Three-thirty-five to Hoboken
"My child lost her crayons!" The red haired woman's scream drowned in waves of noise. Her eyes were bloodshot and filled with terror. Her hair sprouted like neon red lightning bolts from their too-soon grey roots. She wiped a hand across her face, in an effort to move loose hairs and smooth them behind her ears. Splotches of blood smeared her cheeks, and colored the roots without having to make her usual appointment.
On the floor, of what used to be the three-thirty-five train to Hoboken, lay a partial box of Crayolas. Scattered across the explosion singed, oil soaked carpet were the discarded carnation pink, dandelion, cerulean, apricot, and scarlet coloring sticks. A half finished Elmo grinned a half smile. The other part of the page was burned into oblivion by the unintended marriage of fuel and spark.
The red moved up and down on the page, inside Elmo's still paper colored fur. The small hand grasped the crayon, twitched up, pressed down, twitched up again.
Her mother lifted the little girl up onto her left hip. She cried out to anyone that passed, desperate for help of any kind. Each of the survivors were just as dazed as the woman and her injured daughter. They all continued on their way seeking help that was a long, long way off.
The daughter lifted her arms to place them around her mother's neck. Her right hand grasped for the left, to enclose her mother in a comforting and familiar gesture, but it swept through thin air.
The girls hand lay beside the coloring book. The stump of her wrist seared closed by the intense heat. The little girl looked down with confusion as her left hand continued to color.
THE END