(A/N This is a piece I wrote in English where the prompt was a picture of a girl with headphones on. Obviously, I took that and ran :-) I'm aware of how long the sentences are, yes :-)
The station is busy,
bustling with shopping bags and buggies and broken English. People
echo “Excuse me” as they try to edge past strangers on the end of
the platform, careful not to slip over the side onto the tracks.
Children are warned not to cross the line of paint which separates
their safety from their danger, and an old man argues with a young
attendant about the outrageous price of tickets these days. The sign
above us says that the train has been delayed; it's always said that though, because it's broken. Just like everyone else here, stuck saying and doing
the same things over and over and over again like clockwork.
The man
with the big red duffel bag is going to work, down in London. He
can't afford to live there, but can barely afford the rising ticket
prices either. The weary looking woman with the wailing twins is
barely 18, and takes them to visit her mother every other day so that
she can do her college coursework. She wants to be a hairdresser. The
boy with the broken leg is going to his physiotherapist; he was
pushed down the stairs by a stepfather who somehow got away with it.
And the girl with the headphones and the badly bandaged hand is
running away from a house that's attempting to be a home back to home
that sits in the charred remains of a house; that's me.
It's 9.31AM and now
the train is late, but that's no different from usual. I'm not used
to taking the train, but my older brother used to all the time and
would constantly complain about it when he got home. The last time I
was on a train, it was coming up here, with my brothers. Now I was
leaving, alone. Seule. Well, is one truly alone with music? It's my
own personal soundtrack that can change the mood of the scene with a
simple skip. One track makes each person passing by seem important
and sculptured and the next fills the air with a sense of fear.
I should be at school.
I should be wearing an outfit that at school allows me to blend in
but here would illuminate me like a neon sign. That outfit is stuffed
behind a toilet in one of the cubicles in the girls toilets of
Twynham School. My bike is chained to the metal fencing of the train
station car park; I don't care if it gets nicked, it's not actually
mine. I'm just borrowing it.
The train is drawing
closer and sitting people stand and standing people step towards the
edge of the platform. I stand too, and watch as it pulls up beside
us. Us- it's like we're all somehow connected now, just because we're
all catching the same train.
Points: 112
Reviews: 12
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