Nightmare on the Stranded Express
The Stranded Express slid to a stop where no station appeared, only a blank white glare that stretched in every direction. The snow pressed against the windows like fingernails, and the power flickered once, then died, leaving the car full of shadow and the soft hum of a machine that refused to wake. Passengers whispered in half-voiced fears, counting the minutes as if they might add up to something rational, something that would undo the nightmare waiting beyond the doors of the next car.
I kept to the rear carriage, where the air smelled faintly of old perfume and rain. The conductor’s seat was cold, not a single ember of pride left in the leather. A nurse with a gray shawl pressed her palm to a child’s fevered brow, but the child’s eyes stared through her, as if already somewhere else, listening to a clock that ticked in a different world. The door between cars shuddered, not with wind, but with a sigh—one long, mournful breath that rose from the tracks beneath and settled in the ribs of the train, making every breath feel borrowed and dangerous.
“Stay with the train,” a voice whispered from the dark, though no one claimed it as their own. “Stay with the train, and you will learn what the rails mean when they forget you.”
In the dim glow, a map of the line hung on the wall, torn at the edges, as if someone had gnawed at it for years. Every station between here and there was crossed out, as though erased by a giant hand. A rumor began to circulate among the passengers—that the tracks themselves remembered every soul who rode the Stranded Express and kept the memory like a thorn in the side of time. A man with a mustache swore he heard the wheels whisper when the car slowed, counting the heartbeat of the night. A woman with chipped nail polish swore the corridor grew longer each time she walked it, stretching toward a door that should not exist.
- The sound of wheels turning, though the wheels lie still.
- Breath visible where no one has breathed for miles—except the cold itself.
- A clock that advances only when the train forgets to move.
- A collective memory of strangers, all of them chasing a way out that isn’t there.
- Footsteps that aren’t yours following you back through a mirror of windows.
As minutes bled into hours, the car’s walls seemed to breathe, and the ceiling lowered just enough to press vitality from the room. The nurse pressed a hand to the child’s chest and listened not for a heartbeat but for a rumor—the rumor that some journeys cannot end until every passenger has admitted the truth they’ve been running from. When the door finally breathed open again, it revealed not an exit, but a corridor that looped into itself, a loop that ended where the past began. The Stranded Express did not hurry to a destination; it refused to forget each traveler’s face, and in doing so, it kept them forever on the same night, forever waiting for a signal that would never come.
In the end I understood: the nightmare was not the waiting itself, but the realization that we were the ones who chose to stay, so the train could keep its half-remembered passengers alive in the dark, riding an endless line that existed only because we refused to leave.