Train 318-B

Blistering winds swirled inside her coat, catching on the furred collar, and familiar gray light pierced the clouds overhead. In the distance, advertisements echoed and thundered through the early morning dim and fumbled her brain around her skull.

Every morning, she thought bitterly before sidestepping an opening newspaper stand. The cart’s owner, a withered man with thinning gray hair and an overlong beard, scowled as if she’d pissed a personal stream in the still-steaming coffee atop the exterior metal shelf. She didn’t return his ire, so focused on reaching the stairwell for entrance B on 2nd and Carter.

Zombie bodies formed a flow along the damp concrete and dispersed like ants at the nearest redlight. Green walking men flickered and blurred, and she cut a wild path from one block to another, never straying from her usual fervent speeding. She planned to move closer to the downtown district, but career paths rarely went as one hoped—salaries even more so.

The hand buried in her coat pocket curled. Nails bit into her palm alongside the harsh plastic edge of a too expensive train card. Its lifting edge and fading text mocked where it sparked a green light, and the turnstile banged open. Carrie’s voucher released a wave of paying and non-paying vagabonds. Their dead eyes flickered and shuttered where leather satchels and overpriced briefcases clutched close, and she weaved between them like a serpent, swift and shorter than average.

Bodies swarmed the yellow-lined ledge with heads bowed to the mobiles gripped by shadowed hands, and loud thumps carried from a line of plastic bucket drummers. Scowling, Carrie attempted to curve past the alternative instruments when a scrawny palm smacked her ankle and gripped. Brown eyes peered up from under a threadbare blanket. Their hues so dark the irises almost appeared black. Melanated skin brightened from a lack of sunlight stretched taut over ivory bones, and the man’s long legs curled inwards as if to minimize his presence amongst the wealthy and weird. His fingers flexed when a robotic voice overhead called for her train’s boarding.

“I do not have time for this,” she huffed and reached into her faux leather purse. Old receipts crinkled and rustled before she plucked a handful of coins from the bottom. They dropped into the cup with a metallic tink-tink-tink. He did not release her. “Look, man, I don’t have anything else. Let go.”

His grip held firm, and in the shadowed depths of his eyes, a glazed white film sprouted. It pricked his pupils like a spear of light brightening a tunnel’s distant opening and spread, branching outwards in jagged lines. Carrie’s stomach flipped, and the man’s voice graveled out. “Don’t get on.”

Unease crawled her spine with icy threads, and she shifted her unimpeded foot as if that alone could ground her to the gum dotted pavement. People milled about the two like fish parting for a predator, and no one looked their way. “Get on what?” she grunted and once again attempted to free her ankle. “I feel like I’m on your fucking crazy train.”

“Death waits,” he continued in that same rasping tone. “You cannot go.”

Carrie glanced around, eager to catch someone’s attention. A police officer, a security guard, anyone who could get his hand off. “Like I said, I don’t have anything else, and I’m not paying for whatever weird ass shit you’re spewing.” I’m one expensive grocery run away from a thirty-day eviction notice. “Come on. I have somewhere to be.” Like that job that pays next to nothing but the bare minimum.

The man’s chest rattled—a deathly sounding thing—and released a heavy exhale which warmed the skin behind her trouser leg. He leaned closer, and the rigid edges of bitten nails dug into translucent skin. “You will die. God does not save the wicked.”

Those chilly tendrils unwound and expanded. Tension gathered about her lungs where the next inhale came slow and labored. Unseeing faces weaved and bobbed, and they all moved like a single behemoth, stepping up to the platform. Ants following an unidentified leader, air whistled through the cavernous underbelly and heaved before tracks clanged and sparked. Train 318-B rumbled out of the darkness with a shrieking hiss.

Carrie’s eyes blew wide when the doors slid open and people poured in and out. Low class and high class melted together in a large blur, and she wrenched her leg. “Let go!” she hissed and lifted her other leg to kick him, but his hand vanished as quick as it came, leaving a tremulous and ghostly touch in its wake. Unbalanced, she stumbled back into some stranger’s peacoat, and they brushed her away as if she weren’t there at all. The man’s midnight eyes remained locked on her frozen form and watched as she righted her clothing and gripped her satchel with white knuckles. “Crazy bastard.”

“Mr. Pennington saves his pennies. The mistress must save her life,” he murmured, and Carrie stopped in her tracks. No more than a yard away, she twisted to look over her shoulder.

“What did you just say?” Her fingers twitched to pull at her ears. Disbelief gave way to suspicion then arrogance. He couldn’t know. Not this man. “Nevermind. It doesn’t matter. I’m already fucking late.”

Shouldering her pack again, she whispered through the throng as she did earlier. Expensive leathers brushed her elbows and Rolex watches glinted. A string pulled loose at her wrist.

His voice followed like a specter. “Wires glint, prepared to blow. This ride will be the last.”

Pressure crowded the base of her spine. Goosebumps dotted her heated skin, and she shot through the doors with a cool breeze licking her nape. Hairs stood on end, and she turned as the doors rumbled shut. Through the windows, the man stood beside a line of plastic drums. Shoulders curved inwards beneath oversized fabric, and his white stare sparked like a star before cutting out. Awareness seemed to reel back to the man, and he bent forward to collect his blanket and cup.

Their eyes met once more as a distant ring echoed through the tunnel, and she lurched left against the machine’s acceleration. Gray brick gave way to rigid darkness broken by the occasional bulb, and then the earth itself breathed.

Noises kicked up around her—gasps, murmurs, trembling whispers—and an orange glow flickered. Unending warmth flared vibrant white, and the walls crumbled before her eyes. The world went dark.

Silence.