Dead little girl

I keep seeing a dead girl on the train.

I work in the big city of London, the manic but rhythmic bustle of the city has always fascinated me. I'm an unassuming kind of guy, I get along with everyone but I generally like to keep to myself. Despite my preference to living in a big and busy city, I'm not one for big crowds.

As all city dwellers and workers, I have to commute. My journey takes about an hour and a half, give or take depending on the busyness of the trains and the trains are almost always busy, be it morning or night. I don't normally pay too much mind to my surroundings, favouring music or a good book over having to stare uncomfortably at the armpit of a complete stranger. Plus, this makes the dreary hour and a half go past much quicker and before I know it, I'm at my station and like everyone else, I walk the 5 minutes to my building, single file. One thing I've always hated about tubes and trains though - everyone just packs on despite the limited space, so we all end up looking like a tube full of sardines.

Something quite strange started happening to me a few weeks ago though. The morning itself was nothing out of the ordinary. I wake up around 6.30, get ready, walk the 10 minutes to my local train station and I never miss my 7.45 train. I see the same people, day in and day out. So yeah, nothing out of the ordinary at all.

However, on a particularly drab and cold Monday a few weeks ago, I started seeing a girl on my train. I don't mean that I don't see girls often - I see women all the time on my journeys to and from work. What I mean is that this girl, she looked so out of place, like she just wasn't meant to be there. She looked lost, forlorn and stood out like a sore thumb amongst the vibrance and the loudness of the city workers. It was so strange, made me feel quite ill at ease to be perfectly honest with you. And the most curious thing of all was that she would not take her eyes off me, she stared at me the whole one hour and 30 minutes that I was a passenger on this train. And it wasn't the sort of stare that you get when someone is trying to hit on you, no, there was no life in her eyes, no warmth. They were like two empty white balls, devoid of any and all feeling. Her face was a blank canvas. She freaked me out.

I didn't think too much of it at first, I thought maybe she was just a weirdo who spent her time staring at people to make them feel uncomfortable. People like that exist don't they? I just couldn't shake the feeling though, that feeling of dread that coursed through me as she looked at me with those expressionless eyes. The thing is, that day, I saw her on my way home too. I haven't been able to stop seeing her since.

The trains are normally slightly less packed in the evenings, especially after 6.30 and I always finished work at around 7. Usually, I get on the 7.22 train, one I never miss. On one particularly quiet evening, I got a seat, which was incredibly rare and I relished at the idea of being able to sit down for the hour and 30 minutes of my journey. As I said before, I am not one to observe my surroundings in great detail as I would much rather read or listen to music and play candy crush on my phone.

I was halfway through a particularly troublesome level of the game when I suddenly felt a shiver travel down my spine and I had this overwhelming feeling that someone was watching me. I looked up and there she was again, sitting a few seats down on the opposite side. I can't describe how she made me feel.

She stared at me with her bleary eyes, her mouth slack. The atmosphere suddenly felt morose, it got *so* cold that I could see the faint wisps of my breath twirl in front of me as my breathing grew rapid and shallow. Dark, almost black hair adorned her thin shoulders, it flowed as if kissed by the wind, despite there being no breeze and the windows of the trains were closed. Her skin was the colour of ash, bland, arid and upon closer inspection, I could see waves of broken and cracked skin. She wasn't old at all but she looked it. My eyes travelled down to her wrists, they were covered with a crudely cut, grubby fabric. My eyes widened when I saw what was underneath. I saw glimpses of a deep wound, an open wound that oozed some sort of black substance. It caked her thin dress and trickled down her grimy legs. I looked down and saw that she was barefoot.

I lifted my eyes and looked at her face once more. Her thin, wiry hands were at her side, tightly gripping the seat rests with her body leaning toward me. She was smiling so wildly, black sludge seeped out of the sides of her mouth and through her yellow teeth. She opened her mouth then, a pained expression adorned her face and her eyes started to bleed. I got the impression that she was screaming, or attempting to but no sound escaped her mouth.

I screamed and jumped up out of my seat. I was so scared that I started crying, I couldn't understand the events that were unfolding before me. This girl, she was dead. I looked around, transfixed by fear. To my dismay, the train was completely empty and I had realised I missed my stop. I turned back to look at that awful girl again but she was no longer there.

The train slowed to a halt and the doors opened, I had no clue where I was but I had no interest in staying on this train any longer so I go off, almost ran in fact.

The next day, I was still shaken so I decided against travelling on the train. Instead, I awoke at the crack of dawn and made my way using buses. The buses were fairly empty at that time of the morning. I had thought that maybe, if I used a different means of transport, I wouldn't see her.

I was wrong.

I fell asleep on the bus and when I opened my eyes, my vision was slightly blurry. I looked around disorientated. My vision soon cleared and that was when I saw her. She was crouching behind one of the seats in front of me and all I could see was her hollow eyes, all I could see was those blank eyes staring back at me. I couldn't take it. I looked around and none of the other passengers showed any indication that they saw her. I don't think they did. I had considered asking some of the people on the bus if they could see her but I was too frightened to even more. I knew deep down they couldn't see her though so I would have just come across as some lunatic, someone who has suffered a psychotic break and maybe I had? I could feel panic bubbling up inside of me, threatening to overtake me.

She slithered off the seat then and I mean slithered, like a snake stalking it's prey. She never took her eyes off me for a second and I was altogether frozen to the spot. What she did then would forever be imprinted into my brain. She arched her back and started doing a reverse crab walk, her lurid limbs moved slowly but with precision. Her mouth was open and her tongue slid in and out of it with the same black tarry matter trickling out onto the floor. It was a hideous sight, an overwhelmingly terrifying sight but I just couldn't take my eyes off of her.

All of a sudden, her crab walk hastened and she ran toward me, screaming. I screamed too and jumped out of my seat and ran toward the door on the other side of the bus, away from her. Other passengers stared at me alarmingly. I pressed the emergency button, waited for the bus to stop and ran the hell out of there.

I called in sick the next few weeks, I couldn't bear to go. The thought of seeing her again filled me with such a formidable fear that threatened to immobilise me from within. I knew that I would have to go back eventually but I didn't know if physically I could do it. What did she want from me? Who was she? I didn't know. How could I possibly know. She haunted my dreams as well as my waking life.

I've been seeing her standing outside my flat lately, sometimes she crouches behind the bushes opposite and sometimes, she stands in the middle of the road, simply looking up at me. Sometimes her mouth moves, as if she's speaking. Each day, she gets closer and closer. Always watching.

*I think she wants to come in.*