r/twosentencehorror except i fucked up and wrote 600 words
cw for gore, child death, unreality & eldritch horror as pornography
Though you haven't travelled by train enough to have Adapted to it, you've travelled enough to know how this goes: before a Storm starts, it announces itself with a clap of thunder, and you have two to five seconds to close your eyes before it gets going, but really everyone always closes their eyes immediately after the peal just to be safe, and you parents always said you should do that too, so when the first Storm gives its warning you close your eyes and in four seconds the train shakes, and in three you hear the usual screaming, in the voices of all the other passengers you think might scream when something goes awry, and you feel someone grabbing you, begging you to open your eyes, to help them - you think it's the photographer, maybe, but you're not sure because you haven't gotten a chance to talk to them much - and you forgot how bad the Storms get and you try to stay strong and keep your eyes closed but then you hear blades rending flesh and bones breaking and the strangled, bubbling cry of someone getting their neck slashed open and trying to wail, and suddenly you can't convince yourself it's just the Storm tricking you, begging your eyes open, and you reach for where you know your classmate was and she's not there, shit, so you open your eyes - just for a second, just to make sure she's safe, fuck, she couldn't actually be stupid enough to take someone else's - and the train is soaked in a sick, pulsing violet light and there's blood clinging in the corners and the windows are growing teeth and the seats are writhing and you see that every other passenger is dead or dying, gaping wounds showing shattered yellow bone, and you can't breathe, you're choking, something's choking you, there's a hand at your throat and nails digging into your trachea drawing blood and god, you fucked up, you're going to die, shit - but it really is beautiful, isn't it?
The screams of the dying sputter out as you watch, enamoured with the gore, and the hand around your neck reaches into the wound it's created - that you didn't realize was big enough for that because it hardly hurts at all anymore - and the hand crawls up into your mouth and you shudder, and you can start to see why your classmate offered to take this from you, because even though it's horrible, some part of you feels chosen to see this, the crumpled bodies around you and the hulking silhouettes through the windows, and the little girl's plushie is stuffed into her open chest cavity, and the train and the Storm both sing, in a way you've never heard before, electric whining and pumping pistons and thunder swelling and throbbing and the rain whispering awful, scared things as it paws at the glass in an effort to get close to you, to hold you, soak you in itself, come out, please, fuck, i need you, but you can't move because the hand has moved from your mouth to your brainstem and is massaging it, and you're trembling and whimpering because you want to break the window and embrace the Storm, but you guess the hand is the Storm too, its touch searing and holy and so, so loving, and maybe you're going to die like this, but damn, you think, what a great way to go, and
then you wake up alone in the observation deck and the train is not moving anymore and the sky outside is hauntingly clear.
