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With a breath, the next train whistled by, leaving Tommie shivering on the platform. The air congealed around her, icy fingers trailing down her spine, every train missing her and the darkness ever-present.
She didn't know why she was there.
The clock read a date four years from now, and Tommie waited on the station out of time, pulling tighter on her jacket, containing only the scrap of paper with the words that ruined her life. I loved you too much. Leave. Run, before it's too late. Ha. As if it weren't already too late, like she didn't dream of her beloved—her no longer girlfriend—every night, like she didn't think of her warm embrace as she shivered in the cold, like what she was running from hadn't already sunk its claws into her, injecting her with its poison. She didn't know what she was running from, but she knew that her not girlfriend had caused it.
It lay dark, on the station out of time, an accurate name, yet Tommie knew she was running out of time. Irony, her least favourite form of karma; she must have done something truly awful in another life.
A train trawled in, grinding to a halt before her, the funnel weeping smoke. The door did not give way under her hand, a century's worth of rust blocking its movement, but when she sunk her nails in it opened like it was oiled on the daily.
Inside, it was still. Too still. Even once the train had juddered to a start with a screech and a scream, the air in the compartments was oddly stationary, and she had to wonder if they were moving at all, or if the sounds had played solely to make her believe she could escape her own personal monster.
("I love you, Tommie," Harriet murmured, then froze. It was a cool night, and probably not the best to have chosen for stargazing, but Tommie had found herself surprisingly relaxed. For her girlfriend not to be was odd, considering it was Harriet that always told Tommie to calm down.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Can't I tell you I love you?"
"Of course you can," Tommie said, fondly. "You just don't tend to freeze and panic after romantic gestures."
"It doesn't matter," she said, firmly. "It's not like you'd break the final seal anyway."
"What—? Beloved?"
She only shook her head again. "Don't worry, Tommie. Everything is okay. I love you.")
A door that wasn't there opened and closed; the clammy darkness giving way to a wall of light and heat, Tommie cringing away with a tight lockbox of fear stealing the space in her chest. The cold may neglect, may forebode and forewarn, but the heat devoured, the monster not hiding in the darkness but with teeth and claws of molten light. Whatever she had been running from—she hadn't run enough, hadn't run fast enough, and it was here, this was it—
She risked darting a glance over her shoulder, each breath drawing less and less air, only to see a gentle-seeming girl.
("I love you," Tommie said, it all coming out in a rush of giddiness and excitement, raw happiness from the girl beside her, who she wanted to always be beside her. It was a grand statement, and one Tommie had not ever thought she would manage to say, and yet she had managed and it was easy.
Her darling froze.
"Love?" she asked, confused. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, yes," Harriet said. "I'm fine. Sorry. I love you too, Tommie."
There was a frown carved into her face that belied her words. Tommie chose not to comment on it.
It wasn't like she froze up often, just only after—after she, too, had said I love you. A two way street, a mutual connection, a bond that could never be broken, the desire to devour and keep forever shared between them.
"We should go to sleep," she continued. "It's pretty late. And you have a big morning ahead of you."
"I do?" Tommie asked.
Then Tommie woke up, the next morning, and her fingers closed around a piece of paper.)
"Hello, Tommie," the girl said, bright green eyes blinking up at her. "I'm Harriet."
"Hello, Harriet," Tommie replied, the claws in her chest releasing her breath. I know her. Why do I know her? "It's a pleasure to meet you." Again. Who are you, that I feel I know you so well?
Harriet smiled back up at her, offering up her hand. "You too."
In the grip of Harriet's hand, Tommie remembered that she'd never told her her name, and where she'd heard that voice—seen that face, felt her hand— before.
Harriet's smile was pointed, like a shark. There was something wrong with her, then, in that instant, in every second since she'd entered the train, something not quiet human, not quite right, something that wanted to tear and rip and destroy. "I've got you now, Tommie."