From Hurried Ascensions
by Esi Noire
The next door opened itself.
Rene hadn’t touched it -hadn’t even stepped forward – but the frame melted away like wax in heat. Beyond it, the train changed.
No more benches. No lights.
Instead, an open corridor stretched into a living hallway of fabric and smoke.
Tarps floated from the ceiling like breathing lungs. Bits of glass glowed in the walls – old mirrors, broken lenses, pocketwatch faces that pulsed softly as she passed.
The floor shifted under her feet. It wasn’t solid anymore. It felt like packed earth.
She reached for the wall. Her fingers brushed something soft.
A voice.
*“This is where we carry what we never meant to pass on.”*
The smoke thickened. Images formed inside it: a man hunched over a table, coughing into a red cloth. A girl in braids hiding under a kitchen sink. A folded letter burned before it was read.
Rene staggered forward, hands out.
The corridor pulsed.
The walls whispered.
One said, *“You don’t belong here.”*
Another answered, *“She does now.”*
A wind rushed past her, warm and full of ash, and behind it came a shadow, wide and winged, made of the memories no one spoke aloud.
Rene didn’t run.
She stood still, let the wind wrap around her, and whispered:
**”I came to remember what they couldn’t carry.”**
And the corridor went still.
Wicked Grim Stories 
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