The Woman on the Train

From England

Photo by Tomas Anton Escobar on Unsplash

Hello to all my readers. Here in Florida, the kids have gone back to school. I’m sure they’re real thrilled. With that happening, work has been more hectic. I’m working more hours. I’m back to one day off a week. As you can imagine, that doesn’t leave much time for me to communicate.

I’m throwing in one of my fiction stories here. I haven’t had time to write anything else. This was written a few weeks ago in a few hours. I have

Terry Freedman

from

Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life

to thank for turning me onto this story. As you’ll see, he provided a few keywords and I ran with it.

For next week’s newsletter, I’ll be returning to another interesting topic from my past.

Let’s get on with it.

Terry had an opening segment on one of his recent newsletters where he said the following:

What happened (I hope you’re sitting down) was that a woman got on, someone looked at her, and a few stops later got off. That is obviously a dead boring story, and explains why I’ve never mastered the art of fiction writing.

This gave me an opening when I read that. I love to concoct stories when I’m given any kind of text like that.

So without further ado, here it is. Enjoy!

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I was on the train early Saturday morning. It was seven a.m. The skies were gloomy and it looked like it would be overcast most of the day. I wasn’t supposed to be on this train. But I was. I was going to points unknown.

Then, she appeared. A young woman carrying a book bag. Her long brown hair swept over her shoulders and down to her waist. She came through the train doors and settled in a seat next to the door. I was on the opposite side of her. I looked her way. She was wearing a blue pantsuit. As I looked away toward the right, I noticed an older gentleman with glasses looking intently at her. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. I wondered if he was enamored with her looks. Then he reached into his bag. I started to get up. He produced a cell phone. He typed something into it and then put it back in his bag. He was wearing a brown jacket. He had gray hair and blue jeans on. I sat back down.

Then he noticed I was watching him. He looked directly at me. He nodded toward me. I wasn’t sure what to do so I looked away. I looked to my left and besides all of the other riders, I saw another guy who looked out of the ordinary. He had a backpack on and was looking intently at the woman. I looked back and forth between the two guys. They looked at each other. Glasses guy was mouthing something to backpack guy. I couldn’t read his lips.

The train moved along on its merrily way. When the train came to a stop at the next stop, people started piling off. The young woman stayed seated. The two guys moved further down the train car. I stayed put.

As the train started moving again, there was an endless number of announcements coming across the speaker system. I was not used to all of this having been from the United States.

The train made another few stops and we were now surrounded by many people. A lot of them had to stand and grab one of the pulls to steady themselves from falling down.

I noticed glasses guy moving closer to the young woman now. I looked to the left and saw backpack guy still in his original location. All of the sudden the train came to a screeching halt and stopped abruptly. The sound was deafening. The lights went out briefly and then came back on. I got up and someone pushed me. I was now on the floor. I looked around attentive to finding glasses guy. He was wearing some distinctive black boots and I tried to find them. I saw him walking toward where the woman was seated. I could see that she was still there. I looked back through the legs of the other people to see backpack guying approaching the woman too.

I quickly got up and pushed the people in front of me toward glasses guy. They were shocked when they got pushed. This caused mass hysteria. The people on my left started yelling. Thankfully, backpack guy retreated. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to get him back.

“What are you doing?” the people said to me.

“Someone pushed me down. I lost my balance getting back up. I’m sorry,” I said lying.

Glasses guy looked point blank at me. He was reaching into his book bag again. The antennas on my ears shot up. I didn’t know what his plan was. I watched him. I turned around to look at backpack guy. He was missing. I looked around all the people. I couldn’t find him.

“Did anyone see the guy with the backpack?” I asked.

“I think he went to the other train car,” said a man with a red ball cap.

Glasses guy was now using his cell phone again. He was texting.

After about thirty minutes, the train started back up. The next two stops eliminated most of the standing room only crowd.

With the train moving again, everyone stayed in their appropriate spaces.

Everything changed when we got to the next stop.

The train stopped. The doors opened. The young woman stood up and started for the door. Glasses guy started toward the woman. I got up and stood between them.

“Hey man, what are you doing?” I said as I intervened.

As I pushed him back, the bag he had fell to the ground. A small black gun shot across the train floor. Backpack guy re-appeared and ran toward me. The young woman exited the train. I followed closely behind her. Backpack guy reached down and grabbed the gun. Quickly, I turned around and grabbed the gun, kicked him in the groin, and took the gun out of his hands. I took it with me. The young woman had a head-start on me but I was able to catch up to her. I found a trash bin and dumped the gun.

Conclusion

I’ll leave the ending up to you. What happened? Why was the guy watching the woman? Who were the two other guys?

I hope you enjoyed this. And thanks go to Terry for giving me the opportunity to explore this kind of story.

Until next time, happy reading!

-Matt

Feel free to comment. Know someone who might enjoy this fiction story? Send it to them. I’m always looking for interaction with other writers.