Suicide Platform by Katie McIvor
The suicide platform isn’t like Platform 3 or Platform 4. It’s much smaller, only a couple of paces across, and it sticks out from the side of the station footbridge, high above the tracks, like the box on a window cleaner’s boom lift. Because it’s so small, there is always a long, long queue. The railway passengers eye this queue with mixed expressions. From the less frequent travellers, you might see pity; disbelief; horror. From the daily commuters, annoyance; the queue does, after all, take up a fair amount of space on the narrow footbridge. Disembarking passengers jostle the suicidal, propelling themselves with discreet use of elbows across the bridge to the main concourse. There the suicide queue continues, round the side of the ticket barriers (for which the suicidal are issued special one-way tickets, no destination listed) and on, winding its way between coffee kiosks and banks of awkward metal seats, all the way outside and into the roaring ranks of the bus station. How very British, the tourists think, snapping photographs: to spend their last few hours standing in a queue!
The queue is always slow. Delays and hold-ups are common. It takes a while, of course, for the station staff to swab the locomotives and clean the tracks between jumps, with all trains halted in the meantime, to the commuters’ repressed fury. And there are always those who, having reached the head of the suicide queue, step out onto the little platform and freeze. Just jump, mutter the queuers behind them, footsore, irritated. Get it over with. But occasionally the jump proves impossible, and the failed jumper must retreat the length of the queue, shame-faced, pass back through the ticket barriers, and negotiate with station personnel the handing back of their one-way ticket (no refunds). Today, the queue is slower even than usual. The suicidal shuffle on the spot, eyes down, hour after hour, politely ignoring the leaflets of the priests and do-gooders who haunt their line. Only those near the front are privy to the cause of the delay: a young man, who upon reaching the suicide platform turned, unfurled a banner, and stands holding it aloft, a mute message to those behind him in the queue. The banner reads: THINGS GET BETTER!! The suicidal stare at it, unmoved. Gradually, word travels down the line. A protestor. An obstructor. Staff are alerted; an official intervention is requested. The stationmaster arrives with coffee strong on her breath and a don’t-fuck-with-me look on her face. She speaks quietly to the young man. He nods, smiles, patient, gracious, ever so slightly smug, but does not move. By this point commuters have gathered. Phones come out, videos are recorded. What does the protestor want? What does he hope to achieve? Outside, the line grows longer and longer, weaving between the clouds of exhaust vomited hot from waiting buses. At last, the stationmaster attempts to remove the young man by force. He resists. No, no, he says. I’m going to jump. Really. There is a wait. The queue lengthens. No one quite gets it on video, the exact moment, but there is a consensus, afterwards, among the onlookers, that the stationmaster did indeed step close, almost touching the young man, and that she put her face up to his. She whispered something. Perhaps she convinced him; perhaps she pushed him. Either way, the young man’s eyes were observed to fog out of nowhere with a kind of frightened despair, and in the howl of an oncoming engine he slumped from the suicide platform, banner a-flutter around him, and was gone. In the long pause afterwards, while the spattered remnants are cleaned from the tracks, the commuters reassure themselves. Just a silly stunt, they say. One last prank. He wanted to jump, really.
They all do.
Katie McIvor is a Scottish writer. Her speculative short fiction has appeared in magazines such as The Dark, The Deadlands, Gamut Magazine, Interzone, and Little Blue Marble, as well as the 2023 Nebula Awards Recommended Reading List, the 2024 Bram Stoker Awards Recommended Reading List, and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology Mother: Tales of Love and Terror. She has been 2x Hugo Award-nominated as staff with khōréō Magazine. She lives in the Scottish Borders with her husband and baby daughter.
