Verloren
- 45 minutes ago
- 4 min read
/ Second Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Flash /
The wheels of the train clacked against the tracks.
She didn’t know if she should tell him yet. Or ever. When would be the right time? Now? In a month? In a year?
Verloren.
She’d heard the man at the café in Zurich say it to his friend: “Ich bin verloren.”
He’d said something heavy just before that. Her German was poor, but his body language was plain enough.
I am lost.
When should she tell him? Now? In a month? In a year? When they were old and faded, one holding the other’s hand as they lay dying, their lives escaping them, when they had done everything there was to do and the only thing left was to, for the last time, say goodbye?
Sunlight.
It came at her through the windows, bright for a while, then through the stuttering shadows of tall trees.
They had done it. Tied the knot, gotten married, become man and wife, joined in holy matrimony, gotten hitched, taken the plunge. Of all the expressions for marriage, the one she couldn’t get out of her mind had come from her friend, Annie.
“Game over!” Annie had said, or half-screamed, in surprise, or maybe delight, or maybe something else.
That had been at a café, too. Maybe that is where all big news is shared, in cafés, over coffee.
Maybe she should avoid drinking it.
Headphone music from the kid across the aisle. Loud enough to hear the rhythm but not the song.
Should she even tell him? Would it matter?
A hand touched her own: warm, sweaty.
“Are you all right?”
Felix.
Ich bin verloren.
She nodded, made herself smile. But the price for it was that now there was no energy left for words.
“Me, too.” Earnest. As though he’d truly meant it. Knowing Felix, he had.
Someone slid the door open at the end of the car. Sewage smell from the restrooms, assaulting her.
When should she tell him? Now? In a month? In a year? Never?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Felix said. He said it slowly, mysteriously, with one eyebrow arched, as though they were playing a game and as though she were interested in playing it.
“Doubtful.”
Leaning toward her, brushing her hair aside, he whispered something crude in her ear. It was all she could do not to recoil.
Force a smile. Say what’s expected, arch her eyebrow, play along.
“You’ll have to earn that.”
Now? Should she tell him now?
“This time for real,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Doubtful.”
“But if I say it, it will be wrong. Even if it was right.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes all the sense. It’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.”
Felix liked applying principles of physics where they had no business being applied.
“That still makes no sense.”
“You’ll change your answer.”
“Try me.”
He put a finger to his temple and closed his eyes, pretending to think. “You’re thinking that you’re lost.”
A flutter in her heart. Did he find her out? Should she tell him now?
“No,” she managed to say.
“See?”
“See what?”
“You changed your answer.”
“I did not.”
“Well, then, what were you thinking?”
That I was lost.
“Nothing whatsoever.”
“That would be a first.”
He sat back in his chair. They watched the yellow fields fly by. When she’d first seen the fields, she’d thought they were magnificent, beautiful. The mystery had worn off.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“You’re always thinking about things.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“I say that as if it’s the truth.”
In Felix’s face she saw the boy he’d been. It was hard to see the man he was or the older man he would become, when they were old and faded, one holding the other’s hand as they lay dying, their lives escaping them. His face bore all the earnestness of youth and none of the jadedness of its passing. Where had hers gone? When had it gone? Had she ever had it to begin with?
Should she tell him now?
“Maybe I was right, after all,” he said, now smiling again.
“About what?”
“I knew what you were thinking, and I knew you wouldn’t admit I’d guessed right.”
Clack-clack went the wheels. Sudden darkness as they entered a tunnel. They disappeared, replaced by ghosts sitting next to one another in the faint, bluish light of the train.
Ich bin verloren, said one of the ghosts.
I know, said the other.
Then sunlight as they burst from the tunnel, then trees, then sunlight, then trees, then sunlight again.
“Heisenberg wouldn’t apply,” she said.
“Why not?” A faint, shallow furrow appeared on his brow, a rarity.
“Because you predicted I would be unpredictable.”
The furrow deepened, remained for a moment, then disappeared altogether. But in that moment, she had seen him as he would look as an old man, old and faded…
She swallowed. It tasted of horror.
“Okay,” he said in that smug way of his that didn’t mean “okay” at all. “Do you want anything from the dining car?”
She shook her head and focused on the clack of the train, the beat of the kid’s headphones, the sewer smell of the restrooms.
He stood and stepped into the aisle. But before he could leave, she clutched his arm.
“Wait.”
“Yes?” His face bore no concern.
Should she tell him now? What would it change? Would she be telling him for his sake or her own?
“I changed my mind,” she said.
The train clacked. The headphones beat. The smell was still there. The yellow fields flew by.
Verloren, said the ghost.
“Bring me a coffee, would you?”
