train was a clock, but with slow, patient certitude.

Each seat was towards the rear of the carriage.

There was only one wooden door at its end.

It did not look like anything in the train, as everything else did.

No symbols.

No locks.

Only a rustic handle of brass that is simply being polished by hundreds of hands. It was by the side of which the woman stopped.

"You have to open this one yourself."

"What's on the other side?"

Her head was downed.

And ten years of your life in changing him.

I understood she was going to say such before she uttered.

Daniel.

His last morning.

The accident.

So many years had I replayed that day, till memory was no longer memory. It was my refuge whenever the world was too quiet.

Suppose I were to have answered him?

But what if I had asked him to have coffee?

What had I done? Had I driven?

Grief is surviving with questions with no answers. It makes you believe that a single choice can save a lifetime.

It takes ten long years before you miss somebody. It is also a prolonged period to remain prepared in case they come back.

I had lost ten years trying to come to terms with Daniel being dead.

One impossible train had unraveled all that. The woman had her hand pressed lightly on the door.

"You don't have much time."

“What will happen to me if I do not go?”

“Then thou wilt spend the remainder of thy life in wondering.”

"And if I do?"

For the first time since I met her, sadness crossed her face.

"You'll understand."

She stepped away. The train stood dead still.

Even the rain appeared to wait upon the other side of the windows.

I clenched my hand on brass.

It felt warm.

I’m almost familiar. I made one long breath. Then, I opened the door.

The light of the day blazed through.

The train was swallowed up under my feet.

I stood at a street. The fresh bread perfumed the morning air like a corner bakery. Here, against a fence, as I knew, a bicycle was leaning. On the opposite side of the road, Daniel had left his old car under a flower tree.

A music watered softly at the open driver window.

Daniel was standing by the car, rummaging his pockets to find the keys which he always dropped.

He looked up. One moment, our eyes had met.

Thereupon, he smiled graciously. Not on account of his knowing me. As he believed, I was another stranger going by in his morning.

My heart was dead. It had taken me a decade to wish that I could talk to my brother one more time.

I did not even consider the cost of it. Daniel turned back to his automobile, still trying to find his keys.

He chuckled at himself as he at last located them in the breast pocket of his jacket.

It was a so common thing. And it was the most painful thing.

Death had reduced him to a memory.

As I stood there, I recalled the time he was a man and lost his keys, hummed songs he never finished, and grumbled that coffee was never hot enough.

Vergie had whitened him to perfection.

Life had never demanded of him that he should be perfect.

It had merely requested him to live. My feet moved me on until I was walking.

"Daniel."

My voice scarcely got to him.

He turned.

“I am so sorry,” he said and smiled. “Do we know each other?”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

Where do I start in a sentence with the ten years of missing somebody?

To answer his question on how I could know that I had memorized the sound of his laughter because I feared time in robbing me of the sound?

What should I say to him — that all the impossible roads that I had traveled to this day had returned me to this one morning?

Remembering me saying:

“You make me laugh.”

The words were more violent than he could have imagined.

"I suppose I have."

Not knowing, he smiled, and looked to the dark clouds swelling over the town.

There was a word going around that we would have rain before noon.

Rain.

Even here, it had discovered us. Daniel had his hand on the door of the driver.

All the instincts within me cried to halt him.

So as to say to him, abide.

To enter another road. To choose one variant over the other.

The Homebound ticket was in my pocket, and my fingers were close.

The paper was unbelievably light.

Like a decade of sorrow was heavier than the decision.

So long had I thought that love consisted in not letting go.

Through cities I crossed with the photograph of Daniel.

I downloaded the sound of his voice to not lose it.

I traced dead ends in trains in dead defeat because hoping grief was a thing to be bargained.

There was a decade in which I longed to have an additional talk with my brother.

I never stopped to wonder what it would cost.

The first in the series of rains falls on the hood of the car in which Daniel is riding.

In a few seconds the sky parted way.

Daniel glanced up at the clouds, smiling as he always did when the rain spoiled his plans.

He still was not able to see me as I was.

Perhaps that was mercy.

Perhaps there were some goodbyes that were never to be reunions.

I checked the yellow ticket.

HOMEBOUND.

One Way.

No Return.

I finally understood.

The journey had never been about bringing Daniel back. It was bringing me home.

Tear after tear I cut the ticket in two.

The paper faded away before it hit the floor, and it was swept away by the rain as though it had never been.

A warm breeze was blowing down the street. The voices of the town died down.

Daniel was leaning on the roof of his car with one hand. For a moment, he stared at me full in the face.

Not through me.

At me.

His smile was watery.

Gentle.

The smile of an older brother who knew exactly when to stop talking.

He lifted one hand.

Two fingers first.

Then the rest.

The wave had been the one which I had observed in the train window on Platform Six.

This time I also raised my hand.

Nor did we say anything.

We didn't need to.

Not all conversations involve speaking.

Daniel nodded once. Then he drove into the car. The engine started. The car disappeared around the bend. I didn’t follow.

For the first time in ten years... I let him go.

The world closed nonchalantly around me.

This street was swallowed up into silver precipitate.

The bakery vanished.

The music disappeared.

As I opened my eyes I found myself standing on Platform Five.

Not Platform Six. Platform Five.

In the morning rush, passersby were held by umbrellas and paper cups. After knocking my shoulder, I was apologized to.

As a train came to the station, a child laughed. Life had gone on, waiting for an absence. I put my hand into my jacket. The picture of Daniel had disappeared. I felt in all the pockets.

Nothing.

Then I shut my eyes. I could not remember now what the color of his jacket had been. Or the mould of his hand. Or the ivory voice he whistled a song with when he was driving. Those details had faded. The love hadn’t.

My phone vibrated. My final voice message.

No number.

No name.

And nothing but the sound of rain.

I pressed play. There was a few seconds of silence. Then Daniel laughed. Softly. Warmly. Precisely in the manner that I recalled.

“Go live your life, little brother."

The recording ended. No further messages. No mysterious numbers. No impossible warnings. Only silence.

Beyond the station there was a light drizzle.

At this point, it halted.

The light of the sun had forced its way through the clouds, and struck the tracks, making them brightly silverlike.

When I was standing there, I was before the old ticket window. The yellow lamp was missing. The glass was foggy. There was no chair inside. No drawer. The slightest indication of any recent effort to work there. A senior station worker was looking over my shoulder.

“Would you like me to assist you?” he asked.

“I was looking for Platform Six."

He frowned kindly.

“Only five have we ever had.”

I smiled.

“I know."

He bowed his head and made a departure.

Perhaps he believed that I had lost the station. Maybe I had.

I took a bag and headed to the door. As I crossed the concourse halfway, I paused and looked behind me one more time.

Five platforms. Five ordinary trains. Hundreds of common men starting with common days. There was nothing in the station to indicate that miracles had ever occurred there. Perhaps they hadn’t. Maybe miracles do not always seem to be extraordinary at the moment.

Well, maybe it’s just those silent moments when somebody decides to continue to live.

The air smelled fresh outside after the rain.

I exhaled slowly.

Then another. The burden of ten years had been taken away. Not that I had forgotten Daniel. Since I no longer had to continue to seek him.

A train had come behind me. Its whistle went round the city and vanished into the darkness.

I did not turn round this time. I kept walking. The rain had ended. So, I had my journey.

Thank You For Reading!

— Âññ