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Runaway Train: A Short Story
In this terrifying short story, a lone railway passenger discovers that the man sitting next to him is none other than the Grim Reaper.
16 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 18, 2014
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8 people want to read
About the author
Brandon Meyers
26 books26 followersBrandon Meyers is author of the novel "Lovely Death" and the short story collection "Chasing the Sandman." And when not writing solo, he and his best friend, Bryan Pedas, co-authored the novels "The Sensationally Absurd Life and Times of Slim Dyson," "The Missing Link," "The Graveyard Shift," and "Dead and Moaning in Las Vegas," as well as the humor blog/web-comic A Beer for the Shower. Someday he will grow up and get a real job. Brandon can be reached at brandonleemeyers@gmail.com .
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 28, 2017
There's nothing wrong with reusing familiar story lines; great writers do it all the time. Romeo and Juliet got an Americanized musical treatment and came out looking like West Side Story. But if a writer is going to trot out a familiar story line, he or she needs to do something to distinguish this particular tale from the crowd. Brandon Meyers is unable to find anything special in his short story, "Runaway Train," and the result is a competently written but thoroughly predictable horror tale that falls short of being an actual thriller.
As you might guess from the title, “Runaway Train” takes place on a train, one heading through Stephen King country in rural Maine, where a businessman named Jake Rickshaw is trying to relax while en route between stops on a business trip. Jake has a fear of flying, but that’s nothing compared to the fear he starts to feel when a spooky stranger straight out of a Peter Lorre movie sits down beside him and starts to strike up a conversation. Jake doesn’t like the rather morbid turn the conversation starts to take, and he especially doesn’t like catching a glimpse of the man turning for an instant into a ghoulish nightmare figure.
Jake soon figures out that his traveling companion is the Grim Reaper himself, out to collect the souls of Jake and every other human on the train by causing a major accident. Jake tries to convince his fellow passengers and the train’s crew that their livers are in danger, but that proves to be rather difficult to prove without Jake coming off as a giant nutcase. The more that Jake tries to make his point, the worse things get.
The ending of “Runaway Train” will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with horror fiction. In fact, I remember reading a version of this story in elementary school. From about the second page of the story on, I knew pretty much what was going to happen every step of the way and waited in vain for the author to throw a curve. Nor does the author try to add any real suspense, such as by disguising the identity of Jake’s new traveling companion or drawing out his attempts to get the crew to stop the train. The story is only 15 pages long, and a good writer would have been able to make it far more entertaining given a few more pages.
Having read a great deal of self-published dreck on Amazon, I can appreciate competent craftsmanship when I come across it. Author Meyers is a decent writer: the story flows well, and he’s added some good description. But all of this is in service to a plot that’s quite well worn and unexceptional. The result is rather like a print of a painting you might find in a motel room, pleasant enough to look at but quite unmemorable. I can give “Runaway Train” a marginal recommendation, for the author’s competent craftsmanship but nothing more.
As you might guess from the title, “Runaway Train” takes place on a train, one heading through Stephen King country in rural Maine, where a businessman named Jake Rickshaw is trying to relax while en route between stops on a business trip. Jake has a fear of flying, but that’s nothing compared to the fear he starts to feel when a spooky stranger straight out of a Peter Lorre movie sits down beside him and starts to strike up a conversation. Jake doesn’t like the rather morbid turn the conversation starts to take, and he especially doesn’t like catching a glimpse of the man turning for an instant into a ghoulish nightmare figure.
Jake soon figures out that his traveling companion is the Grim Reaper himself, out to collect the souls of Jake and every other human on the train by causing a major accident. Jake tries to convince his fellow passengers and the train’s crew that their livers are in danger, but that proves to be rather difficult to prove without Jake coming off as a giant nutcase. The more that Jake tries to make his point, the worse things get.
The ending of “Runaway Train” will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with horror fiction. In fact, I remember reading a version of this story in elementary school. From about the second page of the story on, I knew pretty much what was going to happen every step of the way and waited in vain for the author to throw a curve. Nor does the author try to add any real suspense, such as by disguising the identity of Jake’s new traveling companion or drawing out his attempts to get the crew to stop the train. The story is only 15 pages long, and a good writer would have been able to make it far more entertaining given a few more pages.
Having read a great deal of self-published dreck on Amazon, I can appreciate competent craftsmanship when I come across it. Author Meyers is a decent writer: the story flows well, and he’s added some good description. But all of this is in service to a plot that’s quite well worn and unexceptional. The result is rather like a print of a painting you might find in a motel room, pleasant enough to look at but quite unmemorable. I can give “Runaway Train” a marginal recommendation, for the author’s competent craftsmanship but nothing more.
September 3, 2018
Nicely written, but ultimately a rehashed plot line that offers nothing new.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews