The Fast Way Down

The Shortcut

Joe was always in a hurry. Not in a caffeine-jittery way, but in a constant, quietly burning urgency. He walked fast, drove fast, thought fast, and more than once, made decisions faster than he should have. He blamed it on the city — New York taught you to keep moving or get run over.

So when a man in a gray hoodie tapped his shoulder at 2:43 a.m. on the A-train platform and said, “Hey, you tryin’ to get downtown? I know a faster way,” Joe didn’t hesitate long.

He looked up from his phone. The platform was almost empty, the night soaked in that stale, subterranean silence. The trains were delayed. He’d been waiting twelve minutes already, and the screen still flashed DELAYS DUE TO SIGNAL ISSUES. He had a deadline in five hours, and an edit to finish before that. He didn’t have time to wait around.

“Faster how?” he asked.

The guy — mid-thirties maybe, no visible twitchiness or weirdness, just that hoodie and a duffel bag slung across his back — jerked his head toward the far end of the platform.

“Service stairs. You can hop the fence, take the maintenance corridor, cuts right to Fulton. I used to work MTA. Everyone does it, man. Cops don’t care if you keep your head down.”

Joe hesitated. Common sense fluttered, briefly. He wasn’t that desperate.

Then he looked back at the display- A TRAIN – DELAYED – 18 MINS EST.

Screw it.

“Alright,” he said.

They moved fast. Down the platform, past the no-entry sign, around the locked gate where a loose section of fencing leaned just enough to slip through. The tunnel was dim but not pitch black — red utility lights flickered every twenty feet or so. The guy led the way, walking like he knew where he was going.

“I’m Joe,” he offered.

“Uh huh,” the guy said.

Joe let the silence settle. He didn’t need a new friend, just a shortcut.

A minute passed. Then two. Then five.

“Still good?” Joe asked.

“Almost there,” Hoodie said. “You ever been under here before?”

“No.”

“It’s like a whole other city. There’s layers, old tunnels, bricked-off stations. Most people don’t know.”

Joe started to feel it then. The wrongness. Not danger, exactly — just a slow itch of doubt crawling up his spine.

He looked around. The tunnel had branched, twice. There were doors, big metal things marked with numbers and graffiti. The lights were thinning out. His phone had no service.

“How much farther?” he asked.

No answer.

“Yo.”

The man stopped walking. Slowly, he turned.

“You really think you’re the first one to follow someone down here?”

Joe froze.

“What?”

The man let his duffel bag drop. It hit the concrete with a dull, heavy thump. He crouched, unzipping it.

“You think people like me just hang around platforms for fun?”

Joe backed up a step. Then another.

The guy pulled something out — a flashlight, thick and black. Then a coil of rope. Then something silver and crinkling that made Joe’s stomach twist before his brain could name it.

Duct tape.

He didn’t know why that hit harder than the rest, but it did. Something about the sound. The shine. The way it didn’t belong down here, unless someone meant for it to.

“I’ve done this before,” the man said. “I know what I’m doing. You don’t scream, you don’t run. You go home after this, maybe. Depends on you.”

Joe turned and ran.

It was instinct more than strategy. There was no map in his head, no plan, just motion. Back through the tunnel, around the corners, shoes slapping wet cement, air burning in his lungs.

He didn’t look back.

Behind him, the flashlight flicked on. The tunnel lit up in pulses. The man didn’t yell. That was worse. The silence felt surgical.

Joe veered left, tripped over something — an old rail maybe — and went down hard. Scraped palms, knees. Got up. Kept moving.

He saw a door ahead. Not marked. Just there, slightly ajar.

No time to think.

He shoved through it and slammed it shut behind him. Darkness. He felt for a latch, anything.

Nothing.

He pressed his body against the door, heart hammering. Silence outside. Then footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.

They stopped right at the door.

Then nothing.

Minutes passed. Or hours. He didn’t know.

Eventually, Joe slumped to the floor. The adrenaline ebbed. He started to shiver. When he reached for his phone, the screen was cracked. No signal. 3:11 a.m.

He sat in the dark, listening to the city breathe above and below him.

Morning came slowly.

A maintenance worker found him, curled up on a utility blanket in that backroom. The man looked surprised, then irritated, then concerned.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he barked.

Joe didn’t have a good answer.

Police came. EMTs. Lots of questions. He gave his story — enough of it, anyway.

They didn’t find the man in the hoodie.

He hadn’t imagined it. There were security tapes showing a figure following Joe down the platform. But the cameras cut off where the tunnel began.

Joe didn’t tell them everything. He didn’t describe the duffel bag. Or the flashlight. Or the rope.

He told them the man offered a shortcut. He followed. Got scared. Got lost.

They nodded. Not the first time they’d heard something like it.

When they finally let him go, it was late afternoon. The sky outside felt too bright. The traffic too loud. His apartment, when he got there, looked exactly the same — but something in him didn’t.

He took the next day off work.

Then the next.

He deleted his subway apps. Started walking everywhere. Then biking. Then Uber. His coworkers called him paranoid. One even laughed and said, “What, did you get mugged or something?”

“Or something,” Joe said.

He still moved fast. Still hated waiting. But he stopped taking shortcuts.

Because now he understood- the wrong person doesn’t always look wrong. Sometimes they wear a hoodie. Sometimes they talk casual. Sometimes they just say the thing you want to hear.

And you believe them.

Because you’re tired.

Because you're in a hurry.

Because you think you're smart enough to see danger coming.

Joe wasn’t.

Not that night.

But he was lucky.

And luck, he’d learned, was a terrible thing to rely on.