End of the line (standard:horror, 1738 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Jun 01 2011	Views/Reads: 3131/1971	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
As he pokes his nose into other people's business, will he end up regretting it?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

walked quickly forward towards him, not really sure what to do. 
However, he saw that the man was standing with his hands grasped onto 
the wall. He assumed there must be a small ledge or something to stand 
on. 

Now what? he thought. The man simply stood there. Was he waiting for a
train to throw himself beneath? or was he waiting to find courage to 
leap onto the electrified tracks? His sense of moral duty or obligation 
kicked in, and he approached him. “Excuse me,” he said, “Whatever your 
problem is, you don't have to do that”. 

Scott looked at him. “Yes I do,” he said, “It's the only answer I've got
left, so don't try and talk me out of it”. Michael approached the wall, 
only four feet away from the man. He was surprised to find himself this 
close. In books and films, the potential suicide victim always said 
that if they came any closer they'd jump, but this one simply looked at 
Michael with a dour expression of utter despair. Maybe this was all he 
had left. “I'm going to do it. I've made my mind up”. “Come on now, is 
it really that bad?” “Yes, it is, my girlfriend's ended our 
relationship to take up with Richard, a night club bouncer” Michael 
decided a more sympathetic approach might be in order, so he decided he 
would attempt to get closer in a kind of considerate gesture. He saw 
that a missing brick in the wall provided him with a leg up onto the 
wall so he could sit with his legs dangling. “I'm just waiting for a 
train so I can jump under it” said Scott. “That's not the way to go. 
Can't you just come onto the road and we can talk about it properly. 
I'll take you to a café and buy you whatever you want.” There was few 
seconds silence. “D'you think it'll be painful? I mean, it won't take 
that long to die. A few seconds maybe”. “Surely there are plenty more 
women out there, why wait for her?” “She's it. She's the only one who I 
know would go with me. Look at me. I'm hardly fucking prince charming. 
I just fell in love with her, but she's with bloody Richard. Richard 
the fucking dick. They split up you know, and I thought that that was 
it, that was my chance, but no, she's decided to try again with him, 
and now tells me it would never work between us. Well it would!” he 
shouted, “It fucking would!” Michael decided to clamber down onto the 
small ledge. He stood about three feet away from the man, and looked 
down the forty feet to the shining tracks. He heard the rumble of a 
train, and saw it in the distance. “Who are you anyway?” Scott asked, 
“Why are you so interested in me? Have you never lost anyone? Have you 
never suffered?” Those words were like bullets into Michael's brain, 
because they blew the lid from memories he had successfully managed to 
keep suppressed for 6 years. “Yes, Yes I have,” he said, as thoughts of 
his wife and daughter came flooding into his mind. 

They had been volunteering for a charity in Ghana when there was a
limited outbreak of typhoid. They both died, leaving Michael with an 
only son with whom he had fallen out with years ago when he had 
emigrated to Australia. He didn't bother to let him know, and two weeks 
after that, his dog, a border terrier was crushed under the wheel of a 
hit and run driver, and that was it, he couldn't take anymore, had 
pressed a stanley knife to his throat with the express intention of 
slicing it across, but as it had touched his skin however, it had hurt, 
and drew a trickle of blood. He had thrown the blade to the side and 
then basically forced himself not so much to forget, but to accept that 
that was how things were. He had suppressed his emotions so much, like 
pressing down on a spring coil, that Scott had simply lifted the lid on 
the bottle holding his emotions down, and now they all came spilling 
out. Their faces and the dog swam around in his mind's eye, and he 
opened his eyes and saw that the train was thundering closer, and the 
man was holding out his hand. “Together, let's go together”. Tears 
streamed down Michael's face and he nodded, and gripped the man's hand. 
He saw the driver's shocked face in the window, then leapt down into 
the air. It took two seconds for him to hit the ground, bones cracking 
in his legs, and in the split second before he went beneath the wheels, 
when his head cracked into a girder, he saw above a terrified Scott 
still standing up on the bridge, with a white, ashen face, gripping 
onto the wall, not able to hear him saying, over and over again: ‘I 
can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it...'. Michael was torn asunder 
the train, and the man clambered back over the wall as he heard the 
loud screeching of the train braking, and ran without stopping, the 
three miles it took for him to reach home, telling himself that being 
single might not be so bad after all. 


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