Cart 23

She swallows hard. Her throat is tight, raw, like she’s been screaming, even though she hasn’t made a sound. The train keeps jerking, the metal frame rattling like it’s barely holding itself together. The flickering lights drill into her skull, buzzing, humming, never stopping. The voices around her blend into a shapeless mass of noise—too loud, too sharp, too wrong.

It never stops.

The fluorescent hum is under her skin, vibrating in her bones, needling its way through her skull like a drill boring into her head. The artificial brightness sears her eyes, too white, too harsh, burning into her retinas every time she blinks. But keeping her eyes open is worse. The flickering, the subtle, erratic stutter of the bulbs—it’s like a warning, like something is about to happen. It puts her on edge, makes her muscles coil so tightly she feels like she might snap apart.

She should’ve brought her noise-canceling headphones.

She should’ve fought harder.

"You don’t need them. Stop being so persnickety."

"You’re not a child. You don’t get to block out the world just because it annoys you."

Her parents’ words loop in her head, blending with the noise, with the light, with the scraping, screeching, suffocating sensations closing in around her. She shifts in her seat, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. The seat is too stiff, the fabric rough against her skin, like it was designed to torment her. Every wrinkle in her clothes feels wrong, pressing against her in ways that shouldn’t be possible. The hem of her sweater scratches her wrists, and the tag inside is like sandpaper against her neck.

She clenches her teeth and tries to breathe, but even the air feels wrong. Too thick, too hot, pressing against her face like a damp cloth, making her lungs work too hard. She’s sweating, but she’s cold. Her body can’t decide what to do, can’t settle, can’t adjust.

She’s going to pass out.

Or throw up.

Or both.

The baby’s wail stabs through the train car again, a jagged, relentless sound. Her shoulder slams against the window with the force of her flinch, but the cold glass isn’t relief—it’s another sensation, another thing, and it makes it all worse. It presses against her burning skin, shocking and unbearable. Her breath catches in her throat. The crying won’t stop. The fluorescent lights won’t stop. The train won’t stop.

She could’ve had silence. She could’ve had her world dimmed down to something bearable. But that wasn’t an option.

"You’re too sensitive."

"You have to learn to deal with real life."

As if this—this relentless, skin-crawling, stomach-turning, nerve-shredding onslaught—is something anyone could just deal with.

She curls her fingers into fists, nails digging into her palms. The pressure isn’t enough. She needs more. She needs to press harder, to feel something real, something sharper than the noise, something that she controls. Her hands twitch against her sleeves, nails dragging against the fabric, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

Another sniff from the man across the aisle.

Another scrape of a shoe against the floor.

Another sharp, high-pitched giggle from the teenagers in the back.

The sounds pile on top of each other, relentless and inescapable. Every tiny noise is a needle under her skin, pricking, stabbing, burrowing deep into her nerves.

The train lurches.

Her stomach flips.

Her vision warps at the edges, narrowing. The nausea is rising, clawing up her throat, thick and acidic. She swallows it back down, but it doesn’t go away. Her pulse is hammering, too fast, too loud, deafening inside her own skull. The overhead lights blur into streaks of white, pulsing, flickering, flickering, flickering.

She can’t breathe.

Her chest is too tight. Her ribs are caving in. The air is pressing against her, suffocating her. The baby is still crying. The man is still sniffing. The teenagers are still giggling. The foot tapping behind her has sped up, a frantic, jittery rhythm drilling straight into her skull.

She needs out.

She needs out.

She needs out.

But there’s nowhere to go.

The train car is spinning, tilting, crushing her under its weight. The walls are too close. The sounds are inside her now, bouncing around in her skull, multiplying, multiplying, multiplying—

The baby wails again.

The sniffing man clears his throat.

The foot tapping speeds up even more.

Her hands snap up to her ears, pressing hard against her skull, but it’s too late. The noise is already inside her, rattling through her bones, wrapping around her throat, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing—

She wants to scream.

She wants to disappear.

She wants to tear at her skin, to rip herself out of this moment, out of this train, out of her own body.

Twelve minutes.

She checked the schedule five times before getting on.

She knows the next stop isn’t for another twelve minutes.

But time isn’t real anymore. It’s stretching, warping, twisting into an eternity of suffering.

She can’t do this.

She can’t—

A hand brushes against her arm.

She flinches so violently that she nearly falls out of her seat. Her head jerks up, eyes wide, breath coming in ragged gasps.

It’s the man across the aisle. The sniffing man. He’s staring at her, brow furrowed, mouth opening like he’s going to say something.

She can’t hear him.

She can’t hear anything anymore.

Her own pulse is a roar in her ears, drowning out everything else.

His lips move again. She doesn’t know what he’s saying.

She doesn’t care.

She bolts.

Her legs barely work—too stiff, too shaky—but she forces them to move. Forces herself into the aisle, past the staring eyes, past the luggage, past the noise. She doesn’t know where she’s going, only that she has to go.

Her hands fumble against the cold metal of the train door. The bathroom. She throws herself inside, slamming the lock shut behind her.

Dark.

Quiet.

Small.

Her back hits the wall, and she slides down onto the floor, knees to her chest, hands clutching her head.

She should’ve had her headphones.

She should’ve had an escape.

She should’ve been allowed to breathe.

But she wasn’t.

And now, she is breaking.