New Story - My Ticket

My Ticket

A lost man with an old ticket stub tries to find his way home.

“Excuse me,” he said, ancient face sad and lost. “I have my ticket.”

He held out a piece of worn, yellow cardboard, cut inward in curves at the corners. For the sake of pleasantries, I took the ticket and examined it.

Barely glancing at the text printed in faded red, I said, “Sir, this ticket is invalid. Modern day tickets are stored on a refillable card.”

I handed the stub back to him, which had to be a few decades old, at least. I didn’t know what he was doing with a ticket as old as that, and what he thought he could do with it.

“Oh,” said the man. He lowered the ticket but didn’t leave. I picked up the guide book I’d been reading but studied it more intently to make it look as if it were part of my work.

“But it is valid…”

“Sir, all our current tickets are digital. I’m sorry.”

I blocked him out with my book once again, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want the old git to make a scene. I just wanted him to go.

“But I was meant to visit my wife, you see. I paid for this and-,”

“Sir!” I said. I dropped my book on the table with more ferocity than I intended. I looked up at the man, all white hair and wrinkled features. He had glassy eyes like he could cry at any moment. He made me feel all the things I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted him to leave. It wasn’t my responsibility to walk him back to the nursing home, and I wondered whose responsibility it was.  

“Sir,” I began, calmer, “our tickets are all in digital form. The ticket you have in your hand is no longer valid. I’m sorry.”

I reached for my book.

“But I paid for it,” he said.

“In what year?” I asked him.

He swallowed, looked about as if he had to remind himself where he was. “I, um-,”

“It’s no longer valid, sir, I’m sorry.”

“But I…” he sniffled, growing upset. My stomach started to swirl. Just walk away, I thought in my head, please. “I never used it.”

“They expire,” I said, my patience growing thinner and thinner. Just leave. “It is no longer valid.”

He sucked in a stuttering breath. “I just… I’m just trying to get home. To her.”

The word home fell out his mouth, and it held everything. That word. It was so familiar, I felt it in my chest.

“Home?” I repeated, but I hadn’t meant to.

I noticed then, the old man’s vintage suitcase, his shoes that looked like they’d been in the closest for years but had been taken out and given a shine that morning, his moth-eaten travelling hat and scarf. He was shades of warm red and winter brown in a world of dazzling white.

“Hmm,” he said, running a crinkled thumb over the ancient ticket stub.

“Where’s home?” I asked, but I had a feeling he would not give an answer that would satisfy me, would not give me a problem I could solve. I suddenly began to wish for something I had previously dreaded – a number to call, a destination to take him to.  

“London,” he said and everything fell apart. His eyes were glassier, his voice, more worried. It was as if he knew… he knew, but he didn’t know.

I dropped my eyes to the table. I couldn’t look at him. “Your wife… you said she’s in London, sir?”

Cars shot by in the street outside the station, the television in the corner trickled static. I waited.

“Yes,” he said. The word crashed into me. It was like waiting for a wave, knowing it’s too late to get away, knowing it’ll crash, but holding on to the hope that it won’t. All in a single, helpless moment. “She’s waiting for me.”

My eyes fell shut by themselves, the tears stinging behind the lids. I couldn’t look at him.

“Can I see your ticket again?”

“Hmm?” he asked. “Oh, yes.”

He handed it over, and I examined it properly. A non-stop train ride to London, purchased in 1992 and valid until… well, it didn’t have an expiry date. It really was, technically, valid, but a ticket I’d never seen before, and so old.   

“Why aren’t you home with your wife?” I asked him.

“Oh, I had a conference. I had to speak at the… the university. She didn’t want me to go, my wife.” He smiled, lost in his thoughts of her. “All that fear peddling in the paper is making her paranoid.”

“Sir,” I began, taking a breath to summon the courage. “Sir, I’m sorry to tell you this but… but London doesn’t exist anymore.”

He blinked at me. “I’m… I’m sorry?”

“It’s gone, sir,” I said. “It’s been gone… for years.”

His eyes looked far away in the distance, and his face seemed to fall apart. “Then… where… where is my wife?”

The tears slipped out of my eyes. “I… I don’t know, sir… but she can’t be in London.”

“But…” he looked around, over his shoulder, as if he’d find the answers he sought behind him. “This is the train station.”

I swallowed the dry lump in my throat. “Yes, sir.”

“Where do the trains go?”

“They go nowhere, sir. There’s nowhere left but here.” I hated this job. “The trains are for those who miss travel but have nowhere to go. You buy a ticket and the train just… takes you. It rides the tracks, you watch the view go by your window and it stops here, and here only. You can just ride the train until…”

“Until you forget you have nowhere to go.”

I reached out and took his hand in mine. “Yes.”