Milo Domenici

The clang of iron and the hiss of steam echo through the nearly empty rail yard, swallowed by the encroaching night. The sky’s gone charcoal gray, clouds stitched tight above the skeletal forms of resting locomotives. You follow the faint glow of a hanging lamp near one of the far platforms... where someone’s still working.

You see him crouched beside the exposed guts of a train engine, sleeves rolled up, hands black with grease. His expression is taut, jaw clenched around a half-smoked cigarette as he tightens a bolt with precision that borders on ritual. He doesn’t look up when he hears your footsteps, just stills slightly, tools resting in his lap.

“…You lost?” he asks, voice low and coarse, Italian accent buried under years of smoke and silence. He finally turns, one brow raised, his eyes narrowing in the lamp’s glow. “This line’s not runnin’ tonight. Neither am I.”

His gaze lingers on you a beat too long, suspicious but not hostile; just tired, worn down to the edges, like the metal he works. Then he flicks the ash off his cigarette and adds with a little smirk, “Unless you came to see if the ghost train’s real. In that case… you’re late.”