••• The International Writers Magazine: Dreamscapes

Back Home • Victor Castleton With a mild screeching halt, I was back where I was twenty two years ago. After a moment of static silence the doors were opened and the people started to clear out, but I remained seated. I wanted to catch a glimpse of the station the same way that I left it. The passengers moved out quickly one by one until the car was empty. A conductor appeared carrying a duffel bag, and doffing off his cap voiced out a polite “Last stop young man” and continued walking. A long hissing blow shivered me up, and the whole train went dormant.

The late August sun pressed on with a soupy lazy unison cadence of screaming cicadas.

The last heads were bobbing down into the stairway while I rested my own on the window. I squinted to the light and I fell into a conscious wondering among the creatures and things under my lids in a drowsy harmless dilution.

I knew that I had no place to go, and I went into a dream. I was woken up by being nudged and grubbed by my chin. I opened my eyes in wonderment to my mother’s face, young and beautiful with her light blue eyes and commanding stare “Jimmy, Jimmy don’t you fall asleep now,” she said. “You’ll be up later…” the train jolted almost imperceptibly and started to move on.

Nobody was at the station but a tall man that I do know. We looked at each other for as long as we could. One of us was left behind, like a dot in the distance.

© Victor Castleton June 2016
bravejames07@gmail.com

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