The Night Train Conductor – Part 1: Boarding

The sleeper train waited at the platform under a hiss of steam, its dark-blue carriages lit gold, brass fittings polished. Vivienne had booked the whole end carriage. She had told Anton to meet her at eleven, in a good coat, and to bring nothing else.

She was forty-two, a rail-network planner with a gift for timetables and a deep private streak of command. He was thirty-seven, a translator, kind and dreamy, who had told her in a wagon-lit on their honeymoon that he often wished someone would tell him where to sit.

In the compartment, by the little lamp, she laid out a single timetable-style card. Conditions of Carriage. His limits and hers: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, no strangers. The word was Terminus.

"Say it."

"Terminus."

"If you say it, the Conductor steps off. We have coffee."

"Yes, Madame."

"Not yet." She put on a long navy coat with brass buttons and a peaked cap, and clipped a brass whistle to her lapel. Her voice dropped, crisp and cool and unhurried. "Passenger. Your ticket."

"I... don't have one."

"Then you are travelling without authority." She looked at him for a long moment. "That is a serious matter on this line."

She locked nothing. The compartment door stood on the latch, and she showed him the handle, plainly. She sat him on the plush seat and stood over him, hands behind her, while the train began to move, and the platform slid away into the night.

"You will wait here," she said, "until I have decided what is to be done with you."

The train gathered speed. The lights of the town streamed past the window. He sat with his hands on his knees and his heart singing.

A knock, an hour later. "Are you content, passenger?"

"Content, Conductor."

"Good. Do not move."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Terminus.