The Train Ride

It was a crisp autumn day, and Zeke Bronzky was leaving home to go to college. Having been raised in an education oriented family; this had been planned since he made an A on his first spelling test. He and his best friend Clayton Kent (or Clay as he was often called) were finally fulfilling there parents dreams.
They had got a ride from Zeke’s parent to the train station. Zeke was telling his parents goodbye, “Goodbye dad I’m going to miss you.”, he told his dad. Then turning to his mom,” Looks like your little boy is all grown up Mom.”
His mom answered, “Text us, write to us, post on our MySpace page, or e-mail us, just talk to us every once in a while please Zeke”.
”Ok Mom I’ll stay in touch with you guys.” Zeke answered as he hugged his Mom and Dad. “And I love you guys.”
”We love you to Son.” answered his mom.




As Zeke and Clay got on their train, Zeke waved goodbye to his parents. As the train began to move, Clay and Zeke looked at each other, slapped a high five and said,”Yeah, we’re free men! Here we come college life!” A few minutes later the waiters entered and started taking orders from everyone. Looking at the people near them Zeke saw a man smoking, knowing that there was a no smoking policy on the train he told the man it was a bad idea to smoke with the waiters in the train car.“Thanks kid I’ll remember that advice.” answered the man.
After giving his order Zeke looked back towards the man only to find he had gone. Turning to Clay he asked, “Did you see that man?”
“What man are you talking about?” answered Clay.
” The man that was sitting right there in that seat!” Zeke said pointing at the man’s empty seat.
“You feeling okay Zeke?” asked Clay.
“Yeah, just never mind.” answered Zeke. Clay got up to use the restroom a few minutes after the incident. Having been under a lot of stress lately Zeke decided that the stress was the cause. He decided to take a nap until his food arrived; he hoped that this would help him. He had been just begun to doze off when Clay arrived saying that he had seen the waiters coming with the food on his way back.
“I’m not sure if the guy you saw was the same one, but there was a man that came out of the restroom right before I entered. He had a tattered old hat and his clothes had holes in them. He seemed weird so I turn around to ask him who he was, but when I turned around he was gone.”Clay told Zeke after they had got their food.
“I told you!” exclaimed Zeke, raising his hands in exasperation.
“Do you have to be rude about it?” Clay asked Zeke.
“Well, yeah. You were acting like I was out of my mind!”Zeke answered.
Throwing his hands up Clay whispered,” Maybe we both are!”
The two calmed down and there were not any other sightings of the man for about an hour. Near fifteen minutes before the stop where they got off, the man walked by their seat and said, “Hello kids.” Turning their heads to watch him walk by the boys noticed that one of his eyes was green and the other was half blue and half white.
Jumping up, the boys followed him. In about a minute they caught up to him.
“Who are you?” Zeke asked the man when they caught up you him.
“I’m nobody kid”, he answered as he walked through the door that led to the next train car. The boys followed after him only to find out he had disappeared once again.
Walking back to their train car they asked the waiters if they had seen the man. Sitting down after the waiters had told them no they talked amongst themselves about the man, they did this until the train arrived at their stop. As they exited the train they asked every one if they had seen the man. Nobody but them had seemed to see him but the two boys. Looking at each other they both thought the same thing: Who was that man!