Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Midnight Train ‒ with LucaStarchester (closed)

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"... and please, do let me know if I can help you with anything else."

Anna closed the door to her apartment behind the couple. They'd come with blank stares and white knuckles, and left again with tearful streaks and sad smiles on their faces. She let out a small, exhausted huff, leaned her back against the door, and looked at the dead girl sitting in the window sill. She, too, looked forlorn. Anna began packing up her tools. Most of it was just for show, but she found it helped her set the stage, as it were, when people came to request this particular brand of her services. She despised the circus performer aesthetique that fiction had popularized as that of psychics and mediums, but it helped the process when people believed, and a purple tablecloth with an embroidered pentagram and some lit candles assisted with that little nudge into the territory of the incredible that most of her customers needed.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" Anna asked the girl. She was faded; her hold on this world was weak. Ghosts hung out in some sort of limbo, Anna knew from her conversations with them. Once people had properly passed on, there was no contacting them ‒ a fact that had netted her a couple of undeserved poor reviews and accusations of being a hack. The girl shook her head.

"Nah, there's no conductor right now."

Anna frowned. "Conductor?"

"We're all waiting for the train, but it's stuck at the station. And no one can find their baggage."

Anna blew out the last cheap black candle. She wasn't sure how literal the ghost was being. Many of them talked about some sort of personification of transition ‒ the ferryman being easily one of the more long-lived (ha-ha) ones. More recently, you heard stories about train conductors, pilots, and bus drivers. It seemed like dead people were often attracted to places of mass transit; she certainly frequently saw a ghost or two hanging out at Green/50th, final station of the C-train.

"Well, you still need to leave my home," Anna said gently, but firmly. She wasn't about to be haunted. "I promise I'll look into this if it makes you feel better, okay?" The girl looked sceptical as she walked out through the window, but she did leave, so that's that sorted. Still, Anna couldn't shake a niggling feeling. She pulled on a jacket over her fraying, navy blue sweater and stuffed her deck of alleyman's cards into her bag on a whim. She just felt a little more prepared that way. The C-train rattled in its usual rhythmic way. Little by little, fewer people got on, and more people left the lights of the train car in favor of the cool autumn evening. Anna shuffled the cards absentmindedly and flipped the top one. The Emperor, reversed. Everything in its proper place, but the usual order is on the verge of breaking under stress. She tucked it into the stack and flipped the next one. Death, carrying a shovel. Digging something back up that wasn't ready to be buried. That one, too, went back into the stack. With a growing sense of unease, she flipped a third card. The Four of Keys, reversed. Doors that have once been opened cannot be opened again to return; there is no going back. She jammed it into the stack, bending one of the corners accidentally, and snapped the old box that had formerly held stormproof matches shut. She chewed on her nails as the brittle loudspeaker announced that they were coming up on the last stop, the niggling feeling growing only stronger as the brakes whined and the train came to a halt. Anna walked down the two steps from the car to the platform and stopped dead.

The station was filled with ghosts.

Slumped on the benches, staring at the vending machines, sitting on the edge with their feet dangling over the tracks; all quiet and looking strained. Two dozen or more, maybe, far more than she'd ever seen in one place. Why hadn't they left yet? And how would she even begin to unravel this?

A dull, persistent pressure throbbed behind Francis's eyes, a phantom echo of a sudden, brutal impact he couldn't quite recall. He drifted aimlessly near a row of flickering vending machines, his spectral form shimmering slightly in their weak light. Around him, a silent crowd of others like him filled the echoing space of the station. They stood slumped on benches, stared blankly at the advertisements, or sat with their feet dangling over the unseen tracks below – all sharing the same heavy stillness of prolonged waiting.

There was a sense of a journey interrupted, a destination unreached. Whispers he couldn't quite grasp spoke of a departure, a conductor, a train that was meant to carry them onward. But the train remained stubbornly absent, and a thick atmosphere of stagnant anticipation hung in the air.

He felt…unmoored. Fragments of a life flickered at the edges of his awareness – a flash of warm sunlight, the scent of old paper, a fleeting feeling of anxiety – but they were like half-remembered dreams, elusive and without context. Yet, one thing remained clear, a constant anchor in the swirling fog of his lost memories: his name. Francis.

Then, a new presence descended the steps from the last train car. This living woman was different. Unlike the others who hurried through the station, their eyes glazed over, she seemed to *see* the unusual stillness, the sheer number of silent figures. A subtle ripple disturbed the stagnant energy as her gaze, though unfocused, swept across their gathering.

She wore simple, worn clothes and carried a small box. A furrow creased her brow, a flicker of something akin to understanding or perhaps just bewilderment crossing her face. Most of the living simply passed through them, unaware. But this one… she paused, her gaze lingering for a moment on the silent crowd.

A faint, questioning murmur escaped Francis, a sound without substance in the living world. He reached out a translucent hand, a silent plea in the echoing space. Could she sense them? Could she somehow understand their predicament, this strange delay in the journey beyond? A fragile tendril of something akin to hope stirred within the emptiness of his amnesiac existence. Maybe this woman… maybe she could help them.