The Last Stop
Toby awoke with a gut-wrench jolt, the kind that gripped at your innards and yanked you out of the haze of dreams.
The kind of jolt when you realised you’ve slept through and missed your stop.
Something was wrong.
His cheek and chin were damp, smelling of spit. He scowled as he swiped his sleeve against it, trying to rub it all clean as his bleary eyes glanced around.
Another jolt.
The tram was still.
Silent, except for a soft chiming.
Empty.
Pulling himself up by the back of the seat in front of him, Toby was suddenly very, very awake.
There was no one. Bags were scattered along the ground. Someone’s shopping was spread across the aisle, one can rocking back and forth on the spot. A sandal — a single sandal? — left discarded by the open doors.
He tugged at his sleeves, pulling them down and over his fists, pulling his arms close to his body, wildly glancing around. Outside was no help — the tram had pulled up to a station, but he couldn’t see a sign showing a name, it wasn’t anywhere he recognised.
“Hello?” The voice didn’t sound like his own, so soft and timid and unsure of itself, but it was Toby’s voice all right, calling out into the empty carriage. His hand dropped to his school bag, gripped its webbed strap, felt the weight of it and the texture against his skin and in that moment he knew that he wasn’t still asleep, that he was definitely wide awake and all alone on the tram, everyone had disappeared and he’d missed his stop, Mum was gonna kill him — “Is anyone here?”
Only silence answered his questions.
He turned, peered out the window, tried to see what station he was at or if everyone had just run out and were all evacuating up some stairs or something and had just forgotten him in the rush, anything that made sense.
All Toby could see was a single orange bench, under an ordinary tram station shelter.
The chime sang again, louder than before.
“This is the final stop. Please alight from the tram to continue on your journey. Thank you.” It was a man’s voice, tinny as it crackled over the speakers. Toby sat up, peered up towards the front of the tram, then the back. Both of the drivers’ compartments were empty and dark.
He tried to keep it down, that rising bile, that rising panic that started within the pit of his gut and raced its way up to his lungs where it squeezed, to his throat where it choked.
It’s okay, he told himself, told that rush of panic-loneliness-terror-fear that went streaking through his body, applying cold hard logic to the hot weeping emotions. Everyone’s just gotten off. It’s the last stop on the line.
Then why did they leave all their stuff? A little voice whispered in his ear. Clamped his eyes shut. His grip on his bag tightening, his stomach, his right shoulder, his chest all aching under the crushing wave of anxiety and underneath it a sharper pain, a deeper cutting pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
“Toby?”
Toby jumped.
She was behind him, standing in the aisle. One delicate hand tipped in pointed creamy nails rested on the back of his chair. Her dress was long, white, soft. He wanted to touch it, to keep looking, to watch the lines of it along her body.
She was smiling. It was a gentle smile.
“Toby, they’re all waiting for you,” she said, and her voice was the sweetest sound he had ever heard, he would listen to her for the rest of his life if he could.
But then he frowned.
“Who’s waiting for me? Who are you? Where are we? I missed my stop-” The words tumbled out of him before he could stop, that stupid anxiety, he wanted to clamp his hand over his mouth to stop but then he’d look even stupider in front of this beautiful woman.
“Don’t worry about any of that.” She waved that delicate hand, then held it out to him, palm up. Her nails were long, shaped like little daggers. The undersides are black. “Come with me. You have to get off now.”
He almost took her hand, almost, his other weighed down by the heaviness of his school bag. But he stopped, his fingers so close to hers. There was something, something he was meant to do. Something back there. Something that was missing.
“But…” He trailed off, glancing down at his bag. His stomach was hurting so bad, so much worse than before, it felt like someone was sitting on his chest and pressing something long and deep and sharp into his belly, and as he stared down at his bag, and his shorts, and his shirt, he could have sworn he saw something heavy and wet and red begin to blossom and spread.
“Toby.”
Her voice was firm, and he snapped his head to look back at her. Her smile wasn’t so gentle anymore, her red lips pulled back in a sort of sneer. There was something in her eyes, a deep, dark thing that he couldn’t understand. It was far beyond anything most twelve-year-olds could understand.
“Come on. Let’s go.” Her hand didn’t waver. The longer he stared at it, the larger it seemed to grow, the more twisted it became, if he looked back up at her face there was something wrong with it, her eyes too wide and far apart, her nose sharper and sharper, her mouth looking like a slash filled with daggers, it was unearthly and beautiful and terrible all at once.
“I don’t want to.” That little voice again. Toby found himself pushing into the corner, against the wall, pulling his bag into his lap to shield himself from her.
“You have to.” Her voice, so sweet it was piercing. “You can’t stay on here anymore. You have to come with me.”
He glanced around at empty carriage, with its discarded bags and quiet repetitive chiming and that one lone sandal.
There was nothing there for him.
He dropped his bag onto the ground and took her hand. She simply smiled, and without another word, she pulled him from his seat and led him down the aisle.
He hesitated before he stepped off the tram, one foot hovering over the deep gap.
“I’m scared,” he said, and this time his voice was full and large. She squeezed his hand between her talons, their sharp edges scraping against his skin.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Toby. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
He searched her face, that terribly beautiful face that scared him and soothed him all at once.
And then he stepped onto the last stop.
