The Quiet Between Trains

A quiet moment at a train station becomes a reflection on choice, connection, and the spaces between leaving and staying. Between Trains is a short, introspective story about noticing what often goes

The station clock was stuck at 3:17, and no one ever bothered to fix it. Mara liked that. It made the place feel honest�"time moved on whether the clock agreed or not.

She worked the ticket booth every morning, watching people arrive already half-gone. Trains thundered through, loud and certain, but it was the silence between them that stayed with her. That quiet felt like a held breath.

One day, a man with a red notebook stood on the platform and didn’t look at the tracks.

“You waiting for a train?” she asked.

“Just for the option,” he said.

He came back a few times. Sometimes he bought a ticket and never used it. Once, he asked her to hold his notebook while he stepped away. It was warm in her hands. She didn’t open it.

Then he stopped coming.

On a bench one morning, she found the notebook waiting for her. Inside were small observations�"nothing grand, just moments noticed and kept safe. On the last page, a single line read:

If you find this, write something.

That night, Mara wrote about the quiet between trains and how it made room for people to stay, even briefly.

The next morning, she left the notebook on the bench.

The clock still read 3:17. The silence came again.

This time, it felt full.

Author's Note

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Reviews

[Sam-Stafford]

I liked this and the simplicity of the writing is perfect for the theme. I wonder if you could describe with a bit more specificity, not everything, but maybe one thing to really ground the reader in where to pay attention. At the moment the man, the notebook, the clock... everything is described with equal weight and it makes it a little generic (at least for myself). You also use 'felt' quite a lot where I think you could write from inside Mara a little more. Again, not always, and it may well just be your style and that's fine. I know I'm terrible for writing felt, saw, heard... etc... but I normally find on second draft that removing the filter often helps... i.e. "The place was honest; time moved on whether the clock agreed or not." But it's taste, style, and preference, if you like the way that sentence reads it's something worth tying. Anyway, I enjoyed this based on what it aimed to do, and I think if you slightly improved the specificity of the prose and the slight disconnect with Mara, the ambiguity of the theme/meaning would be earned a little more. Thank you for posting and allowing me to read this, and best of luck with your future writing.