LITMIR.BIZ

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I could summon, shocked that the words were coming out of my mouth. ‘But I think we both could do with something new; I know I could. I think we could both do with some help. So why don’t you come join me? Why don’t you and I get a coffee … together?’

      ***

      Chris wanted to scream at her. He wanted to shake this stupid girl who had misread his intentions. He was not being polite. He was not being kind. He was not showing empathy or chivalry. He just wanted some fucking peace before ending it all, but she wasn’t giving up.

      ‘I’ve never met a man who would offer to buy me a drink like that without expecting or trying anything on. Never. That makes you someone good in a world full of arseholes and I can see you are struggling with something and so am I. I’m asking you to join me because we both need someone nice. We both need a good person to talk to, even just for a short while.’ Her breathing was shallow, panicked, rising in pitch as she struggled to get enough air in her lungs to speak her words without spilling her fear. A fear of what she hadn’t yet learnt.

      ‘You don’t know me,’ he replied, looking once again to the clock. ‘And I’m not a good person. Can’t you please just understand that and go for that coffee?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘What do you mean no?’

      10 seconds.

      Ten months flashed through his mind. He thought about the pain, the suffering. The routines he developed to cope against his great adversary that was now time. He thought of Steve’s attempted interventions as he spiralled into a downward depression. How his best friend wouldn’t give up on him despite Chris backing away completely.

      He thought about his father, how much stronger he was. He thought about how sad his friends would be at his funeral, wearing black with tears in their eyes unable to contain their grief. Although none of them were shocked.

      Then he heard it, the voice he had been waiting to hear for so long, calling out to him. He had longed to hear it say these words, now he was desperate to not hear them yet. He needed more time but the announcer continued to talk, despite his silent begging.

       ‘The next train to arrive does not stop at this station. Please stand back from the platform edge.’

      The rattle of steel on steel with over three thousand five hundred tonnes of moving machine started to build. The screeching of the friction caused by the immense weight became so loud it penetrated deep into his inner ears. The train girl instinctively turned her body away from the direction of where the noise was coming from, as if she would be protected from the monster approaching.

      He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink as he stared out towards the track, its rumbling almost inviting. It was as if the tracks had hands and they would surely pull him down. He looked to his right and could see the eyes of the train approaching. He wanted to step out, but she was there, she would see, and he would damage her as a result. Reluctantly he knew it wasn’t going to happen as he had planned and hoped. He turned to look at her, the girl who’d stopped him being with his wife.

      ***

      Sarah knew that he was too near to the edge, but didn’t have time to say anything before the deafening noise of the train strangled her voice as it passed. Its driver desperate to deliver his payload and return home; his mind was on other things.

      Sarah turned away further, the whipping wind generated by its passing caused her to grip onto her cardigan as her hair was jostled by the monster’s phenomenal force.

      ***

      Chris, however, didn’t blink; he just stood there looking at her as the train sped past. She shouted something to him. He couldn’t hear. He didn’t care. To his right he could see the solid mass speed past broken only by the gaps between the carriages, which moved so fast they seemed to be only millimetres long, but still long enough for him to slip under. He would only need an arm to get caught, or a leg, and the amount of downforce created would suck the rest of him under before he could register the pain of his limb being hit. All he had to do was take one step back. Just one. But he couldn’t. She was watching him. And he hated her for it.

      As it passed he looked to his left and longingly watched the red tail lights of the train disappear into the night.

      He had failed to do the one thing that may have redeemed his fractured soul. Unable to think of how to fix it, Chris looked towards the exit. Still facing the train girl, he crouched down to grab his shoes. He looked up at her; her eyes were fixed on him. For a while neither moved.

      ‘Please, can you stay?’

      He was unable to form any words. His ears unable to hear what she had said. But she didn’t matter; all that mattered was searching through his thoughts for a solution. It was either find one or fail his wife.

      ‘Please?’

      He picked up his shoes and then without putting them on, he walked towards the entrance, up the stairs and away from the station, leaving the girl noticeably alone.

      ***

      I watched him leave and for a moment couldn’t move. Like a rabbit caught in headlights. I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure, but it felt like the man who had just left was there to do something terrible. My instincts told me that’s why I couldn’t leave the platform when he insisted. It was in the way he kissed that picture, the way he stood too close to the edge. The fact he had taken his shoes off ‘to be connected’. On their own, they were oddities; together they told something else.

      They told me he was there to take his own life. And I had stopped him. Still looking towards the entrance that was lifeless, I heard a breeze sweep along the platform and the sound of traffic rattling over the bridge. The sounds returning after a brief moment of not existing. Sitting down on the bench, my gaze shifting from the entrance to the track, I tried to shake off the feeling I had about him. It made me feel sick.

      Taking another cigarette from my bag, I lit it. The adrenaline in my hands made it difficult to hold the flame steady. Once I had taken a few drags my mind settled and I realized the truth. I was mistaken about him. He was just drunk, or a nut job, a sad man whose girlfriend dumped him who had no intention of hurting himself. Instead, it was something I had made up as an elaborate distraction tactic from my sad little life. That was the real tragedy, my pathetic loneliness, meaning I had to practically beg a stranger to spend some time with me.

      Allowing my head to sink, I watched my cigarette ash blowing away in the wind and let out a laugh that quickly turned into a small cry. I just wanted to be home, in my bed, desperately trying to forget the night’s events and getting on with my life, as sorrowful as it seemed. I wondered if I would ever feel the elation that came with victory. Just once.

      Wiping my eyes, I saw there was a letter directly under where I was sat. One that was carefully folded and placed under a stone that looked alien on the cold, damp asphalt. It was clear the stone didn’t belong at the station. Reaching down I picked it up to examine it as well as the note it held down, although I wasn’t ready for what it said.

       ‘To the person who finds this letter …’

      Scanning to the bottom made me almost throw up and I stood up as I realized what the letter was. My gut instinct had been right. That feeling I had when he walked out of the station was true. He was there to kill himself; he was going to jump in front of that train and I had accidentally saved his life.

       ‘… There is no one who could have stopped this from happening …’

      And yet, he didn’t do it.

      I thought about my reason for being there, how it was a massive coincidence, how it was probably usually deserted at this time of night. If I came any night other than tonight or had decided to stay at John’s, I would have never have seen him and then he would be dead.

      I felt an overwhelming need to find him, to talk to him, to explain I had seen his note, to tell him that whatever had happened to him, it would get better. There was something

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