The Journey

The platform was empty when he got there. He had no idea what time it was: his watch, a knock-off Rolex, had stopped beating at around a quarter-past ten that morning. It was dark, but that didn't mean anything ' it was the middle of Winter, and daylight had long-since migrated along with all the other birds. Not that the not-knowing bothered him, particularly: he was pretty drunk by then, and actually quite amused by the thought of not having a bloody clue what time it was, let alone whether another train was in fact due that evening. He'd have quite happily kipped on the station platform, the frame of mind he was in. Hell, he'd have relished it.
The station's sole lamp-post was flickering, buzzing like an electric fly-catcher. One moment he could see the rail-track beneath, shimmering gold; the next, he could hardly see his own feet. The strobe-like effect did his thrumming head no favours; waves of nausea were soon crashing against the rocks of his fragile blissful state.
And then the train arrived, its lights flooding the stage, consuming everything. He dragged the last of his cigarette, threw it down. Suddenly he was inside, the warmth spreading over his skin like dragon-breath. His eyes soon became accustomed to the white-hot light, and he staggered to his seat just as the train began its downward-descent.

He didn't know where he was going. Home, he supposed, though he didn't really know where that was. All that mattered to him was the hip-flask of vodka in his inside-jacket pocket, and the fact that he had got away with it. Sure, it was early days¦ he couldn't be certain of anything, just yet. But he was confident that he had done a good job, that he had left no trail. And besides, he didn't really give a damn if they did catch him¦ it had long-since ceased to be a thrill for him; it felt more and more like a chore every time, and yes, he supposed that he actually wanted to be caught now. Every day he woke up and wondered where it was all going to end.
Darkness had turned all the windows into mirrors. He saw his reflection, a ghastly shade of yellow in the unnatural light, and quickly turned away. It was a long time since he had been able to look at himself eye to eye.
The train trundled on. The carriage wasn't quite empty; there was a drunk sitting opposite him, slumped in his seat with a bottle of industrial strength cider between his legs, and a woman further down with a corpse-complexion, snakes writhing in her hair and eyes that could turn people to stone. He scanned these people briefly, wondering¦ had they ever created anything? Had they ever watched something die? He knew destruction, knew it like the back of his hand, and yet he had created something as well, hadn't he? A paradox, for sure. That destruction was in fact creation: that he was a God now, of sorts: that he was more than God, in fact, holding both life and death in his hands.
The train trundled on. Suddenly there were faces in the darkness outside, contorted into expressions of interminable pain and suffering, and then he realised exactly where this train was heading. All of a sudden the drunk was a skeleton, his face rotted off with maggots staggering around his eye-sockets. And the snake-woman, too, was dead and putrefying, her festering face contorted into a sickening grin. Cackling now. Looking directly at him.
There was no getting off, now. As he jumped up from his seat, a scream emerging stillborn and silent from his throat, he realised exactly where the train was heading:
Saw the licks of fire spreading in the darkness outside:
And he then knew, of course, the difference between destruction and creation:
He knew exactly where it was going to end.