TWO
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Adolfa let a small scream escape, then began running frantically around the subway car. She pushed on the windows, pulled at the door at the front of the car. None of it opened. None of it offered a way out.
Jim didn't move. He just watched the dot, the dot that was them, moving ever closer to the point that represented… what?
Again he knew. For a moment, an instant, he knew. Then the moment was past and again his mind was in darkness.
I'm coming Carolyn. I'm coming Maddie. I promise.
He hoped it wasn't a lie.
Adolfa coughed again. This time the coughing became a damp retching. She bent over and clutched at her stomach, and when she stood twin streams of blood ran from her nostrils.
Jim went to her. "Hey, you're bleeding." He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He dabbed at the blood but it wouldn't stop. "Sit down." He guided the old lady to a seat.
"Damn," she whispered. Her voice bubbled around the blood, making her sound like she was drowning.
She looked at Jim, and he recoiled. "What?" she said.
He shook his head. He didn't know how to answer her. Where only a moment before she had seemed like a healthy older woman, suddenly her flesh was sagging, changing. The skin of her face seemed like it was no longer attached to her skull, drooping strangely and giving her the appearance of someone who had suffered a severe stroke.
"What?" Adolfa said again. "What ish it?" Her voice was slurring, and at the end of the question she unleashed another flurry of coughs.
Tic… tictictic… tic….
Jim looked down automatically, his eyes tracking the sound of something plinking against the metal floor of the subway car. He didn't see what had made the sound for a moment, his eyes tracking wildly left and right and up and down without spotting anything. Then he saw them: splashes of red with white centers.
Blood. Blood and... teeth.
He looked back at Adolfa. Her face was still sagging, the skin loosening ever further. And now her baglike chin was covered in blood, both from her still-sluicing nostrils and from the blood drooling thinly from her mouth. From the holes where many of her teeth had been.
As Jim watched, Adolfa reached with shaking fingers into her mouth and plucked out a molar. Jim knew – he knew, dammit – that Adolfa had been possessed of a wide, pleasant, white smile. But the tooth that she pulled out was yellow and rotted. It was the tooth of someone who had been drinking cola for years and hadn't ever bothered with brushing her teeth in the interim.
A fresh gout of blood spurted over Adolfa's lips when she pulled the rotten tooth out of her jaw. She didn't seem to notice. She laughed. The laugh was bereft of humor, the laugh that takes over when horror has reached such an extreme that the only choices are to laugh or to allow oblivion to claim you.
"What'sh going on?" she said. The words still bubbled, and another tooth pushed its way out of her mouth with the sound. Her skin had sagged so far that her eyes were almost invisible, displaced by the strange change in her facial layout. Her nasal bones poked through skin that Jim was fairly sure had once covered Adolfa's forehead. The effect was less gory than much of what he had seen on the subway, but more sickening in a strange way. As though seeing a human pulled apart bit by bit was less offensive to nature than merely watching it adjusted by a few inches.
Adolfa patted herself. Her dress, which before had fit her well, now hung loosely. Her breasts had become dangling sacks of flesh, low and sickly. Her thighs had become visibly thinner, and yet what flesh remained of them was all fatty tissue. She had no muscle tone left, like a calf that had been raised in a too-small cage for the sole purpose of being slaughtered for veal.
Adolfa started to cry. "Thish can't be happening to me," she said. "Not to me. Not to me."
She sagged. Jim caught her. His flesh crawled. He liked Adolfa. But in that moment he wished that someone – anyone – else could have been there to catch her. What had happened to her was too unsettling, too grotesque.
"Adolfa?" he said after a moment.
There was no answer.
And Jim wondered if he was the only one left in the subway.
THREE
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A moment later Adolfa sat up again. Not dead after all. Jim was relieved. He hadn't been able to get up the courage to check for a pulse, or even to listen closely for breath. He hadn't wanted to get that close to her. To whatever she had become.
"You're awake."
Adolfa snuffled. He thought she might start crying again, but she held it together. Her face had stopped sliding off her bones, but now strange sores had appeared on it. They were crusty and painful-looking, scabrous tissue that oozed pus and blood. They clustered around the old woman's mouth especially, and the first time she tried to talk a number of them cracked open and seeped into her mouth.
"What I deserve," she whispered.
"What?" said Jim.
"What we all deserve."
Jim shook his head. "I don't understand." He thought Adolfa must be delirious. Whatever sickness she had contracted must be giving her a fever. Maybe she was hallucinating.
"This place," she said. "It's taking us to what we deserve."
"I don't think so," Jim said.
Adolfa clutched at him with fingers that suddenly seemed to have the power of a dozen strong men. "It's true," she whispered. Blood sprayed out of her mouth. Jim felt it speckle his face, and gorge rose up in his throat. "Each car is for one of us. To punish one of us. Freddy. Xavier. Karen. Olik. The doors didn't open in each car until one person had died." She swallowed, grimacing in pain. "This car must be mine."
She started coughing again. More blood poured from her mouth. Her body slumped, as though all the strength had gone from her.
Jim caught her. "Adolfa, don't be silly. You're an abuelita, a shop keeper. Why would anyone want to punish you?"
Adolfa pushed herself up a bit. Her drooping eyes focused on his. She laughed. Then the laugh turned into a cackle. "A shop keeper?" The cackle increased in volume, growing hysterical. "A shop keeper?" She coughed. Blood. She inhaled, coughed more. Then seemed to stop the hacking coughs by force of will. She smiled, the grin a horrific sight in the sagging mask of her face. "I took over the family business when my husband died," she said. "Selling drugs. The largest cartel of cocaine, heroine, and meth in seven countries." Another cough. Another gout. "I was in New York to negotiate a new market, a business agreement with a rival family."
Jim shook his head. He didn't believe that. "No," he said. "Adolfa, this is insane."
Her face was drooping more now. Her eyes were lost, gone from the folds of skin that bore no relation to the place they should have been. "Insane?" She laughed. "A pedophile, a skin-merchant, a rapist, a killer, a drug dealer." She grew suddenly serious. "No, we all deserve this, mi hijo." She started to sag again. "This is my car. This is my place to go." Jim caught her. She looked at him. "It is only you I do not understand, mi hijo. The only good man in a den of thieves and killers." She touched his cheek. The beds of her nails were ruptured, star hemorrhages that oozed bloody trails across his skin. "Perhaps you were here to bear witness. To give final rites and comfort to the damned."
Adolfa's fingers fell away from his cheeks. She slumped forward and Jim lowered her to the gently rocking floor of the still-rocketing subway train.
Click-clack click-clack click-clack.
Adolfa's face was an amorphous mass, gone, lost in folds of featureless flesh. Her bony body started to twitch.
"Adolfa?"
She began to convulse. Somewhere from within the folds of what had once been her face, a muffled scream sounded. Her body flopped like a fish.
The door at the front of the car slid open.
Jim looked down at Adolfa. Looked at her like he had looked at someone long before.
(so much blood. so much blood.)
Then
he stood. Walked toward the open door.
Adolfa was lost.
He had to get off this train. Had to get home, had to get to his girls.
FOUR
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The open door beckoned at the front of the subway car. Jim could only hope that what Adolfa had said was true – that he was here to bear some sort of horrific witness, a dark apostle to an evil gospel, and that now the others were gone he would be free to go.
He cast a last backward look at Adolfa. She was still seizing, her frail body thrashing against the floor, her feet tapping and rapping and her shoulders thumping as she twitched her way back and forth across the center aisle. How long would it take her to die? Jim didn't know.
He turned back to the door.
And there were two people standing there. A man and a woman. They were tall. Good-looking. They were in their mid-thirties, both blondes with blue eyes that looked at him for only the barest instant before they stepped into the car.
The door shut behind them.
Jim's heart lurched. This wasn't right. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go, the way it had gone. He was supposed to get out of here. What was happening now? What new awfulness was about to descend on him?
The man and woman stepped toward him. Jim fell back a step, sure that they would attack him, certain that they were the next wave of terror sent to torment him.
But they took no notice of him. They stepped past him. Went to the still-stuttering form of Adolfa. They knelt beside her. The blonde woman cradled Adolfa's head – what was left of her head, the deformed mass of skin and bone that her head had become – in her lap. The young man passed his hands over her spasming body.
Jim watched, transfixed, as Adolfa's body stopped convulsing. It relaxed so fully and completely he thought at first she must be dead. Then he realized that her dress was rising and falling, rhythmically and regularly. She was breathing.
And looking at her breathing, Jim saw with amazement that her body had filled out again. It was returning to its previous health.
"Who are you?" he said.
Neither the man nor the woman paid any attention to him. He wondered if they were angels. But they couldn't be, could they? Not if they were come to save an admitted drug dealer, especially if they were doing so in lieu of saving someone whose girls were waiting for him, depending on him.
"What's going on?" he said a moment later. Still no answer.
Adolfa's face shifted. It pulled back to its moorings on the bone below. It began to resemble itself again. The blood seemed to seep into the skin and disappear. The rotten teeth that remained in her mouth grew bright and white once more, and the gaps where no teeth were suddenly held molars and incisors and bicuspids again.
The old woman opened her eyes.
"Adolfa!" Jim said.
Adolfa didn't seem to notice him. She looked up at the man and woman who knelt beside her, who held her in their arms and who had brought her back from doom's door. Her eyes moved from the man to the woman, and back again. "Scott," she said. "Kim."
"Hello, Mamá," said Kim, and Jim remembered Adolfa telling him, several cars and forever ago, about her son marrying a girl and bringing her into the family business.
"You came for me," said Adolfa, and pulled Kim down into a hug. Kim didn't return the hug, only seeming to endure it. After a moment, Adolfa let go. "What?" she said. "What is it?"
Kim and Scott exchanged a look that spoke of untold secrets. Finally Scott, in a curiously emotionless voice, said, "You were supposed to die."
"What?" said Adolfa.
"You kept living," said Kim. "Kept living and living, just getting older and older and never dying. Never dying."
"So we had to hire someone," said Scott.
"To help you along," said Kim. Both of them spoke strangely, almost like they were being made to speak, as if the words were coming forth against their will.
"What do you mean?" said Adolfa.
"You know what we mean," said Kim.
"It's why Karen was here," said Scott.
Jim started. But he remembered. Remembered Karen grabbing Adolfa and saying she was here for the old lady; something about her "commission." He gaped. Had Adolfa's family hired her?
Adolfa must have been thinking the same thing, because her face registered shock. Then disappointment.
Then rage.
"You hijos de –" she began. But never finished.
Kim waved, and the aluminum poles nearest Adolfa detached from the ceiling. They writhed like snakes, suddenly flexible, then as Jim watched they seemed to shift in appearance. No longer aluminum poles, now they resembled tubing. The bottoms were still anchored in the floor, but the tops glinted. Like something sharp.
Needles.
The pole/tubes shot out, and wrapped themselves around Adolfa's arms and legs. Another one trussed around her neck. The needles at the ends of the tubes buried themselves in her wrists and thighs and chin. Then the tubes darkened as something flowed through them… and into Adolfa.
Her body convulsed again. The skin pulled from its bones. The sores reappeared, and blood poured from every orifice on her body. She screamed.
Jim edged away from the scene. His only hope was to get away before the homicidal relatives of the old drug dealer noticed he was there.
He glanced at the front door.
It was still closed.
Adolfa shrieked again. Her scream bubbled around skin that had the consistency of loose putty. Jim looked back at her.
And saw that Kim and Scott were staring right at him.
FIVE
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Jim held up his hands. "Please," he said. Hot tears burned behind his eyes. "I don't know what's going on, but I don't belong here." He glanced over his shoulder. The door was still closed.
He looked back. Scott and Kim were still kneeling beside Adolfa. Still staring at him. Adolfa was screaming, and the scream burrowed like a tick into the deepest parts of his mind, shaking loose everything that he had ever suffered or hoped to bury there.
Kim and Scott looked at each other. Then back at Jim.
"I have a family waiting for me. I don't belong here." Jim pointed at Adolfa as she flailed on the floor. "She said it herself."
Kim looked at Scott. "Should we kill him?" she said. Her voice still sounded queer.
Scott nodded. "I think so."
They looked at Jim. He flicked one more glance over his shoulder. The door was still shut. And he knew that it was because this car hadn't claimed its victim yet. Hadn't claimed its due.
He ran. Not toward the door – that would have been useless – but toward Scott. Toward Kim.
Toward Adolfa.
As he ran, he reached toward his pocket. Not for his journal, though. His hand veered aside at the last second. He pulled something from his waistband.
Xavier's knife.
Kim and Scott reached for Jim.
He dodged their hands.
He dropped down. Looked at Adolfa's spasming body. "You were right about me," he whispered. "I really am a good person. And I don't belong here."
And then he drew the knife across the old woman's throat. It was a perfect, practiced cut. Carotids and jugular were severed in an instant.
Jim felt the fingers of Kim and Scott on his arms and shoulders. And felt them changing. Claws emerging, flesh growing scaly and hard.
But at the same time, the blood from Adolfa's body spattered against the floor of the subway car. At the same time, the lifeblood splashed from her in a gout.
At the same time, the door at the front of the car opened.
At the same time, Jim ran.
Fingers grabbed for him, tearing his shirt from his back. They raked bloody furrows in his flesh. But then the things that Kim and Scott had become turned to lap up the blood that still spilled on the metal floor.
Adolfa screamed, sputtered, gurgled. An impossible
sound through her cut throat, but still she made it. Her skin fell from her bones, her body emptied of blood. But still she screamed. As Freddy had screamed, as Xavier and Karen and Olik had screamed. She screamed though dead, a wail of never-ending pain and betrayal and agony.
Jim threw himself through the door. Nothing followed him. Nothing but the scream.
And the subway continued on.
1 FARE
Got in a fight with Carolyn today. Stupid fight about nothing. Maddie heard it. She cried.
I'll make it up to her. To both of them. After work today. We'll go on a picnic.
ONE
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Jim pushed through the doors to the next car. The scream, Adolfa's scream, followed him. Followed him like a bloodhound that has caught the scent of a lifetime. Like a stink that would not be shaken loose.
Like past sins.
He ran into the next car. And blinked with surprise as silence fell with the power and finality of a hammer blow.
All was quiet.
All was dark.
He couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, couldn't feel anything.
Then a single light shone. A moonbeam, a pure white shaft of light that fell on the face of an angel.
His mother.
Jim looked down at himself. His hands were his hands. His hands and yet not his hands. His body, yet not his body. It was all different, yet all the same.
He held a knife. But not Xavier's knife –
(who's Xavier? where did that thought come from?)
– no, this was just an ordinary kitchen knife, taken from the block on the counter next to the white stove that Mother always kept spotless.
He crept to her. He walked on feet that were bare, silent on a floor that had somehow become wood –
(wasn't it metal just a moment ago?)
– laminate, a light color by day but dark and pooled in shadow now, in the deepest part of the night.
Jim was quiet. Quiet as a mouse, quiet as any animal in any of the bedtime stories that Mother had ever read to him. But still she opened her eyes when he stood by her. Maybe that was part of being a mother. Maybe there was some extra sense given to parents that allowed them to know when their children were near, even in their sleep.
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