The Magic Train

 The train of magic pulled up at midnight.

We'd been expecting it.

It was our turn. 

Our town.

And it was here.

We'd heard that you could get on the train.

You could get mail too.

Sometimes something got off, but we weren't sure that was true.

It had arrived slowly, sluggishly, like a fly being dragged through treacle.

We whooped and clapped when it came to a complete halt, the steam wrapping round us like ectoplasm..

It was time for some magic. 

Which kind we didn't know. 

My friend got a letter from her dead Mother. Shed been gone ten whole years. She was fine. She lived with a lesser angel. She was the housekeeper and did whatever he wanted.

My neighbour got what she wanted too. A bottle of pills. They were in a brown paper bag with a tag on some old string. 

It said 

Take them all. It's what you asked for every night. 

Signed, No Empathy Whatsoever.

Agnew down the street got on board and was never seen again. She was desperate for some company. I saw her sit in the carriage next to a beautiful man, who turned to stare at me. I gasped. He was now an inexplicably hideous creature. Agnew smiled and waved and was deep in conversation.

I recall too from the corner of my eye a figure stepping down from the train at the far end of the smokey platform. A shadowy form with moving skin. It was covered in tiny crabs scurrying everywhere. A breeze carried them all off and the figure blew me a kiss.

I knew then that this was what what I'd asked for. What I'd dreamt of. My once -fiancé lost at sea some fifty years earlier. Fallen from his trawler like an anchor.

An anchor buried in my shredded heart.

Now old, he'd come back to me, direct from the ocean floor.

I wasn't sure I wanted him now.

He waved with his lobster claw and ran towards me on flippers.

I hesitated.

Some magic is worse than reality.

Some magic is terrifying.

My salted lover reached me festooned with barnacles, each one filter feeding in the station's smog.

He smiled, his mouth a clapping clamshell and wedged between his briny tonsils a large pearl.

He spoke in a voice ripped straight from a piranha.

Kiss me and take it with your tongue my dearest. It's my homecoming gift to you.

I panicked.

This wasn't how I'd imagined it to be.

I suddenly boarded the train of magic as it was pulling away.

My only chance. 

I stared at my fiancee through the window.

He was as I remembered. Young and handsome like he was before the molluscs made him home.

He looked sad and confused.

I sat down in the carriage Agnew was in. The beautiful beast was just finishing up eating her face clean off.

I screamed when the conductor appeared with a rib saw.

One-way ticket?

I nodded.

Ah, that'll be one heart and one soul please.

He came closer. 

Choo Choo!