The next morning, I woke with the faint taste of pizza grease in my mouth, like a dream I couldn’t fully remember. The tiny TV sat quietly on its rickety table, innocuous, almost apologetic, as if nothing had happened. I poured coffee, the steam rising in lazy curls, and kept glancing at the screen, half-expecting the words NEXT STOP to vanish or wink at me, some reassurance that it was just a weird dream. But the TV remained black, silent, patient. Waiting.

I didn’t want to turn it on. I knew better. Something about it had changed. The scratches, the name, the smell—it wasn’t just a channel anymore. Something had shifted.

By noon, I’d convinced myself it was coincidence, or my imagination. But when I opened the blinds to get light into the room, the shadows clung to corners like they were afraid of sunlight. The living room looked familiar and alien at the same time. The couch sagged in a way it never had. The carpet fibers seemed longer, like they were reaching for me. Even the table that held the TV wobbled more than usual.

Eventually, I turned it on.

The hum started, low and measured. The click. The faint whiff of pizza. My stomach knotted. The screen came alive with its usual first-person view: the tracks, the endless rails, the sky dark and wet. And then the words appeared: NEXT STOP – VISALIA.

I froze.

I didn’t just recognize the station this time. I felt it. Like the TV knew where I lived. Like it had always known. My heartbeat thudded in time with the camera pans, which lingered unnaturally long on corners of the empty platform, the benches, the peeling paint on the walls. The scratches in the wood weren’t just letters now—they looked like marks someone had made to guide me, an invisible map only I could read.

Then I saw movement.

Not on the platform. Not on the train.

Inside the glass windows of the waiting room.

A figure. Blurry at first, indistinct, like a reflection in rain-slicked metal. Then, as my eyes adjusted, I recognized it: me. Or someone who could have been me. Same posture, same clothes I’d worn yesterday. Sitting on the bench, looking straight at the camera, at me. The screen flickered for a second. I leaned closer. The figure smiled. A slow, deliberate curl of the lips that made my stomach tighten.

I jumped back. My coffee mug rattled against the counter. I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t hallucinating.

The screen cut to black.

And then another message:

YOU ARE EARLY.

I stumbled back, heart racing, but a part of me—maybe the part that had always loved trains, loved schedules, loved the ritual of the screen—felt an odd, magnetic pull. The TV wasn’t just broadcasting anymore. It was communicating.

I sat on the couch, hesitant. Watching, waiting.

Hours passed. Shadows shifted across the room, sun to gray dusk. I refused to look outside. Nothing outside was important. Nothing mattered but the tiny TV on its table.

As night fell, the hum returned, the click, the smell. The screen glowed. And then the programming changed: Railway Risqué.

I should have looked away. I should have covered the screen. I didn’t.

The camera didn’t show the usual sleeper cars. It showed my living room. My couch. My table. My hands. My reflection in the dark window behind the set.

And someone was on the couch with me.

I turned, slowly, not wanting to startle it. Nothing was there. Just the room. Just the shadows.

I looked back at the screen. The figure, my double, reached out from the TV. Not literally, but the camera angle, the timing, the exact mimicry of my movements—it was as if it had been recording me all day.

And then the screen went white.

Words burned across it:

TONIGHT, WE DEPART.

I froze. The smell of pizza hit me stronger, almost choking me, but not from the TV. From the corner of the room. Something unseen, hovering. Watching. Waiting.

The hum of a train, distant, faint—but unmistakable. My living room trembled ever so slightly, like the rails were under the floorboards.

And I realized: the TV wasn’t the only thing in the room anymore.

Something had come with it.

Something that knew my name, my movements, my smells. Something that had been patient. And it had just decided it was time to move.

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. But my legs felt like they were glued to the carpet.

Then I heard it: the low, steady hiss of a train door opening. Not on the screen. Not outside. In my living room.

I didn’t move.

I couldn’t move.

The train was here.