Siderodromophobia-fear of trains
At one point in my life they were nothing much. On a warm summer night I could hear a lone haunting whistle in the distance. It was calming, peaceful but now I'd rather close my windows and forget the large machines. Their rhythmic melody that once lulled me to sleep only brings nightmares now.
Sure the big Aussie afraid of a midnight train. But you've never seen a woman picked out of the cattle catcher before. Or I should say what was left of the poor woman. I've seen her, heard her screams and watched her eyes. God her eyes, full of fear knowing that there wasn't any hope. She was dead the moment she decided to take that tunnel.
Call it fate, or death looking to pick up a life that night but either way you slice it. It wasn't pretty. Sure I could go on with my life if it ended right then and there but, like I said before I saw her eyes. I saw her eyes that night when I helped clean out the cattle catcher and again later that week.
I went back to that tunnel, why? I'll call it morbid curiosity. Really it was just me being stupid. Thinking I could understand what happened, how her last moments could have felt. Again it was stupid because with each thought I walked deeper into that dark tunnel until I was half way through.
That's when I heard it. It started out very faint but soon her eyes met mine in the darkness. Full of the same fear, the same exact terror and while I didn't realize it at first the screaming I heard were mine. Not because I was face to face with her but because of what I saw behind her. A blinding white light that was bearing down on me as the whole tunnel rattled.
I turned tail and ran as fast as my legs could go but soon it caught up to me. And as I fell I braced myself for the same fate but as the train was nearly on top of me, it was gone. The only thing that told me it was ever there in the first place was a lone whistle that echoed in that god forsaken tunnel.
Long, cold and eerie. The same thing I hear every night in my dreams. Well at least I pray it's only in my dreams.
