A Sad Story

A Sad Life.

Ask anyone who used the station, and they would say that he was always there, standing on the end of the platform, a ragged notebook in his hand, and homemade, half eaten sandwiches sprouting from his pocket like some disastrous physics experiment. A sad, lonely, figure watching the trains.

On that bright summers day, there he was as normal, a faded blue anorak, out of which hung two arms, two legs and an unkempt mass of hair. He watched intently as yet another train pull up at his platform. As it passed, his pen dipped down dutifully to note down the engine number. While he scribbled, the train came to a stop and doors opened. Out streamed the passengers, each wanting to get to the exit as soon as they could, as if they were gazelles under the threat of a hungry lion.

Everyone ignored the small figure. The crowds seemed to part around him as if he were a stone jutting out into a stream. He seemed oblivious to the mass of people, so wrapped up was he in his little world. As the people parted to pass him, it was almost as if they too seemed to not notice him. All that is, except two lads.
“Hey Martin, check out the saddo.”
“So sad,” laughed Martin, loudly, as he passed.
The figure said nothing, already awaiting with interest a new train he could see in the distance.

Martin and his friend, Chris, headed through the exit and out into the sunshine. Their eyes screamed for much needed sleep, but sleep was the last thing on their minds. Besides which, they were too macho to acknowledge even to each other that they couldn’t hack it. Just back from a night out at a club in London, they had a full day of drinking ahead of them. They were young, and cool, things like sleep didn’t matter to them.

“There’s Jason.” Chris said as they got outside.
“Where?”
The reply came in a squeal of brakes and a heavy thumping bass as Jason pulled up alongside his friends. The thumping got louder as he lowered a window.
“Well, hop in then, we haven’t got all day. The pubs already open,” he yelled over the racket, his fingers running the beat up and down the steering wheel insistently. Martin and Chris threw their bags in the boot and then piled in. They had already forgotten the sad figure on the platform, someone they wouldn’t be seen dead with.

Martin, Chris and Jason enjoyed that day. They couldn't know it was to be their last. They spent the afternoon flitting from place to place, steadily knocking back more and more drinks.
As for the lonely figure at the station, the platform was his home for the day. His half eaten sandwiches hung forgotten out of his pocket as he gathered number after number, his notebook looking steadily more tattered as the day wore on. Eventually, as early evening was arriving, he wrote down his last number and tucked the notebook in his shirt pocket, oblivious to the fact that his sandwiches still existed.
It was only after he got out of the station that he thought back on the day, to the comment from the man that morning. It wasn’t the first time someone had insulted him when he was there, harming no one.
“I’ll never understand them,” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t know he was exactly right.

It was just after seven that summers evening when Jason lost control of his car while taking a shortcut through a housing estate. His mind was numbed after drinking a couple of pints at the last pub an hour before, and Martin and Chris were singing along to the current song on the stereo right in his ear. When he ran over some broken glass and a tire shredded he was way too slow to correct the car. As it mounted the kerb, he was shocked to see children straight ahead of him. By the time he began to try to avoid them, it was way too late. Frantically he tried to swerve around them but merely put the car into a spin.
The stranded children stood no chance. Passers-by could do nothing but watch in horror as the car ploughed straight into them, cutting off their frightened screams, replacing them with the sickening crunch of shattering bones and bodies slamming to the ground. Their fragile bodies were scattered, like bowling pins, with brutal, fatal force. One of them already lay dead before the car, completely out of control, smashed into a concrete pillar on a nearby bridge. One spark was all it took to ignite petrol vapour in the car, adding a fireball to the carnage, flattening the children still standing, and slowly roasting the trapped passengers in the back of the car. Their screams quickly faded as the roaring flames took hold.

By the time the flames were put out quite a crowd had gathered. Putting out the fire had taken only a few minutes, but the clearing up would take a lot longer than that. The bodies of the children had been moved into ambulances as desperate paramedics fought unsuccessfully to revive them. Now, there remained just one ambulance, waiting while fire fighters carried out the grim task of cutting free the remains of the car’s occupants. The crowd had gathered as close as they dared to the wreckage, mournfully quiet. They watched in silent judgement as one by one, body bags were wheeled up to the side of the car and a misshapen figure was placed in it. Finally all that remained was a burnt out car and, on the pavement, little orange tags indicating the position of the children’s bodies. Slowly, the crowd began to disperse, returning to their homes, the sights and sounds of the tragedy imprinted on their minds.

" So sad," summed up one man. Still shaking his head slowly, he too turned for home, a tatty notebook poking out of his shirt pocket, and a half eaten sandwich sticking out of his coat.