by Kane, Paul
It was ‘C’.
Taken from the Daily Record
Aquarius: Now is not a time for being selfish. You have lots of love and compassion to spare at the moment so show those special people in your life that you care. Perhaps organize a party or pick them up if they’re feeling down. Only you will know what can work for the best today Aquarius, and it will pay dividends later on.
It was as though the universe had stood still for a few seconds.
Mary Dowling had fallen into the man’s arms, trying to get away from that lunatic who was attacking her. And it felt so safe there. She’d held on to him tightly, never wanting to let go. Somehow she knew he’d protect her. Then something weird happened. She remembered a loud noise, and the floor seemed to slip away from under her. That’s when the universe had stood still. Only for a little while, she thought. Or it might have been a lifetime; probably both. She’d looked up into the man’s eyes, the man holding her, a man she’d bumped into once before that day. She saw those eyes dart from the toilet behind her, to the ceiling, and then he looked right back at her. Their gaze locked. Mary saw every single blood vessel in his eyes––saw herself reflected in those orbs. Oh, did she look a mess…
Then time gradually started to roll again. The man fell with her, toppling sideways. He tore his gaze away from her. She felt him fling her sideways, through the carriage door he’d come through only moments ago. As Mary fell she saw the whole train spin like one of those postcard competition tumblers on Saturday morning children’s programs. Somebody, somewhere, was winding the handle and the whole train was tumbling around and around. Lights flashed on and off, and she was hurled to the ground––or what appeared to be the ground now. Mary held out a hand and grabbed hold of a luggage rack; saw the man who’d thrown her disappear from view. People were screaming from behind, she could hear them but blotted out their cries with ‘I Will Survive’. Yes, she’d finally chosen her song. She played it over and over again in her head.
Everything seemed to speed up then, just briefly. Cases fell onto her, bags and coats. And as suddenly as the chaos had started, it stopped again. All was quiet and still. Mary remained there, under the luggage that had fallen on top of her, for some time. What had happened? Just what in the name of bloody hell had happened? Mary’s own private world had been shaken up when that guy grabbed hold of her in the toilet. Then, as if mirroring this somehow, the whole train had suddenly been shaken. It was too much information to take in at one time, too much to process.
She already knew what had happened. Something had gone wrong with the train and now it was on its side. She only had to look around to see that. Mary was trapped inside one of the luggage compartments, one of the spaces on the left or right as you entered a train carriage. And now that was the new floor.
But she couldn’t stay there forever. Mary attempted to move, to push some of the luggage away. She found she was quaking. It seemed so dark now in the train. Mary wriggled up into a sitting position, her breathing slow, shallow. She made to push one of the bags away and realized it was hers, the handbag she’d used in the toilet to whack the guy––like some little old lady or something. It’d worked though, allowed her to get away from him and press the red button, to open the doors and escape. Out of the frying pan…
Mary was suddenly aware that ‘I Will Survive’ had stopped looping in her head. She could hear the sound of crying and screaming from behind again. Not as loud as before, granted. Less like the screams of people going through some sort of major tragedy and more like the cries of people trapped and wanting help. Mary remembered her phone. Reaching inside her handbag she groped around. It wasn’t there. It has to be there, you can’t have lost it. How would that look, you working for a mobile phone company and you’ve lost your phone just when you needed it the most? It has to be… Ah, there it is! Mary’s hand closed around the small object. Pulling it out she saw that the screen was blank.
Oh no. It’s broken. You broke it when you hit the guy with your bag. What a stupid thing to do, Mary. What an idiot you are! But how was she to know she’d need to use it in a few minutes for this? All she could think about at the time was his hands all over her, the razor he’d held up.
No, you really are an idiot, aren’t you, Mary? You turned it off, remember? So nobody would call you at the audition. God––the audition! They’d be lining up soon to get in, their numbers ready. But no number 35. “Where’s number 35?” they’d call out and there’d be nobody there to answer because she was here, under all this luggage and––
Mary’s mind was racing, not making any sense. Dammit, concentrate.
She switched on the phone and it lit up, a shining beacon in the darkness. Mary dialed a number and a woman asked which service she required. Mary opened her mouth and found she still couldn’t speak. She was asked again: which service?
Mary found her voice this time, strong and sure. And she used it for a much more important purpose than singing.
“Hello… Hello… there’s been an accident,” she said.
Taureans are an Earth sign so being outside every now and again is fundamental to their happiness. They simply love getting back to nature and if they’re enclosed in a man made environment for too long will soon start to feel the strain.
William Booth opened his eyes… and found he could only see through one of them.
He thought for a second he might be blind in the left, as he’d hit the side of the table quite hard. Perhaps it had taken out his eye? They weren’t particularly sharp but given enough force even the bluntest of things could do considerable amounts of damage. Then he blinked and discovered that something was trickling into the socket, blurring his vision on the left hand side. He brought up a hand to wipe away the wetness. It felt sticky to the touch, and he knew it must be blood. His left temple was throbbing as well, where he’d connected with the table, slightly higher than he’d imagined. His eye was okay.
Will tried to get up. His body ached all over, a consequence of being thrown halfway across a train carriage probably. Nevertheless, he tensed his muscles and tried to raise himself. It was no good; his back was killing him. He couldn’t stand. Looking around, he realized that he was now on top of that table… sort of. The aisle he’d been walking along was to his immediate left. Which meant that the train was on its side.
Brilliant observation, Will, he thought. So long as that University education wasn’t completely wasted.
When had he been aware that something was wrong with the train? Only mere seconds before he did his Superman routine and flew up the centre of the aisle faster than a speeding bullet. Eat your heart out Brandon Routh. Hadn’t even needed a red cape and Y-fronts to defy the laws of gravity, just a little push in the right direction and he was away. Will didn’t know why he was thinking such things. It was no time for… for levity. This was a serious situation he was in. Even now his good eye was catching things all around him, a hand sticking out at an odd angle from behind a chair––it was snapped back so far it looked obscene. A couple of prone forms not too far away, one wearing trainers, the other high-heels; neither were moving. Smashed glass from a window lay all around, littering the carriage. Will strained his eye and thought he saw… He looked away, the sight of a shard of glass sticking out of someone’s chest was too much. Will felt bile rising and swallowed it down.
That’s why your mind is cracking Superman jokes, he thought. It’s a knee jerk reaction: protecting you from the reality of all this, trying to get you to focus on something else. Will had once seen a documentary about survivors of plane, car and train crashes, about how they blocked out what was happening around them, and just focused on getting out of there. Would all this be a blur to him soon? Will doubted it; he had a photographic memory and right now it was recording every last detail. He’d relive the whole thing in glorious technicolor and surround sound every time he shut his––
Will blinked again, the blood clearing, but still it stung. He squeezed through the gap between t
he windows and the chairs, crawling along on all fours. He felt something squish under his knee.
Don’t look down. For the love of sanity, don’t look, Will.
But he had to. He had to know what he’d crawled into. Will looked down, lifted his knee up. It was covered in stickiness, but it wasn’t like the blood from the gash in his head. He smelt at it––mayo. He’d knelt in his BLT sandwich. Will let out his held breath.
A hand grabbed his arm and made him start.
He was looking into the face of a young girl about seventeen, eighteen, couldn’t have been much older than his students were. She had short-cropped hair and a stud in her nose. Next to her, holding her hand, was a youth with a leather jacket on.
“W-w-wha…” she began, but had trouble forming the words.
Will took her hand and patted it. “It’s okay. Just stay where you are, both of you. Don’t move. Help’ll be here soon.”
But would it? Will had no idea. Did anyone even know they’d been in a crash? Was anyone on their way? Christ Almighty, he hoped so. In the meantime he had to check as many of the people in the carriage as possible. He had some basic first aid training––it was a requirement of his job––so he’d do what he could for who he could. Will spent the next few minutes assessing those closest to him. Some were clearly beyond help, others he tried to make comfortable; made reassurances he couldn’t personally keep––about getting out of here, about escaping from this nightmare. It jarred loose a quote from Keats: ‘Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering’.
Then above the crying and other sounds, Will thought he heard a distinctive call for help. The voice sounded familiar to him. He didn’t know where from. Will started to crawl towards the end of the carriage as fast as he could. He passed other people in various states of distress and some, like the prone bodies back there, not moving at all. Unconscious or… worse. He tried not to think about it. Tried to block out everything but the sound of this one voice. Why was it so important? He didn’t know. All he knew was he had to reach it as quickly as he could.
Leo and Health: The two areas of the body ruled by Leo are the back and the heart. A Leo should be careful to avoid straining their backs, so no heavy lifting or strenuous bending. They also like their food, but should try and steer clear of fried foodstuffs like bacon and have a nice salad instead as it’s better for the heart. In matters both physical and emotional Leos are likely to be led by this muscle.
Belinda Gould couldn’t move her arm. It was most definitely broken.
No more ticket collecting for a while, she said to herself, as if this was the sum of her problems. She stared ahead of her towards the smashed section, the crushed end of the carriage. She could so easily have been standing there when the split came. Luckily Belinda hadn’t made it up as far as carriage B yet and the impact had thrown her backwards. She’d lost her balance and landed heavily on her arm. The weight she’d put on since her modeling days ensured it broke when she fell. She even heard the loud crack as it went. Belinda had once broken her leg falling down some stairs when she was eleven or twelve, but she didn’t remember it hurting this much. The pain when her arm had broken was unlike anything she’d ever known. She’d almost blacked out a couple of times from it, except it was as if her body just couldn’t decide whether or not to go the whole hog. In the end the pain had kept her in the land of the living.
The land of the living, and what a place to be alive in. The lights were off, electrics were sparking in the carriage. Belinda thought of the people who’d been in the front carriages: the alternative was much, much worse. She held her arm, which thankfully was now numb. I look like I’m trying to flap my wings.
Was she going into shock perhaps, her body shutting down bit by bit? She’d read somewhere that could happen in moments of trauma or crisis. This certainly fitted the bill. You couldn’t get any more traumatic than… Of course, she’d also read that your life flashed before your eyes when you had a near death experience. Hers hadn’t, and she was quite glad about that. She didn’t want to relive her past again, where it had gone wrong with Gerard, the end of her career. Didn’t want to relive cheating on David and the pain she’d caused him. Yes, there were good times in her life she’d celebrate gladly if she was shown the edited highlights, but she always tended to dwell on the downsides. On the regrets.
There was a slight movement to her left, a mumbling. Belinda turned, wishing she hadn’t almost immediately as the pain revisited her arm. There was a girl curled up between two of the seats. Belinda vaguely recalled taking her ticket just before all hell broke loose. The girl was young, pretty, wearing jeans and a pink jumper. At least it had been pink before the crash. Now it was stained with dark patches. Unlike Belinda, this girl’s body had decided to switch off and she was just coming around again.
Belinda shuffled along the floor, reached out and touched the girl’s leg. The girl shook her head a couple of times and then recoiled.
“Hey… hey, love, it’s all right,” said Belinda. She reminded her a little of how she’d looked at that age.
“Where… what’s happened?” said the girl, her words slurring slightly.
“Something bad,” Belinda told her. “How you doing?”
The girl grimaced. “I’ve been better.”
“Tell me about it,” said Belinda. “What’s your name?”
“Tra… Tracy.”
“I’m Belinda.”
“My… My stomach hurts, Belinda.”
“I know, sweetie. Just try and relax.”
Tracy coughed. It sounded like she was gargling with mud. “Heh… And my stars were… were so good for… today,” she said, eventually.
“Stars? You don’t believe in all that, do you, honey?”
Tracy gave a shake of her head. “Not really.”
“You make your own destiny, love. That’s what I say. For better, or for worse. Nobody can see what’s coming. We should know, right?”
“For better or for worse,” Tracy repeated, and coughed again.
There was a noise from the far and of the carriage––the one still attached to the length of the train. To begin with Belinda thought it was someone coming through from carriage D. Then she saw a man drop down from the ‘ceiling’ through the door now on its side.
“Is there anyone in there?” came his voice.
Oh thank the Lord, thought Belinda. Thank the Lord.
Taken from The Daily Record
Libra: So much for living the easy life! You’ll find yourself in demand today, bumping into all sorts of people and generally chewing the fat. You might even meet a special person who could turn out to be a friend for life. Perhaps they’ll remind you of the individual you once were and you’ll decide to take them under your wing? One important factor to bear in mind today though, no matter how bad things look, where there’s life there’s hope. Remember that and you won’t go far wrong. Oh, and you might find unexpected visitors dropping in on you, seeing as you’re so popular. Lucky you!
Russell Prince and his partner Alice Swanson had only just emerged from the accident and emergency department of the local hospital when the call came through. The patient they’d dropped off had been an attempted suicide. Aspirin rather than paracetomal fortunately, which meant the guy might even stand a chance. Stomach pump, clean him out, get him some counseling. If it had been paracetomal, and he’d taken that many, there would be no chance. You might as well swallow a timebomb then sit back and wait for the explosion.
Climbing into the driver’s seat of the ambulance, Russ picked up the radio and responded. “We’ll be there as quickly as possible,” he told control.
“What was that?” asked Alice joining him inside.
“Been a train crash on the main line. Bad one by all accounts.” He started up the engine and put the ambulance in gear. “That’s the kind of thing that really narks me about this line of work and the things you see,” Rus
s said, looking both ways as he came out of the hospital car park. “You get silly sods like that wanting to end it all, and then something like this happens.”
“He had his reasons, Russ,” said Alice.
“It’s the coward’s way out. Some people don’t get a choice; he did. Doesn’t seem to balance out.”
“That’s how it goes sometimes.”
“It shouldn’t.”
Russ had known Alice about nine months now, ever since he’d moved to this area and taken the paramedics’ job here. She was small, under five foot, but he’d seen her do things that would make so-called grown men mewl like kittens. Seen her cut into bodies and stick tubes in, slit open throats to provide airways… even stick her hand inside one biker’s stomach to stem the internal bleeding until they could get him to surgery. Strength wasn’t always apparent from looks alone.
It was something he’d already been taught serving in the army, that lesson. Russ had been a medic in Her Majesty’s Infantry for seven years. And he’d seen action a couple of times during that period. Been in combat situations with youths who didn’t look like they could blow up a paper bag, let along a munitions depot. They’d surprised him, though, just as Alice continued to do every day. Pity she didn’t have as much courage when it came to standing up to that bastard husband of hers.
