Death Stories: A Woman In Red

On a frigid winter night, a woman sat alone on the desolate platform, the skeletal frame of the station stark against the inky sky. She lit a cigarette, the flare briefly illuminating the hollows of her face. The biting wind whipped around her, yet beneath her grandmother's shawl, a deceptive sense of calm settled. Then, through the grimy glass of the platform doors, a figure emerged. A familiar silhouette. A ghost from her past. A man she had once loved with a desperate, all-consuming passion. Now, his presence ignited a chilling dread, the unwelcome echo of a love she thought long buried.

Her pulse quickened, a frantic drumbeat against her ribs. For a fleeting, panicked moment, she fumbled in her bag for a comb and mirror, a futile attempt to compose herself before the inevitable confrontation. But the man walked past, his gaze never landing on her. He stopped before another woman – a stranger, utterly unlike her – and kissed her. The kiss was deep, possessive, a brutal display of intimacy that twisted like a knife in the woman’s gut. A hollow ache bloomed in her chest, a bitter understanding of what she had lost, or perhaps, never truly possessed. Tears welled, blurring her vision, her pale complexion taking on a spectral, almost sinister cast in the dim light.

She watched them, transfixed with a morbid fascination, as they moved further down the platform. She was oblivious to everything else, the world narrowing to this agonizing tableau. The man lifted the other woman's bags, his steps light, almost buoyant. Unseen, a single, catastrophic misstep sent the woman tumbling onto the tracks just as the train roared into the station. A sickening crunch, a spray of crimson against the pristine snow, and the woman lay still. The man stared in horror at the blood staining his hands, his face a mask of disbelief.

He didn't know the woman lying broken beneath the train was his wife. The woman he had abandoned the night before, sneaking out at dawn to pursue a fleeting, meaningless affair. The shawl she had worn was now soaked in her own blood, a chilling testament to his betrayal. The train she had missed was the one that had ended her life.

    Picture Of A Woman Waiting By The Train Station - *courtesy - adobe express ai generated