Daily Prompt: Write Here, Write Now

Write a post entirely in the present tense.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us NOW.

Solothurn Main Station

Waiting for the train: it will arrive soon. I must concentrate, pull myself together. People just walk past and ignore me. Just a commuter, perhaps a musician with a guitar case on my shoulders, travelling to a music lesson or one of those street musicians that sit on the pavement and collect a few pennies for singing and strumming a cover version of something that arrived in the hit parade ten years ago.

If only they knew. There is a commotion on the platform and the town band arrives and organise their instruments. The air on the station is pregnant with the sounds and smells of an approaching train. A tiny mouse runs along the railway tracks from a train that no-one sees, but he feels it in his little pawed feet. “How sweet” a schoolgirl tells her friend and they both point their eyes in the direction of the mouse.

I do not have time to study the antics of a mouse that will one day be crushed by the wheels of an approaching train. There are more important things to do. The band strikes up its tune, a march, something military. It suits the atmosphere and the person arriving on the next train will be happy to find he is being honoured. There are some that will not be celebrating the arrival of this person. They are waiting in a prison for their execution because they said too much, and the band plays on.

My hands are trembling. “Keep still you fool” I tell myself. It will be done and done with in a few seconds. There is a distant rumble, the air along the tracks vibrates, a noisy monster is arriving and now is the time. Open the guitar case and take out its contents. The tune I will be playing will be swallowed by the patriotic clang of the band. My music will be honourable, but not for all. My brother and my father will clap their hands when they hear of how my music will be celebrated.

The train pulls nearer. I am counting the carriages, one, two, three and there I see him dressed in his pompous peaked hat with his rows of medals. I put my hand in the guitar case and remove not a guitar, no I remove a round object: remove the pin and throw with all my might. The train window splinters with shards of glass. The noise of the band is drowned in the noise of the explosion: hand grenades are loud but effective and the carriage of the train explodes in a shower of metal, blood and gore. The deed is done and I leave the station. There will be no survivors this time.

Daily Prompt: Write Here, Write Now

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