Subways sometimes freak me out. I don’t much care for them.
There are too many creepers and nowhere to run if you need a quick out. Plus there’s
the rats, I’m not talking about the people, I mean real twenty-pound city rats.
They gross me out, all pestilence and grease and hair. It almost makes me vomit
every time I see. Fortunately they tend to stay out of sight, but one never
knows.
The ride on the subway ends up being very uneventful. I’m
mostly alone in a car with a flickering fluorescent fixture at one end. There
is a bum sleeping underneath it. I can vaguely smell his decay from the other
end of the car. My guess is this is one of the few ways left to stay warm in
the weather. We go through a dead zone in the tunnel, basically where the wind
kicks up and the electricity goes out. Usually its only for a short period of
time, but this one seems to last longer than I’m used to.
Suddenly the car is washed over with bright-ass lights
everywhere. It’s blinding. I reach for my crowbar I keep tied up under my
trench coat, but it’s not there. Oh shit, I think, what could possibly be going
on now? Across the car the bum is lifted up like a marionette with an unseen
hand controlling the strings. He looks like the dead, eyes askew, drool
escaping from the corner of him mouth. As he is pulled closer to me I can hear
a sonorous distant voice, “Five sevenths and three eighths, you must be sure
you avoid the wraiths. One half and four thirds, don’t forget to head the
words.”
Blackness. Silence. The whooshing sound of wind slowly creeps
back to my ears and the car lights flicker back to its normal pattern. Even the
bum is back in his pile towards the end of the car. I want to get the hell off
this car and soon. My stop is the next one. My stop is the next one. The train
slows, the doors open, and I get my ass out of that station so fast the
littered newspapers didn't even have time to react in my wake.
The bum’s words are still echoing in my brain as I get out on
to the street. I don’t have time for riddles so I try to push it as far back as
I can, but it’s like that birthday song you just can stop singing in your own
head. I guess I’ll have to find a way to deal with it later, for now I needed
to get rid of this package.
Fortunately the subway station was really close to the Chimay
tower, it was only going to be two bitter blocks in this cold. The streets in
the business district were deserted. It’s weird to be in a commercial zone in
the middle of the night. There is a very creepy air about. Best not to think
about it too much, so I flipped up the collar on my jacket and bounded to the
tower in the cold.
-V-
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