Train Tracks

I looked over the edge. The trains rumbled by, below me. Red lights spelled their end.

‘Hey, fancy meeting you here.’ A boy approached me, folding away his umbrella.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I replied.

Rain fell around us, outside of the station’s overhangs. It poured and poured.

‘Damn this rain!’ the boy cursed, yelling it over the rapping of water on the tin roofs.

‘I know. How was school?’

‘Shit, as per usual.’ The halogen lights flicked on, lighting the seats. He took one next to me.

‘I thought education was fun.’

‘It was. Now it’s shit.’ The boy shook his hair, spraying wet everywhere.

I felt a cold creep onto me; as a train thundered under us. I observed the other people on the station apart from the boy. There was a woman chewing gum, a man reading a newspaper.

The boy stared out onto the tracks, nudging himself up to me on the rails that overlooked. ‘So, how was your day?’

‘You ask me?’

‘Of course I do, you’ve asked me already.’

‘It was okay.’ I looked out onto the tracks. The colour in the lights changed from green to red. It was a sombre scene. 

‘Know how these work?’

‘Yeah. The trains run when the light is green. They don’t when it’s red.’
I furrowed my brow at the boy’s naivety. 

‘I mean, really know how they work?’

He smiled. ‘Not really.’

‘I’ve always wondered…’ It was so…grey. This place, this creation, it was merely where nature stopped, and humanity continued. The place where the grass did not grow, trains ran them over. A labyrinth of metal rods and iron bars, there was just no life to the place.

My eye found no grass growing in the station that looked over the train tracks. No little insects scavenging for food. It felt so artificial.

So…cold.

‘Do you reckon we’re like a train?’

My thoughts stopped when I blinked. ‘What? Repeat the question?’

‘Do you reckon we’re like a train? Like, we go when things are green, and stop when things are red?’

I ruffled the boy’s damp hair for him this time. ‘No, we must go no matter what. And although it isn’t shown on the track controller; what about the yellow? “Not sure” parts that we must encounter in life? That’s where I believe we lie. We are never sure whether the lights are green, or red. Therefore we must run when the lights are yellow. It is the unknown that keeps us going. For if we knew everything, there’d be no point to anything.’

‘I guess you’re right.’ We stared in contemplation for a few minutes. Rain still fell all about us. The woman chewing gum went down the stairs off the station, drenching herself. She tripped.

‘Going to help her up?’ the boy asked.

‘The lights are yellow. It would be best not to do anything.’

The woman picked herself up and kept going.

We watched in silence. The lights turned green. A train rumbled past.

‘But…you said – ‘

‘I said that we should continue in the yellow of what we are doing. For life is a mere moment on a line. It bears no relation to anything. They are the “not sure”.’

As if in reply to what was said, something happened. The lights of the track fused, lighting sparks before going out.

To me, this was the lights going yellow. Fear gripped me as I watched, motionless, as train sounds reached our ears.

That rumble, that rumble of change. That yellow, rushing towards us. The track ahead was unknown.

I looked in shock. The trains rushed by, below me. Red lights spelled their end.