The Subway

You’ve just gotten out of work, and you’re tired. You’ve had an exceptionally long, ruthless day considering that one of your idiot coworkers decided not to arrive to work today without any advance warning, so you got trapped with the responsibility of completing his daily tasks for him to keep the whole workplace moving. This forced you to labor for a full twelve hours today. You’re exhausted and bitter with resentment, but the prospect of returning to a warm apartment, brewing up a kettle of hot tea, and then curling up on a comfortable couch is quite appealing to you. All that you have to do is get through the coldness of the outside air and find the subway.

The wind bites your face as it blows. You squint your eyes shut, pull your scarf over your face, and pick up your pace to the nearest subway station. This was going to be your ticket home. It’s creepy out in the dark street and you get that irately bizarre feeling of someone watching, waiting until you were vulnerable so that they’d have an open invitation to bring you harm. Strange fear sets in despite the fact that you see no one around. You’re vaguely aware that it’s utterly quiet on the street. Perhaps it’s simply your gut feeling. Your psyche is merely playing tricks on you, and now you’re hypersensitive to anything in your environment that might appear to be strange. Relax. Get to the subway station.

You turn the corner and finally see the little dark green building that sheltered stairs descending far down into the earth’s frozen soil. You hurriedly enter the small, dimly-lit building. Like the comfort of home, the closed walls give you a sense of security, and the frigid feeling of eminent danger resides. You relax.
You walk down the stairs and the fluorescent lights flicker. You pause and consider going back up into the dark streets to perhaps catch a bus, if any would be running this late at night. You’re afraid of the power going out while you’re down here in this giant underground coffin. You decide to keep going down the stairs, take a right, go down another flight of stairs, and then you ultimately arrive at your desired platform.
It’s eerie down there. The concrete walls are a dull gray and the graffiti seems to have been scraped and chipped away, like someone gave a vain attempt at cleaning it off of the walls. It’s full of that typical, musky basement smell that’s unpleasant but doesn’t hurt your sense of smell. There’re newspapers on the ground and old magazines, as well as various other pieces of long-forgotten trash. While you wait for the subway cars to arrive, one of the newspapers catches your eye. You bend down and pick it up.

The headline reads, “WOMAN COMMITS MIDNIGHT SUBWAY SUICIDE.” It isn’t uncommon, so you’re not surprised. Plenty of depressed and mentally ill people travel down into the subways with death notes and then drop them on the ground seconds before they jump in front of the high-powered, high-speed underground trains. It’s the same thing every time; their bodies crush on impact, everyone screams in shock, and suddenly gore is on the ground. This is not an isolated case, and therefore is nothing special. You simply toss the newspaper aside since you deem it to be unimportant and not worth whatever attention you have left.

Twenty minutes pass. You wonder where the subway is. You consider sitting down on one of the benches, but then you see that is strewn with trash where the homeless once lived before they were evicted from the public transportation station by ruthless police. People have died on those benches from disease, hunger, and cold, and though their bodies are long gone, you think better of it. You stand.

Where is that train? It should have arrived nearly half an hour ago. You’re shivering and covered in goose bumps, but you remind yourself that at least you’re not above, where the wind is freezing and constantly threatening your skin with frostbite. Your previous fear has now been replaced with irritation and you are quickly becoming impatient. This isn’t worth your time, so you turn around and head back to the stairs.

When you get there, you see the most peculiar thing. The stairs have iron gates blocking them, the ones that they only use to close down the subway station in emergencies to keep people out. There’s a padlock. You’re alarmed when you think that maybe there was an issue with the subway and they closed the station, but you don’t recall hearing any worker close it. The discomfort returns. You go back out to the platform and take your cell phone out. Maybe you can get a signal.

It’s fully charged, but nothing appears. You try dialing the police to get you out, but the signal isn’t going through. Of course it wouldn’t. You’re far below six feet underground. You start fidgeting and your legs are suddenly jittering back and forth as you stand in place, and your teeth chatter. You feel stressed.
Finally, after a good hour or so, you hear the distant horn of a subway blare. It’s getting louder and louder and you let out the most relieved sigh that you had ever exhaled before. You never even realized you were holding your breath. The subway cars emerge from the dark hole they come from and halt to a screeching stop in front of you. You get right up close to the door nearest to you and it opens with a small hiss. You immediately step inside.
You’re sitting on a plastic seat. Your stress goes away and you feel so, so wonderfully relieved. You feel the weight of your bag pulling down on your arm, so you set it down. The subway lurches forward suddenly, and now you have time to look around your environment.
Several sleepy-eyed, lifeless-looking people are sitting down as well. One is a middle-aged man of African descent, staring at the ground, depressed. Another, who appears to be Irish and is considerably overweight, is trying to sleep, but his eyes keep opening and were very bloodshot. An old woman who is sitting as stiff as a statue moves her mouth like she is trying to speak, but no noises are emitted. Perhaps it is a facial tick. A young, blond woman who is sitting across from you is staring at you with unblinking, icy blue eyes.
You awkwardly twiddle your thumbs when you realize you’re being stared at, but you avert your gaze downwards. You check your phone. Now it won’t even turn on. You wonder how that could be since it had a full charge only a mere hour ago, and you’re sure you had turned it off. You place it in your pocket and look up to find the blond-haired woman still staring at you.
“What?” you ask simply, but she doesn’t respond. You look at the African man and see that he’s staring at you as well, and the old lady—with her eyes wide—is also watching you. “If this is a weird joke, then you guys have some pretty lousy taste.”
Despite your comment, they don’t look away. You get up and sit on the opposite end of the subway car, but their eyes follow you. You wait several minutes and tell yourself that your stop will be in a few minutes, so you feel as if you can deal with this awkward strangeness for a little while longer.
Every minute feels too long. Their staring becomes unbearable; they aren’t even blinking. You stare back at them, but you’re faltering. “What’s your problem? Just stop it,” you tell them sternly. You wait another two minutes, and then look back at them. They’re still looking. “Okay guys, I’ve had enough,” you claim. “I’ve had a horrible day, just a really awful day, and I don’t need this to make it any worse. I’m hungry, I’m cold, and I’m tired, so quit it!”
They don’t flinch or even seem to care. You get so irritated that you’re tempted to pick up a rock you see in the corner of the subway to throw it at their heads.

You take in a breath to calm yourself down. You blink once, but then your heart stops. Suddenly the four staring people are dirty with black grime covering their faces and dark rings around their eyes. The blond woman’s hair is now a disgusting yellow and the pores of the African man’s face seem huge. The Irish man’s white-and-blue stripped clothes are tattered and covered in some type of black gunk, and the old woman looks like she hasn’t cleansed herself in eons.

You stare at them. You blink once more, but now they’re all standing, heads turned in your direction. They’re dirtier than before. Their eyes are now white and small like beads while the darkness around them expands like water dipped into ink. You back up against the wall, bend down, and grab the rock from the floor.

You feel frightened, so you curse at them and threaten to bash their heads with the rock if they get closer. You become aware of a quiet noise in the background, like the distant screeching of a dying animal. It’s gradually becoming louder and the fluorescent lights overhead begin flickering.
You blink once more, and now the people are closer. Their skin and hair is turning black with filth and their limbs are now twisted in unnatural positions, the joints clearly out of their sockets like they were hit by some tremendous force. You scream and unknowingly blink once more, and suddenly there is a hand clutching your arm.
It’s the hand of the blond woman, now nothing more than a mangled mess of black flesh and grime. You panic and bash her head with the rock over and over again until there is a sickening crack as the bone splits open. You scream in fear, and suddenly the screech of the dying animal far in the background disappears into silence. Your eyes open.
You’re sitting on a plastic seat. Your stress goes away and you feel so, so wonderfully relieved. You feel the weight of your bag pulling down on your arm, but you don’t set it down. Your heart is pounding. You know full well that the terror you just felt was real. You wonder to yourself, “What the hell just happened?”
You consider the fact that maybe you had fallen asleep on the metro and had a horrendous nightmare. Yes, that’s the only logical explanation. You fell asleep and were dreaming, and now that you’re awake and relaxed, you survey your surroundings.
Four sleepy, lifeless-like people are around you. The old woman’s still doing her facial tick and the African and Irish men still look like insomniacs, but the blond woman is staring at you. You shift uncomfortably.
Minutes pass and she continues to stare at you. You get that unbearable itching sensation that crawls up your spine and settles down on the back of your neck. You blink, and now they’re dirty. Your heart pounds more quickly, but you remain seated where you are. You stare back at the blond woman until your eyes water, and then you blink. She and the other three are now covered in disgusting muck and are standing.

You feel a sense of panic. You rush up to your feet and hurriedly grab the rock on the ground. When you turn around, the blond woman is already there, and she has grabbed your arm.

You scream and thrash as you start to hit her over and over again with the rock like the last time, mindlessly and blindly crushing her skull with it. You hear the dying squeal of an animal in the background as the skull cracks and splits open. You close your eyes as you brutally beat her with the rock, and then all goes silent. Your eyes open.

You’re sitting on a plastic seat. Your stress goes away and you feel so, so wonderfully relieved. You feel the weight of your bag pulling down on your arm, but you’re stiff and rigid this time. You’re silent for a very long stretch of time before you get up and rush to one of the subway doors that would lead to the next subway car. You grab the handle and pull, but it’s either locked or jammed shut. You pull harder and harder as desperation sets in, and in that time frame, you blink several times.

You look over your shoulder. They’re standing mere inches away from you, staring at you with their mangled bodies and bead-sized eyes surrounded by thick darkness. They smell like rotting carcasses. Yet again, you scream and kick at them, but they grab your arms and legs and hold you down.
You shriek. You flail and you struggle with them as one of them picks up the rock in the corner. The sound of the pained, dying animal returns. You watch as he returns to you, raises the rock, and then bashes your forehead in with it. All goes silent.

You’re sitting on a plastic seat. There is no relief now. The woman is moving her mouth, the African and Irish men stare mindlessly ahead, and the blond woman is staring at you. You drop your bag, get up, and rush to the rock. You pick it up and begin an attempt to smash one of the subway windows open, not daring to blink this time.

In a desperate panic, the window smashes open. You blink once and instinctively glance back at the people staring at you. They’re dirty, but not entirely covered in filth. You turn around and despite the high velocity of the subway, you jump out of it. Even as you hit the ground, you know that it’s your only chance of escape.

You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You’re hyperventilating. You open your bag and search for any type of weapon that you could use, perhaps a pocket knife, but there is none. The blond woman is staring at you again.

You’re frightened and confused as to what is actually going on, but regardless, you wrap the shoulder strap of the bag around her neck and you pull hard, tightening it as far as it will go. Your lips curl back as the woman begins to suffocate and her eyes look as if they are popping out of her skull. You hear the dying animal for a short while, then all goes quiet the second the woman goes limp.

You’re sitting on a plastic seat. The bag is weighing down your arm. You furiously grab onto the blond woman’s head and begin bashing it into the window behind her with as much force as you can muster, forcing your eyes to stay open. Blood appears, the skull cracks, and the dying animal cries once more. All you want to do is to get out of here, and you’re being driven with a sickening madness.

You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You feel tired and without strength. You blink, and the people around you turn dirty. You get up and the weight of your body feels unbearable on your legs. You grab the rock, blink once, and then twice, and suddenly you feel their grasps on you. You decide not to fight back this time just to see what would happen, even though your terror is intense. They take the rock from you, and the next time you blink, your head is crushed with it.

You’re sitting on a plastic seat. There is no blood on you, nor are any bones broken. You open your mouth to say something, but just like the old woman, nothing comes out. You’re becoming exhausted. You try to stand, but you can’t. The weight of your bag is hurting your arm. Time passes, and you cannot help yourself from blinking just once.

You stare them down after the second blink when they’re standing right in front of you, gazing down at you with those impossibly small eyes. You blink again, and the old woman has her hands around your throat.

You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You get up and run, ignoring your weakness as adrenaline surges through your hot blood. You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You try to kill all four at the same time. You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You climb up into the overhead compartments where baggage belongs. You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You’re sitting on a plastic seat. You’re always sitting on a plastic seat.