Sims Life Musings

This story was written for the penultimate round of the writing contest I’ve been taking part in, and we had a limit of 3000 words. As a challenge worth more points we could attempt to write the story in a maximum of 500 words. Glutton for punishment that I am I went for the challenge version, and finished on 498 words  

The Last Train

“Please, let this year be different,” Frank sighed as he pulled away from Knightsbridge station.

Frank had been driving the trains on the Piccadilly line for twenty five years, and every year on 23rd November, at ten past midnight, the same thing happened. He wondered who he would have to comfort tonight, the fear so deeply etched onto their face that it was a miracle that their features ever returned to normal ….

Gina was gasping for breath as she collapsed onto the seat, her throat raw from the combined effects of the winter chill and running from the cinema to Leicester Square tube station. She’d arrived with seconds to spare; if she’d missed the last train she would have had to spend a small fortune on a cab home, which was not a prospect she relished. Her phone buzzed noisily in her bag, causing the elderly couple sitting opposite her to jump in unison.

“Sorry,” she muttered hastily, blushing as they shook their heads before continuing with their conversation.

She typed a quick reply to the message, promising to phone Tom as soon as she got home. Settling back against the seat she opened the newspaper that someone had left behind, soon engrossed by the latest spoilt celebrity to go into rehab. She looked up briefly as the train stopped at Holborn, the doors closing with a gentle click after the elderly couple stepped onto the platform. She took advantage of being alone in the carriage, swinging her legs up onto the seat. The elderly couple would not have approved.

Gina shivered as the doors opened at Russell Square, an ice cold blast of air blowing around her back and causing her to pull her coat more tightly around her shoulders. Six minutes past midnight: five stops and she’d be home.

The temperature in the carriage dropped even more, in spite of the heater whirring close to her feet. It didn’t appear to be bothering the silent man and woman a few seats away. Gina suspected that they must have boarded the train at King’s Cross while she was reading her horoscope, as she couldn’t remember anyone boarding at Russell Square.

All of a sudden her attention was pulled away from the newspaper. The man had dragged the woman to her feet, and they were arguing silently. Silently? They were less than fifteen feet from Gina, but she couldn’t hear a word of what was being said. Something glittered in the light, moving forwards and backwards rapidly, stained dark red. The woman’s blood was running to the floor in a dark, sticky torrent, her screams silent as the man plunged the knife deeper. Gina pulled the alarm cord seconds before the man rushed towards her with the knife. Her own screams were silenced by those of the train’s brakes, the knife inches from her chest.

She opened her eyes. There was no sign of the man and woman; no pool of blood. It was ten past midnight ….