Please Mind The Gap

Introduction

Yesterday I had to go to Scotland, but this could have been inspired by any public service journey. At every stop, the announcement was made and my mind twisted it into this story. The other thing was that so many people were glued to their mobile devices, which is not always a bad thing, unless the device is the nearest thing that they have to a friend.

"Station To Station" by David Bowie is a perfectly ominous piece to accompany this slice of absolute madness

Please Mind The Gap

The train pulls into the station and there is an announcement:

"Please mind the gap when leaving the train"

There is a gap between the door and the platform and the assumption that is made is that they are bothered about us falling through the gap onto the track, and either being hurt or even killed.

But what if it was something more sinister and mysterious than that, what if those gaps are gateways to dark dimensions? Could those announcers be protecting us from falling into some hellish otherworld?

And one day you don't mind the gap, and you fall, expecting to land on the track under the train, with maybe a bruise or two but that is it.

But no you are somewhere else, some alternative reality.

You are in a strange grey maze made up of old broken fridges and old cathode ray televisions. Although nothing is plugged in some of the televisions have pictures and some of the fridges have doors either missing or open and on their shelves are rotting meat crawling with maggots and vegetables and fruit that has turned to a black mush.

Looking up the sky is a uniform grey and there is rain.

There are people wandering the maze looking at the handheld devices and you call out but they ignore you, continually pressing their virtual keyboards. You can't get near to anyone.

"Where are we?"

"Why are we here?"

"Is there a way out?"

Your words disappear into the fog.

You are hungry but there is no food apart from the rot in the fridges, and you know that is not an option.

There is a deathly quiet, the only noise has been the sound of your own voice and that had absolutely no effect.

You wander now the paths and the odd television explodes, which provides a little diversion, as you look for a way out.

You realise that you have your mobile phone and that might help, but the screen comes to life and you see there is no signal. Hopefully, you start Google Maps and get a screen of blankness.

You start keying in things to find some information about what has happened, and you then realise that you are just the same as everyone that you have seen here, checking your device for information. There is nothing there because the Internet does not exist here.

You start to wonder.

Is this Hell or Purgatory?

There are no fires, no devils or demons. no sign of Lucifer, but you can feel your soul being destroyed by the hopelessness of the situation.

You walk further, feeling hungry, but not hungry enough to raid a fridge, and you don't see anyone else doing it either, you and them may be hungry but not starving.

There is nowhere to go, nowhere to stop, you just have to keep walking and hope that you can find some salvation, but the signs do not look good.

Conclusion

A middle-aged man slipped when he missed his footing as he left the train. He fell onto the track just as the train was pulling out. His family have been informed.