Photography - Botched Photo Interpretations # 5

What story can be conjured from this photo?

Riding the train to Yonkers, NY. 35mm. Taken by Carolina.

Overactive (Story fragment)

Sophie's ten-year-old pale fingers press firmly against the window of the train. Bridges, boats, and brownstone buildings pass by as it travels lazily beside the river. The glass is cool, marked with smudged finger prints and scratches. She believes her hand can push through glass if she presses hard enough. 

"It's gotta work," she thinks urgently, for she has to warn the townsfolk across the river of the impending danger heading their way. Her brown eyes lock on the sight of a metal monstrosity, it's back hunched at sharp angles and skinny steel limbs hole-ridden, face a blank sheet of gleaming metal. It marches sluggishly slow towards the sleepy town, appendages sinking deep into the ground. She imagines them caked in mud, worm guts, and pigeon poop. Those limbs will soon strike the rooftops, crashing through bedrooms and living rooms, splintering bed frames and breaking televisions. They will drag forward, knocking over surprised fathers and shrieking mothers. They will cut into flesh and continue onto other homes until there are no lives left to snuff out.

Sophie has to save them from such a perilous fate!  

She tugs on her mother's sleeve, attempting to direct her attention to the creature, but her mother smiles dismissively and continues to read a magazine. Sophie huffs and returns her gaze to the window, only to realize she cannot spot the creature anymore. Panicking, she stands up abruptly, nose to glass, palms to scratches, her mother's reprimanding tone a whisper fading into the train car.

"Sophie! What's wrong with you. Sit down!" Her mother yells and shakes Sophie's shoulder. The town grows smaller as the train travels farther away.

She tries to explain the occurrence happening across the river-they have to stop this train at once-but the stern gaze her mother gives leaves no room for explanations. Pouting, Sophie returns to her seat dejectedly, for she had failed to be a decent hero. Sighing, she glances out the window anxiously, craning her head. The town is mostly behind them now, the creature suspiciously absent. Had it done the evil deed already?

Her eyes pass over the water tower at the foot of town, a hulking mass of rickety metal flesh, menacing yet ordinary in the landscape that zooms out of focus, and then fades from view.