rormmgale

[rormmgale]

Can Ai write a story?

The Last Train Home

The station clock read 11:57 PM. Olivia tightened her coat around her as she stepped onto the empty platform. The last train home was due any minute, and the night air carried a strange stillness.

She glanced around. Not a single soul in sight. No station attendant. No passengers. Just the hum of the city in the distance and the faint flickering of a dim overhead light.

Then she heard it—the slow rumble of an approaching train. Its headlights cut through the mist as it pulled in with an eerie, mechanical groan. The doors slid open soundlessly.

Hesitant, she stepped inside. The car was empty, the seats untouched. No conductor. No driver. Just her.

She sat near the window, her reflection staring back at her, pale and uncertain. The train lurched forward. But instead of the familiar route home, the city lights outside blurred, shifting into a dark, endless tunnel.

Her phone had no signal. The overhead lights flickered. The train picked up speed.

Then, over the intercom, a voice crackled through the static.

"Final stop approaching."

The doors opened. A thick fog rolled in.

And Olivia realized—this wasn’t her stop.

But she had no choice.

She stepped out.

And the train vanished behind her.

So can AI write a story? Sure. But not like I can.

[rormmgale]

The Hedgehog's Dilemma

I’ve always been afraid of getting too close. It’s not that I don’t want to. I do.

Loneliness is unbearable, pressing in on my chest like one of those cartoon anvils that fall from the sky and crush the breath out of you. But every time I let someone in, it ends the same way, pain, disappointment, distance.

I learned early that love hurts. My dad loved me, in his own way, but his love was conditional. Be strong. Be quiet. Don’t make things difficult. He wasn’t cruel, well, not exactly, but he was definitely distant. When I was sad, he would tell me not to cry. When I was scared, he would tell me to grow up. When I needed him, he wasn’t there.

I learned quickly to stop needing.

And now, years later, I don’t know how to let people close without fearing the moment they’ll turn away. I don’t know how to ask for love or attention without feeling like I’m asking for too much.

Then I met her.

Stephanie.

Steph was beautiful, everything I looked for in a girl. Shorter than me but not by a lot, slightly soft build, dark hair, and blue eyes. The kind of girl you saw on emo album covers from the 2000s. She was gentle in a way that made my chest ache. She didn’t push; she didn’t demand. She just…stayed. She had a way of sitting beside me, of existing near me, that made the silence feel less empty. And for a while, I let myself believe that maybe this time would be different.

But the closer she got, the more I felt myself pulling away. It was an ingrained instinct, a survival mechanism imbedded so deep into my being you could probably define me through it.

First, it was small things: cancelled plans, unanswered texts. Then it became bigger things: a coldness in my voice, cruel indifference where warmth used to be. I saw the way it hurt her. I hated myself for it. But it was easier to push her away than to let her stay long enough to see the mess inside me.

Give them a reason to hate you before they find one naturally. It was my motto in life, a twisted way to keep control of the situation.

I will admit Steph held on longer than anyone else. I was almost convinced that maybe she would stay. Maybe she was different.

And yet, one night, she finally asked, “Why do you do this?”

We were driving. More accurately, I was driving. We had just seen a movie. It hadn’t been very good; some indie crap that tried way too hard to be philosophical and “deep.”

I gripped the hard plastic steering wheel of my 2009 GMC Sierra until my knuckles turned white under the tight metal constraints of my rings. Originally, I had regretted wearing so many as the popcorn got stuck in the ridges when I reached my hand into the bucket, but now I welcomed the slight pain that came with the added pressure. I opened my mouth, as if there was anything to say, anything I could do to fix my actions; nothing came out.

Beside me, Steph swallowed hard, flexing her hands against her worn acid-washed Levi’s. I didn’t need to say anything. She already knew the answer. She’d known for a long time.

 “I keep trying to be close to you, but you won’t let me. And I don’t know what to do anymore.”

I knew this was coming. Fuck, I had been the one to orchestrate it. I had meticulously planned and manipulated my actions to ensure this outcome. That didn’t stop the pain. Her words twisted like a knife in my ribs because I wanted to tell her the truth. The truth was that I didn’t know how to be close without hurting the people I loved. That I was terrified of needing her. That I was terrified of losing her.

Instead, I said, “I don’t know how to fix it.”

It was half-assed at best. Sure, it was true but void of the accountability or blame I so obviously deserved.

Her dark blue eyes shimmered, but she didn’t cry. She just nodded, like she had been expecting it. “I know.”

She didn’t ask me to change. She didn’t ask me to fight for this. Maybe she already knew I couldn’t. Maybe this wasn’t her first rodeo with a girl like me.

I wanted to tell her to stay. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that I didn’t mean to push her away, that I just didn’t know how to do anything else. But the words lodged in my throat; I couldn’t lie to her like that, so instead I let the silence answer for me.

That suffocating silence filled the truck’s cab like gas. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I could hardly see.

I cranked the window down ever so slightly just to alleviate some of the tension and let the sound of the highway wash over me.

The drive was short, I knew this, a quick 12 minutes until I reached Stephanie’s apartment. 12 minutes until I could finally breathe, turn on the radio, and cry.

There is something to be said about the way time crawls when you aren’t having fun. The way a 12-minute drive starts to feel like a never-ending stretch of highway that goes on for hours even though nothing has changed, except for your feelings.

Once upon a time, when I first started going out with Steph, I had begged the Lord for extra traffic just to keep hanging out with her, so this 12-minute drive would feel longer. Now I begged that same Lord to give me an extra 120 horsepower and a clear straight road so that I could cut this agonizing ride in half.

It did end, eventually; I finally exited the highway and made the familiar right onto Oslo Blvd.

Stephanie exhaled slowly as she reached for the door, like she was letting something go. Then she gave me a small, tired smile, the kind people give when they’re saying goodbye before they even really leave.

I know that she was trying to go with grace. Pretend she wasn’t mad at me, but the crease of her brow and the way she slammed the truck's door gave her away.

She was furious.

She should be. I had given her so many reasons to be, and despite that, she had given me even more chances to be better.

A fuck ton of luck that got her. If anything, maybe I can be a learning curve. Don’t give awful people more chances to be awful.

I watched her walk towards her door and waited to make sure she got inside safely before I nearly ripped the handle from the shifter and hit the gas with such force I spun tires.

The smell of rubber burning filled the cab, covering up any lingering smell of Stephanie and her too-sweet vanilla perfume.

Once I hit the highway again, I never let off the gas. Letting my eyes follow the thin red needle as it redlined, the V8 screamed in my ears covering up whatever Creed song was playing through my shoddy radio.

I didn’t cry. I wanted to but I didn’t. I knew that I didn’t deserve to.

After all, this was always the plan, right?

Give them a reason to hate you, before they find one naturally. It was my motto in life.

Always has been.

Always will be.

That night as I lay in bed, alone, I briefly remember a theory my first-year psych professor had talked about or, depending who you asked, yapped on and on about.

The Hedgehog’s dilemma.

The hedgehog’s dilemma was a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. It described a situation in which a group of hedgehogs seek to move closer to one another to keep warm in the winter but must remain apart as to avoid hurting each other on their quills.  

Was that what I was doing? Was I a hedgehog? Seeking warmth but being unable to find it because of my “quills”?

What a stupid question.

[rormmgale]

Pain Personified:

Pain is a near-constant feeling. I like to think it's this way for everyone, in some sense, physical pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain whatever kind of pain the human body can carry. I’m sure everyone feels pain. That’s a fact of life. What I’m not sure of is if it physically manifests so intensely in everyone.

The doctors are useless. It's always the same with them; I wait ages for an appointment, I finally get to see a doctor, they dismiss it as “normal for women” and maybe suggest I lose some weight. So, I stopped booking appointments. I swore I wouldn’t step foot into another doctor’s office unless I was on the brink of death, and even then, I may stay at home.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been very good at keeping my promises.

That is how I found myself, wasting my perfectly good Tuesday morning, in Dr. Guckian’s cramped, too bright cube of an office.

As I said, pain is a near constant. You learn to live with it after a while. Learn ways to cope, ways that the doctors won’t tell you, like mixing paracetamol with ibuprofen and marijuana-infused chocolate and sleeping for hours or burning your skin half off with heating packs and hot showers. Nothing helps 100%, but anything that offers relief is on the table.

This pain was different. Completely unmanageable in every way. Nothing worked, not even my trusty pill cocktail. It pulsated through my whole being. It was impossible to pinpoint where the pain was actually stemming from.

I try my best to explain this, to put the searing red-hot agony into words that a doctor will understand. It's futile. I know. I can see it in his eyes. The way everything I said is going in one ear and out the other.

Why do I bother? I was tempted to stop my story right there and leave. Just walk out of the office and never look at these sterile white walls ever again, but then I prove them right, don’t I?

That I’m just some unreasonable, weak woman who comes crying to them over “normal pain.” So I kept going until I had recounted every painful ache and attack down to the day, hour, and minute it happened.

Dr. Guckian looked at me, feigning some sort of contemplation before turning and typing something on his computer. He turned back to me and said the dreaded words.

“Well, it does seem you are experiencing more pain than average; however, it's important to know that pain like this is normal for women during this time of their cycle.” His fake sympathy act wasn’t fooling me. Once upon a time it may have, but not anymore. I was a veteran when it came to being ignored by so-called healthcare providers.

“I’ve written you a prescription for some anti-inflammatories.”

There it was. The magic word: anti-inflammatories. The end-all be-all of the healthcare system.

I should have been angry. I should have thrown a fit and demanded my pain be taken more seriously. If I were newer to this, I might have, but by now I knew that it got me nowhere. It was best to just accept the mediocre drugs I was given and hope that they eased some of the pain.

That same afternoon, when I arrived home. I popped 2 of the AFs, completely disregarding the label’s instructions of “Take ONE a day as necessary.” I then chased those with an extra-strength ibuprofen and a shot of NyQuil for good measure.

I knew for sure I would be seeing the “hatman” in my dreams that afternoon and somehow, couldn’t care less. Who knows; maybe the hatman had his MD and could give me a proper diagnosis.

~

It was the middle of the night when I woke up. Yanked violently from my painkiller-induced dreams by white-hot pain ripping through my body. I half expected to open my eyes to someone stabbing my stomach.

I wish that had been what I saw.

Instead, I saw a dark stain spreading from across my abdomen. Just beneath the skin's thin surface. As if someone had injected me with the worst tattoo ink known to man. Slow tendrils of pigment stretching outward in slow, deliberate motions.  

In a moment of complete unfeeling shock, I reached to press my fingers against it.

Warm. Pulsing. No, breathing.

Alive.

This had to be some kind of sick, twisted, pill-induced fever dream!

I tried to breathe, to calm myself and think rationally, but the pain was too overwhelming; every atom of my being was consumed by the sharp, stabbing agony.

I had to get up. I had to get to the bathroom; I was going to vomit. I had to get up, but my body couldn’t, or wouldn’t, move. I was cemented in place, the agonizing pain from my abdomen creating some kind of barrier between me and movement.

Then the roots began to emerge. Thin, veiny filaments burst through the skin, writhing like the legs of an insect. They curled outward, wet and dripping with blood, twitching with a mind of their own.

That was the boost I needed to kick my ass into high gear; I practically sprinted to the bathroom. Collapsing on the cold, hard tile, warm, dark blood soaked through my clothes and stuck to my skin. I screamed, a bloodcurdling scream, one my neighbours would surely report, as more of the dark tendrils attempted to escape my body.  

I tried to pull them out, but they were deep, too deep. It was as if they were anchored into my flesh. The more I tugged, the more they spread—curling up into my ribs, weaving into my muscle like vines reclaiming some sort of abandoned building.

I could feel them shifting, burrowing deeper, wrapping themselves around my intestines, my spine, and my lungs.

And just like that, the pain reached a crescendo. I sank deeper onto the bathroom floor, my body convulsing in every which way. The tendrils thrashed wildly, slithering out from my mouth, navel, and the cavities between my ribs.

And then, I was split open.

A figure crawled out of what was once my body, slick with blood and tissue.

I tried to scream, but my body was gone. Torn apart. Unresponsive. As if it was never mine.

The figure stood over the mess that was once me, breathing heavily, its form shifting like shadows caught in fluorescent bathroom light. It was humanoid, but wrong—its limbs stretched unnaturally, skin (if it could be called that) dark and pulsing like the ink that had consumed me from the inside out.

I should have been dead. By all accounts, I was. My body was a ruin on the floor, splayed open like a dissected animal, my insides tangled with the remnants of the tendrils that had birthed this thing. And yet, I was still here.

Still watching.