Sleeplessness overtook me as it always did. I wrestled with my twilit mind as it replayed the inner landscapes waiting patiently behind the mask of the day. Resigned, I drifted out of myself, captive to the mares of night.
No color, no sound. Everything happens in slow motion, like an old film running through the fading light of a disintegrating projector. Once again I descend the staircase down, down, down, looking for the elusive station, the place to redeem my ticket to the place I needed to go. The tracks remained still, empty, silent. No one left and no one came. On the bare platform my shoes echo like gunshots, reverberating to the pounding of my heart.
Breaking towards the opening on the other end of the platform, I begin to count my steps backwards.
Another weary night tangled into the sheets of dawn.
Sara at dVerse gives us a line from poet Edward Thomas to use in our 144 word prosery: No one left and no one came on the bare platform.
K. 
Excellent & effective use of the prompt line, completely hidden within the marvelous dreamscape you’ve created. I’ve been to that way station; it’s in purgatory.
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Thanks Glen. This is a variation on a recurring dream of mine.
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Well done! I liked the ebb and flow, inhale and exhale of this.
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Thanks Na’ama. Dreams are like that I think.
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Very much so, aren’t they? 🙂
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Your imagery in your writing is fantastic! Great story and good choice of music!
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Thanks Dwight. Springsteen’s songs lend themselves to great interpretationsite. (K)
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Very evocative. I’d call this Expressionist – there was a definite Kafkaesque flavour here. You took me with you.
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Thanks Sarah. This is a distillation of my recurring missed train dreams. Although by day I wonder what would await me at the end of the line…
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felt the vivid pain of disappointment. beautifully done.
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Thanks!
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What Glen said! 🙂
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Thanks. Sometimes our dreams take us there…
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Excellent capture of a dream, Kerfe. I like the way you used the cine metaphor, firstly in the film running through the ‘fading light of a disintegrating projector’ and then in the phrase ‘count my steps backwards’, as if winding the film back onto the reel.
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Thanks Kim. Dreams can be very cinematic.
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Oh… a mysterious train station what a place to be in a dream…
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Maybe one of these days I’ll catch the train…
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This had me spellbound.
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Thanks Claudia. The prompt played right into one of my recurring dreamscapes.
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I enjoyed this glimpse into your mind. I tried to think of what my recurring dreams are. One is, I left my purse and suddenly I realize I don’t have it and it’s in a place where anyone could pick it up and take it. The other one is, I go to work but there is nothing for me to do. They’re not firing me, they just don’t need me and they let me know this by excluding me. Both of these dreams really can panic me. Both ridiculous situations and not like your dreamscape. It is beautiful.
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Sounds like my lost at school dreams. I never can find the room where I’m supposed to be having class…
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I have one where I have two college dorm rooms and oh no I forgot about the other one that I now can’t find and I have to because I realize I left the cat there.
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I think losing places and things is common in dreams. Clearly a fear our psyche us always working on.
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Time to leave a comment. I have been catching up and read a few of your posts. And about them all, I want to say you write so close to the bone. I can literally feel most all of your words. Viscerally. Thank you. 🙏🌎
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What a wonderful compliment! Thanks Bela.
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Well deserved!
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I imagine the scene and hear this as a noir-ish voice-over.
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Its definitely a noir-ish dream.
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