The Last Train from Hollow Station
On the edge of a rain-soaked town stood Hollow Station, a place the locals spoke of in hushed, uneasy tones. The platform stretched like a tired finger, and the rails sighed with every gust of wind as if the metal remembered every departure and every apology left unspoken. I arrived with a coat too thin for the night and a pocketbook full of questions I forgot how to answer.
The clock above the ticket booth refused to keep time, ticking in slow, deliberate breaths that felt almost human. A faded timetable fluttered in the breeze, its pages smelling of ink and rain, listing one solitary departure: The Last Train, bound for destinations named only in frost and rumor. The air grew heavier as if the station itself leaned closer, listening for the moment when a traveler would surrender to the clock’s quiet gravity.
“If you’re late for Hollow, you’re already late for home,” whispered a voice from the intercom, though the speakers coughed dust and the room offered no reply.
From the darkness beyond the tracks, a locomotive slid into view—not so much arriving as waking up. Its carriages bore the gloss of something ancient and patient, as if they had waited centuries for the right person to step aboard. The doors opened with a sigh that felt like a memory exhaling. Inside, each seat faced a mirrored window, and through those mirrors I saw people I recognized and others I did not—their eyes following me with quiet insistence, their smiles half-true and half-remorseful.
The conductor appeared at the edge of the car, a silhouette dressed in a uniform that seemed to refold itself with every breath. He offered a lantern that didn’t light so much as reveal, and a ticket that bore my name, etched in frost and shadow. “All aboard for what you left behind,” he said, not unkindly, as if reciting a line learned by heart from a book no one finished reading.
What followed was a sequence of rooms, each a tableau of possible lives: a kitchen radiant with steam and laughter; a street corner where rain stitched music into the air; a hospital ward where a mother counted breaths that never came back. The Last Train didn’t rush you toward a future; it carried you through the memories you chose not to forget, the regrets you never burned away, the promises you swore you’d keep and then let slip like coins through fingers.
To stay was to lose what you were; to go was to become part of something larger, something that remembered you long after your name is spoken only in whispers. The station’s platform grew narrower, the night deeper, until I felt the train’s heartbeat sync with mine and realized that Hollow Station wasn’t a place at all but a memory waiting to be boarded.
- Signs you’re nearing the Last Train: the air tastes like copper and rain, the echoes grow closer, your own name presses against your lips.
- There is a brief moment of choice—step aboard or linger, remember or forget.
- The whistle sounds twice, as if the carriage is swallowing a second breath.
- Mirrors reflect possibilities rather than faces, offering a future you might become.
- Once you board, the station vanishes, and you are left with the sound of wheels turning through the night.
When at last I found the courage to choose, the doors closed with a final, intimate sigh, and the world dissolved into a quiet rhythm. Hollow Station kept its promises with a patient grace—promises about endings that never end and journeys that loop back to where they began. I stepped onto the train, and the last light of the platform faded into the memory of a goodbye I hadn’t known I hadn’t said.