A scream echoes across the platform. At first we thing it’s the conductor’s whistle. By the time we realise what it is, we’ve already left the station. The girl lies dead in the space between carriages. Her blood paints the grey carpet, her skin lily-white in contrast. No one tries to help her. It’s clear she’s dead.
The yellow lines on the highway sped by in a blur, and we flew through the night, and we felt free. But we weren’t, and we knew it. We were running away from something, and running away was never the path to freedom. I thought about telling John to turn back. I thought about suggesting we call the police from the truck stop, but I decided against it. What we had done wasn’t wrong. It was self-defence…of a sort. A preemptive strike maybe. Perhaps self-offence might be a better term. He was going to expose us.
The moon broke through the clouds and the four of them stood there, frozen, waiting for something to happen. They were in the middle of an open field, and it was as if a spotlight had been trained on them.
The Steward nodded to the Chatelaine. “The Baron requests that his wife call upon him at her earliest convenience.”
The Chatelaine curtsied in reply. “The Baroness informs her husband she is unwell, and declines his request. He may, however, call upon her tomorrow, when she has recovered.”
She’d never truly noticed it, not until she heard its voice. Heard it call to her, a cacophony of noise, like each brick was the member of a choir with their own secret song.
Monica had been in the bathroom for close to an hour. Her hands were red raw from the cheap nightclub soap. The girl in the red dress had already been to the toilet twice, but Monica had soaped, washed, rinsed and dried her hands a hundred times between her visits.
High above the world, she slept. The SS Thorny Castle, floating high above the world with its single passenger. A girl of sixteen, fast asleep for over a century.
You could tell because airships had gone out of fashion ages ago.