The Final Journey: Finish the Story Conest #50
The Abysmal Biscuit
The awareness of the box's contents dripped slowly in Joelle's mind, coagulating like a graceless Rorschach's blot. Bones. Tiny tapered bones, standing out against the mahogany bottom.
The unusual item jolted on the worn chair, reacting to the vibrations of the old diesel-powered train. The convoy, the last of his lineage, still fulfilled its duty along the Brașov-Sighișoara route allowing students to return to their homes every weekend. To the rhythm of joints and sleepers, the whiteness of the remains continued to dance tremulously before the eyes of the young woman as the frames of her glasses slipped slowly from her nose.
In a tinkling clink of bracelets, the student closed the lid of the box and moved away as far as possible from it, crushing herself against the seat's padding. The lazy air of the air conditioner stuck to the bottom of her dry throat an acrid plastic taste.
And then she saw him. The old passenger had returned and was staring at her through the windows that led from the corridor of the car to the cabin. She listened to her own scream erupting and fill the cramped cab.
"I didn't want to scare you, young lady."
"N-not scared. No worries, sir." Somehow, Joelle managed to gather the few polite words her manners demanded. She could not have said how long he had been watching and if he had seen where curiosity had taken her. The glasses, temples up in the air, laid on the seat beside her.
The old man was tall and lanky, his burnished skin resembled the ancient scales of a dragon. Dressed in work trousers and a raw cotton shirt, he gave the impression of being one of those peasants whose families had inhabited the Carpathians for centuries.
Joelle's gaze passed involuntarily from the man to the funeral urn disguised as a biscuit tin: the representation of a merry-go-round in a lacquered colored wood and graceful workmanship. The children were swirling with their bent busts, perhaps because of the speed of the carousel. Their mouths were wide open and their hands clung to the poles skewering the horses. With a lump in her throat, she remembered the fleeting memory of just a few hours before, when a train was huffing at the central station and a gentle old man asked her help because he couldn't open the cabin door. She felt like something ruined down from her lungs to her guts.
"I see that you like my craft." In the silence, she could detect the old man's fingers caressing the box inlays.
"It's adorable. A gift for a grandchild?" Joelle realized only now that the object was his only baggage. In the warm twilight, the colors of lacquered wood seemed even more lively. The conifers thickened on the sides of the train, sliding quickly to the edges of her field of vision.
"Oh. A gift, says the young lady. Like a toy, perhaps?" The old man's eyes were two black bottomless pits. His gaze had slowly become vitreous like that of a deep-water fish, yet at the same time penetrating.
"Yes, a toy. I like how you see it, miss." The passenger continued, his voice getting thinner.
Only then, Joelle realized where they were heading: the train had just passed the old mill and would soon pass through the tunnels beneath the mountain.
"You may have noticed how I depicted all these children. Observe, miss, between a horse and the other: they are not alone." By pronouncing the last vowel, which he abnormally prolonged, his voice tone had become a slow and drawling rattle.
It was still too early for the wagons' lights to turn on and the tunnels were preparing to swallow the convoy.
A sound of nails carving into the wood tore the thoughts of the young student.
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The Final Journey
As the tunnel engulfed the train, Joelle struggled to stifle another scream. She was suffocating. Felt as though she was engulfed by death and darkness.
The old man wreaked of death. It wasn't his age, but the hollowness of his eyes. She could not bear to be in that dark tunnel, with those empty eyes and the urn, reminding her or what lay at the end of her journey.
Joelle was living under a death sentence. Her cancer had spread. The bones in her hands jutted sharply. Her cheeks, she knew, were hollows that announced to anyone who would see that she was on her final journey.
Many times she had taken this train. It had delivered her to happy weekends, and returned her to school, which she loved. Never again would she sit in this seat, see those distant mountains, anticipate the celebratory meal her mother always prepared.
The old man stared at her in the dim light of the train. The tunnel was long and did not allow daylight to visit.
“Death is not so much to be feared, young lady. I have come today to help you see that. This is a train upon which I travel often, but only as a guide.”
Joelle shrank into her seat.
What was this horror? Her last journey to be scarred by a vicious humor, a cruel joke.
“No, Joelle, not a joke. You once stopped by the road and picked up a tortoise that could not mount a curb. Death for that tortoise was certain. And you paused once, on your way to class. You had but a few coins in your pocket, enough for a meager lunch. But you gave those coins to a beggar who was invisible to everyone else on the path. This kindness earned you a final gift, my guidance to the other side.”
Joelle's horror dissipated. She saw now in the old man's eyes not emptiness but depth. She felt from him an inexpressible kindness. And she felt peace.
The train arrived at her station a short time later. Her mother worried when Joelle did not exit. The conductor looked in her compartment and found her there. She had died sometime during the train's passage through the tunnel.
No one was in the compartment with her, but next her her an urn with the most elaborate scene carved in the side. And though her eyes were closed, there was evident about her a sense of peace. On her lips, a gentle smile and on her hollow cheeks, paradoxically, the slightest hint of color.
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This is my entry into #finishthestory contest, sponsored by @bananafish. Good luck to all those who entered this week!
Congrats for your curie vote and welcome to the Finish the Story contest! I already understood that you had the potential to be an awesome participant and this story confirms it. I loved how you passed from the grim tunnel's sequence to gradually end the story in a poetic way. The transition was smooth and a pleasure to read.
Glad to be part of the contest. I will surely be particiapting again. I appreciate the warm welcome and generous reception.
We are a safe harbor for every writer and poet. Freedom, solidarity, quality, inclusion: these are our values. Keep an eye on our weekly contests and grow with us in a friendly environment!
Thank you so much!
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Thank you so much!
Hi pokerm,
Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.
That is amazing! Thank you!
Ooo this is such a wonderful way to go with the story, and you do an amazing job of addressing the prompt with in the word count!!
I really like how you build on the depth in the eyes, and bring this to a sweeter ending. The comments as the box as gift/toy tying into him helping her pass over, and it being for her. The weigh of her cancer is so well played, you bring it in at just the right moment to really hit the reader. Then the way her horror gives way to peace.
There is something more in here, something about the meaningless having meaning, the small acts that she did without thinking earnt her this guidance in the end, which combined with the sense of peace she feels, bringing that same sense of meaning to her passing. Very much enjoyed your plot here!
I appreciate your comment very much!
I just watched "The Twilights Zone." The second episode in the first season did something similar to this. Spooky. Nice story.
Congrats on your curie.
The curie was certainly a stunner for me. Love the twilight zone...thanks for the reference.
Well, what kind of story do we have here. Not only a plot-twist of a story from the horror cliche of Death literally standing there and just waiting for the time to be right to collect a soul. To the advent of a story that she shall hear very similarly when she meets St. Peter or whomever really is in the afterlife, that of her guaranteed ticket to the Good Life. But let's stop reacting and let's start diagnosing the story:
La filosofía (The philosophy): Well let's fundamentally break apart this story as one would break apart an equation in math. I like to do this metaphysical separation, for that is what it is right now if you are reading this still, and see how yah created the spirit of the post. In the first part, we can definitely see how you employ literally the tropes of Death standing there through the old man, the train entering the tunnel as a sign of going to the Nether/Hell/Heck/Hades and then brought in a malignant evil, cancer, as a mere ploy to give way to randomness of death itself. Yet within the second part these things established get subverted when the old man talks about how she has done good when no one else would that has granted her a ticket to the Good Life post-mortem. For her death wasn't a point of anguish but a point of celebration, her life culminating in the last and ultimate victory; even if cut short, she gets to be high in the clouds now instead of labouring away her life.
La forma (The forma): Now to break down the meta-physicality and treat this post as a dialectical stream. This entire conversation is mediated between the interactions/play-offs between the two. The "unchanging" old man, that may as well be the Angel of Death, who is there to provide the "changing" Joelle a way to the Good Life. The "unchanging" element providing a catalyst to make sense of her last moments in the material realm and show that he, at least the husk that the Angel of Death is wearing is a he, can read into her while providing conversation to comfort her. That's a thing most often left to Science Fiction, Fantasy or Science-Fiction and Fantasy; yet it is carefully woven in her correctly and nicely. I must provide some props for pulling it off... Anywho, congratulations on the @curie upvote!~ (Hope I see you read my entry for this week in the FTS!!!!~)
It was a simple story and you explain that it has a kind of structure that I think came naturally to me. Thank you for your analysis. I haven't read you story yet, but I will today.
Welcome for the comment! ~^^~
We all are biased creatures, but we definitely can use our biases fairly well to create unique stuff. What was simple to you was quite masterful in that was natural to you even when you were unconscious of why. So always use every story to study upon what you had done, see what could be improved upon, modify strategies and use that in the assistance of the next story. But that is just me and how I managed to scrape by just fine by now - you will find your own way to fight for the top!~
Thanks for sharing the story yet again and here, here, to seeing yah around on my entry now!~
Happy to have you join in the Finish the Story contest with your terrific story and congratulations to you for a well deserved Curie vote!
Deftly you took the prompt to a place many did not. Instead of a tale dripping with horror you gave us a beautiful story of Joelle's transition from her life. The details mount with the suffocating blackness, the reek of death, and the knowledge of her cancer taking its toll to tip a reader off that this would be her final ride on the train. Instead of having to make her final journey alone, we see that her past kindness is repaid with one needed desperately. When this gift of a guide to ease her fear is revealed you had me smiling. A truly wonderful story, Pokerm!
~Bris
Thank you. I wrote the story that made me feel better :)
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nice ending. last train home is always a good trope. I liked how you made the old man a more comforting visitor, just like death can be comforting once people accept it.
welcome to the finish the story community! congrats on a curie vote!
Thank you. I do feel welcome, with these great comments...and a curie!