“The only thing worse than spending the night in someone else’s bed in Alphabet City would be to miss the last train and wander around The City near Grand Central waiting for morning,” he told her.
“You know, you really can be a dick sometimes, Theo. Good luck getting home to your precious New Haven.” With that, she turned and stalked away, her anger and hurt obvious to all but him.
He, on the other hand, was only thinking of how to get to his train. He practically ran all the way from East 9th and 3rd Avenue to Astor Place in order to get the Green Line back to 42nd. He could not remember if the 4 train went through Grand Central, so he held off while two of them went through the station before a 6 train finally showed. It felt like the subway stopped for an eternity at each of the stations along the way for the sole purpose of making him miss the last train home.
All of that was behind him now, though. He ran through Grand Central and smiled as he crossed the finish line of the car door three stories below ground. He smiled more when he saw there were only a handful of people in the car. None of them looked like trouble to him. A young couple, one or two professionals, a group of three twenty-something girls. No hassles on the way home. A good end to a good day in The City. He felt like he had won. He closed his eyes as they accelerated out of the station. Opening them again at the jolt signaling the shift onto a new line of tracks, the flickering lights transforming the windows into mirrors. He saw his own distorted reflection; his haggard state obvious. Ordinarily, he would have pulled a book out of his briefcase and spent the next two hours immersed in it, but the rhythm of the ride and his own exhaustion suggested a nap might be worthwhile. New Haven was the end of the line, so he did not fear missing his stop. He slid down the chair slightly, held his briefcase on his lap and exhaled, long and low, letting relaxation take over and move him towards slumber.
*************
His eyes snapped open. Something was wrong. They should have arrived at 125th street by now. It was the last stop out of The City before you hit the Bronx. The train should have stopped in Harlem. Rather than panic, he rationalized: maybe nobody bought a ticket to Harlem and nobody in Harlem was leaving The City, so the train just blew through the station without stopping. They did that, didn’t they? He didn’t know if they always stopped or not.
The train should be coming out from underground soon then. He’d just wait for the streetlights. The rhythm of the train and the gentle rocking continued. And continued. The lights occasionally flickered, but still the train rode on.
Did he get on the wrong train? He looked at his ticket. The conductor had not come through yet; Theodore could ask when the man came to check tickets. Theodore was in a hurry, but he was somewhat meticulous (Christina would call it “anal retentive”) about location and travel. He went to the right platform. He got on the right train. So why had he not reached Harlem yet? The train should have already slowed and entered 125th Street Station.
He stood up and looked around. It was late, but there should be others on the train as well. But there weren’t any. He was alone in the car. The people who had been there when he drifted off were now gone. Maybe they got out? Maybe he slept longer and deeper than he thought and just slept through Harlem. If they had all gotten off, that meant the train had already made it out past the Bronx.
“Then we’re already past Poe’s cottage,” he thought, “and I am that much closer to home.”
Ordinarily he would have been thrilled to be alone. But tonight it just left him uneasy. He slowly got up and gave a closer examination of the car. Empty but for him. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Theo wanted other people near him. He decided to look for the conductor or some other passengers.
“There’s got to be someone in the next car,” he rationalized. “Besides, I don’t want to be alone late at night on the train. Great way to get mugged or knifed.”
He walked, shifting with the train, one hand on his briefcase, one on the seats as he went, and reached the door. He moved in between cars, the noise suddenly louder as he stepped into the area in between cars, and then entered the next car. Closing the door behind him, he turned and found another empty car. He looked behind him and thought he saw someone back in the car from which he came, and immediately went back through the doors, assuming the conductor had come from the other direction. But he must have been mistaken, as he entered his original car: there was no one there.
As Theodore stood there, confused, he grew alarmed, feeling his breathing quicken. Finally, he forced himself to slow his breath and to smile. The future professor of Gothic literature, suddenly afraid of an empty train? He felt slightly ridiculous. Then he heard an idiotic giggle. Simultaneously, his nose was assaulted by a cloying blend of decaying apple and spoiled milk.
From between two seats, about a third of the way down the car, slowly, something crawled out. The hair was matted and dirty under the black knit cap. The winter coat was old, ragged and covered in stains; one on the sleeve nearest him did look like blood. Through his still drunken haze, he realized it was the same old woman from in front of Grand Central, from the Village.
“Now I know you’re following me!” he yelled at her. She kept slowly crawling, moving towards the seats opposite the ones she had emerged from, and then stopped. Very slowly, her head turned towards Theodore, rotating up, owl-like.
Her eyes were no longer empty. She looked vacant and yet her eyes conveyed the deepest insanity he had ever seen in any human being. He felt paralyzed. He had dealt with homeless people before, everyone in The City had. But now he was alone with one. He braced, ready for anything. She then turned her head facing down again and continued to crawl forward. The rest of her body vanished between the seats. He assumed she had climbed up on one of the molded plastic chairs and sat there.
Not wanting to stay in the car alone with a crazy person, he moved back again into the next car, glancing back to make sure he was not followed. He wasn’t. But now he was in another seemingly empty car with a lunatic in the car behind him. As the train shuttered on, he moved forward, looking left and right to ensure he was truly alone. As his hand slapped on the handle of the door to the following car, he heard the slight quiet giggle again.
He looked back, and she had again crawled out between two seats, stopping to slowly turn and look at him. He stared. She was smiling and drooling, her toothless mouth gumming the air. She giggled again. Her hand rose quickly, like a ragged bird taking flight. In it was a fast food cup, which she brandished at him. She shook it in his direction. Not waiting for a response, she slowly turned to face down and crawled across the aisle to the next set of seats, drawing her legs up and he could no longer see her.
He knew she had not been in those seats when he passed them. The opposite door had not opened after he closed it. So where had she come from? He opened the door and backed up into the next car. Empty. He faced the door, looking through the window, waiting to see if she came forward. Suddenly, the train slowed, and the reflections in the windows turned into the lit platform of 125th street. He breathed a sigh of relief. He’d jump out here, run down to the front of the train and find some normal people to sit near.
The door opened and he moved towards it, but pulled back suddenly. Kneeling in front of the door when it opened was the same woman. She began crawling through the opened door onto the train. He turned and ran back to the door between cars and opened it to find her on the floor there as well. He ran to the far end and moved further forward on the train, but as he entered that car the external doors closed again and the train started forward.
He really panicked now. Think. There were a few more stops in the Bronx. He could get out at the next stop or hold out for the first stop in Connecticut and just find a café or people or anything and catch the first train in the morning. This was crazy, but he would be OK. It would become a story he would tell. His own little Poe narrative. And he heard the giggle again. This time, he looked up to see her in the luggage rack ten feet away, staring a
t him. He had not seen her climb up there. He had heard nothing. But there she was. Her eyes were red-rimmed and unblinking, staring at him. That toothless maw smiling and chewing at him.
“Get to the next car,” he told himself. “That’s all that matters.”
Theodore ran forward, his briefcase dropping as he ran. His mind focused on one task: “Find people. Get the conductor. Get anyone.” The train began to slow again. “Get away from the batshit crazy exorcist homeless bum lady. That’s all that matters!”
He stopped by the doors, his back to them, his chest heaving and his breath ragged. He looked back and forth in the car, watching for her. Turning back as the train stopped, tapping his hands against the closed doors, exhaling a “Thank God!” as they opened… to find they had only pulled back into Grand Central Station. He ran out of the train, but all of the gates were now closed and locked. Behind the bars, he could see her crawling down the stairs towards him. Her expression blank yet malevolent, she stared as she crawled.
He ran back to the train, climbing back on as the doors closed again and, again, with a hiss it started moving. He realized that he had lost his briefcase, was alone on a train headed back to Harlem, and he did not know where she was, only that she was coming. He covered his mouth to prevent the scream growing inside him from erupting.
Theodore’s insides swelled like a balloon with the knowledge that this night would not end. For him, there would be no dawn over New Haven. Why or when it happened, he didn’t know. Maybe his body would be found in the morning by the conductor. Maybe he died in his sleep —high blood pressure and aneurisms did run in his family. Maybe when he first saw the decrepit, empty woman, staring at him outside Grand Central earlier that morning, maybe he had already died. Maybe she was his raven there to show him the real way home; he didn’t know. A giggle crawled inside his chest and burst from his lips like a worm. It joined a chorus of giggles behind him and above him. He closed his eyes with the understanding that he would ride for a thousand million years, until the Sun swallowed the Earth, and who knows... perhaps he would still be there, riding that train, or crawling like the madwoman in the luggage rack drooling down onto his head. At last, he was home in The City.
~~END~~
E-ville
by Frank Collia
I first see me as I step onto the train platform. A moment later, I look right through me.
Ultimately, it won’t matter, but I have no way of knowing that. This is how it plays out. At least, this is how it always does.
I take a moment to breathe, something I can never find time to do in the City. Staten Island has always been overrated as a suburban retreat, but it does house more windows of solitude than its night owl sister boroughs. Turning in place, I don’t see anyone on either platform. No one else in sight for the first time since I creaked out of bed fourteen hours earlier. Still, though, I arrived later than expected and my mother’s house waits a dauntingly long walk away.
I can’t remember the last time I was back on the Island, but know I had come by express bus or, if Luck had felt generous, a ride with a co-worker. But tonight, for the first time in many years, I took the long way home. Subway to ferry to train. After the two hour commute, however, the reason now escapes me.
I plan to spend the night at mom’s —reprogramming her DVD player, or some such technological wizardry, and listening to what a mess my sister has made of her life— then make my way back to my shared studio apartment among the lighter Saturday morning crowd. The tourists would all flock to the Statue of Liberty side of the ferry and I’d get to lounge on the other as if the boat were my own private yacht. It doesn’t matter that I have no better weekend plans. At least it doesn’t matter if I don’t think about it.
I look across the tracks to where I spent four years of mornings waiting for the train to high school. Then, out of habit, my eyes lower to the third rail, that inanimate iron bogeyman of urban legend. Touch it and you’ll fry. Every kid knew that, the knowledge passed down as oral tradition from one graduating class to the next. I shiver. Another thing better not thought about.
Approaching the stairs, I run my fingers over the Eltingville station sign attached to the orange fencing on the backside of the platform. So much time spent here. Nights like this, including one particularly sad and frigid New Year’s Eve, sitting alone on the bench watching trains pass to better places. Different places. Places, I have since discovered, that only exist in the quixotic yearnings of the young and sheltered.
On my way down to street-level, I catch sight of the convenience store on the corner and recall buying baseball cards or wrestling magazines or Snapple after school. The big Optimo Cigars sign above the door, but everyone calling it Joe’s. Now, though? Just a convenience store on the corner, its homogenous façade the blank stare of progress. I shake my head, feeling like the only thing that hasn’t changed.
Reaching the last step, I stop. And remember seeing me. Here, now, I always do.
Slowly retracing my steps, I try to depixilate my image from the blur I managed to retain, my presence having been momentarily realized in the shifting light of the departing train. I have no way of knowing just what I saw, what I look like now. I only know that I saw something because I always come back up the stairs.
Back on the platform, I —always— grab for the handrail, steady myself. I squint, blink, try to recapture that fleeting sensation . I’'s no use. I never see me again from that side. This time I see her.
She strolls along the opposite platform, never quite turning my way. I remember the first time, all those years ago, I saw her on the train. She looked exactly as she looks now, like the cute girl from The Goonies but in a light blue Catholic school uniform. I want to speak, to call to her, but also remember I never did, never had the guts. Even when I followed her home that one time I never got to within two blocks of talking distance.
I see Derek Spector approach the girl whose name I never learned. Derek Spector. Our paths first crossed in junior high when Spector discovered the power of aggression, of proactively exploiting others’ weaknesses before they could see his own. Nothing original about it, but effective nonetheless. It slowly escalated from name-calling to intimidation, from tears to bruises, to terror.
Then Tall Chris appears. My best friend in high school who I hadn’t spoken to since graduation. Who I hadn’t really spoken to since the day I ran home and hid and sold him out to get beat down by Spector. I knew that, despite his size, the only fighting Chris had ever done came on the screen of Double Dragon during our quarter-driven marathons at the old Jim Hanley’s Universe comic shop. I knew and I left my friend behind all the same.
I bring my palms to my temples, close my eyes. When I open them I find myself surrounded. By the girl, by Spector, Tall Chris. By others, with more flowing up the stairs. The neighborhood boy who got hit by a car and scrambled his brain, the one I mocked as “Tard.” The girl I asked out in college, who I overheard calling me fat to her friends in the food court.
The platform fills. People I knew. Centerfolds and pop divas who would never know my existence. Family members who let me down, friends to whom I did the same. I shuffle closer to the edge to make room, closer, until the only space left is down.
I crash to the tracks, my legs giving out on impact. My pant leg rips, the skin beneath shreds on the gravel. I groan, but will himself back to my feet.
They all stop, stare down at me. I stare back. My head feels lighter at the sight of every face I had subconsciously imprisoned for so long. Finally, they were free, and so was I. Unburdened, I want to run, for the first time heading toward what comes next rather than fleeing from what had been.
I reach up to the platform, smile, and attempt to lift myself up. I can’t. I try again, my arms too weak. They always were, even before the added atrophy of age. Then I think the unthinkable and extend a hand toward the closest hallucination, vision, cathartic manifestation, whatever. I gaze into the eyes of the Earth Science teacher who did or said
something traumatic to me at some point. Specifics now relegated to irrelevancy.
My smile fades as my fingers close around air. I swipe at my former teacher’s feet, at all the feet within reach. I know they’re not real, but this security blanket of logic cannot cover what’s in front of my eyes. Backing away, I catch my heel on the rail, stumble, fall. The inevitability of electrocution courses through my body. But I land on the opposite tracks, survive.
However, when it dawns on me, I wish I hadn’t, wish I hadn’t also failed at clumsiness. I look up, see old classmates, tormentors, crushes. My father. I realize I didn’t let them out. I realize that they escaped. I realize —with no fanfare, with no staggering epiphany— that they were the only things holding me together. And now they are gone from me and I am empty. Free, but alone.
Down the length of the track I spot a ladder. Further down, I spot a train. Freed from the shackles of yesterday, I cannot move. My new present is a vacuum, my future already consumed into the void. The tracks begin to shake beneath my immobile feet.
On the platforms, the phantoms begin consuming one another. They morph into monsters, eaters of the dead. Their mouths expand, teeth erupting to savage proportions . They devour. One by one, they disappear, erasing themselves, erasing what is left of me. I can do nothing, never could. The train bears down.
My body vibrates with the tracks. The phantoms are no more. Except for me. I do not look up, but feel my presence, know I’m all that remains. Know I’m the me that comes next.
The train horn, the screech of brakes applied too late. I raise my arms, not in defense, but acceptance. I always do.
I always do, so I can recycle, re-enter this eternal loop. It’s not my choice, I realize, but my penance. To always be here, to always bear witness to my own end. To my own cleansing.
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