elidyce:deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: “What’s it doing?” I asked, watching
elidyce:deepwaterwritingprompts: Text: “What’s it doing?” I asked, watching the train inch through the station. “Looking for a conductor,” she answered. “The train will take good care of you, but you can never get off.” @deepwaterwritingprompts Thank you so much for creating this fantastic prompt in response to my request! I love it, and enjoyed writing it very much. Note: “A Travelling Man” is a companion piece to “The Night Gentlemen”, which was also a Deepwater prompt response and can be read here, and “Betty’s Diner” which is available exclusively on my Patreon page. There’s no need to read the others to understand this one, but they all take place in the same universe. # A train station is a place that isn’t a place, if you know what I mean. It’s a place that’s on the way to plenty of places, but is never the destination of any journey. It’s a place where no-one stays, and everyone passes through. And some stations are more between than others. I spent a lot of time in train stations, when I was a travelling man, selling door to door. And when I got sick, and couldn’t work any more, I still hung around them. I like them. I like the noise and the bustle when the trains come in, and the quieter spells between. I like the feeling of still being connected to the world, even now. Some of the porters tried to hustle me on, when I started spending my days just sitting on a bench at the station, but there was a nice older fellow who told them to stop. “He used to be a travelling man,” he said, his slow accented speech making it sound portentous. “He misses the trains. Let him stay.” He’d stop and chat to me sometimes, between trains, and we’d talk about the history of the railroad and the nature of what he called ‘a between place’. I didn’t know where his accent came from, and never asked. “Call me Ticker, everyone does,” he said when I asked his name, and he never asked me mine. Just called me ‘friend’, which I liked. Anonymity and friendship together, that felt right, for two men who paused for a while in a between place. I don’t know when I started to see… more. I suspect I’d been seeing for a while, without realizing it. But I remember when I realized it. Keep reading -- source link
#story prompt