A few years ago, I had an opportunity to go to Stockholm for a corporate event. I was working with an investment group that was exploring oil prospecting in the Baltic Sea. As a junior employee, most of my days were spent playing second fiddle to one of the seniors, so getting a chance to see the world felt like a reward in and of itself. And hey, they didn’t skimp out on accommodations. Two days of work gave me four days at an amazing hotel in central Old Town. I know I sound pretentious, but I loved the rustic architecture and the cobblestone streets. When I wasn’t locked up taking notes in a boardroom, I was out on the streets taking in the atmosphere. And spending a little bit too much time at the sci-fi bookstore, of course.
The night before going home we had a company outing. Dinner and drinks all around. I work with people who literally make their living writing tiny paragraphs with shady ink, but you can’t say the Hatchetmen aren’t down to clown.
Later that night, I was taking the subway back to the hotel. I took the green line going north, back to Old Town. I collapsed in one of the seats, slowly coming to the realization that there is such a thing as too many melon ball shots.
The train car had this bright yellow and white interior, unintentionally sobering me up. Classic blue seats with strange geometric details. A few yellow seats, currently unoccupied, reserved for those with special needs.
I did a bit of people watching as the stations passed me by. There was this young guy sitting straight across from me. He had a faux hawk and these really thick horn-rimmed glasses. Definitely a fashion statement. To my left was an older woman scrolling through articles on her phone. I saw at least two wikihow-articles. It baffles me that even among the older people, most of them speak English. I hadn’t met a single person who couldn’t understand me.
Finally, there was a couple. A man and a woman, sitting alone in the corner, whispering intimately. They had those kinds of faces where you can’t tell if they’re 16 or 35. They were either made for each other or siblings, and seeing how much they were feeling up one another, I was banking hard on the former.
We were about three stations out from Old Town when the subway train began to slow down. The operator said something in Swedish through the speaker system, and I noticed the other passengers perk up. Even the couple in the corner.
I made eye contact with the faux hawk across from me.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Is, uh… is there something wrong?”
“Obstruction on the tracks,” he said. “We’re going back to switch lanes.”
The old woman looked up from her phone and smiled.
“The thing is very strange,” she added. “Yes. Very, very strange.”
She had a distinct voice. Slow, with hard ‘R’s. I noticed the couple in the corner snickering at her obvious accent. She didn’t seem to mind though; she was just happy to contribute to the discussion.
The train moved backwards. The little sign telling us about the next stop went dark. I could hear strange mechanical squealing as wheels turned in ways they weren’t used to. I guess even machines can settle into routines; going through the motions.
Within a couple of minutes, we were moving again. Everyone settled back into their seats. The old woman kept scrolling on her phone, the faux hawk was staring into the distance, and the young couple whispered and kissed. The whole ordeal had sobered me up pretty well.
The couple got up, anticipating the next stop. They looked at the old woman, snickering to themselves.
“The thing is veeeery strange,” they mocked “Yes yes. Yes yes.”
They laughed, exaggerating her accent. She looked back at them and laughed along. That took the wind out of their sails, and they settled into sarcastic smiles.
The train slowed down, and we came upon the next stop.
Or so we thought.
The whole platform was dark, and the doors didn’t open. Thinking it was some kind of electrical error, maybe connected to the previously mentioned obstruction, we waited. A few minutes passed, and nothing happened. I turned around to look out the window. Something felt off.
The station was much shorter than anticipated. Half of the car behind us didn’t even reach the platform, and the front end of the forward car was already out the other side. This was no ordinary stop. I figured it might be some kind of service station, but then it would’ve stopped in a way that the operator could get off.
Then, the lights went out.
The train powered down.
We all brought out our phones, trying to find some kind of emergency exit or button. The man of the couple tried to make a gap in the doors, to force them open. His girlfriend scolded him in Swedish, and he stepped back, defeated. She pointed at a hatch and a green handle next to the door; some kind of emergency opening mechanism.
Just as she was about to pull it, she stopped. I saw her squinting out the door, as if spotting something in the distance. The rest of us did the same, trying to figure out what she was looking at.
In the distance, a light flickered.
There were people on the platform.
I only saw them for a moment, but I counted at least six. All standing there, motionless.
The couple moved away from the door, taking their hands off the emergency exit handle. They backed away and placed themselves on the yellow seats. Immediately, the old woman perked up.
“Those, uhm… those chairs are for the, uhm… the others,” she said. “You shouldn’t not be sitting there.”
The man of the couple snapped back at her angrily, ranting in Swedish. The old woman nodded, listening intently.
“I want the everyone to be included,” she said. “You shouldn’t not be rude.”
The man in the couple looked straight at me. I think. It was hard to tell in the dark.
“Are you brain damaged?” he asked.
“Not unless you count having melon ball shots,” I shrugged.
He turned to the faux hawk, asking the same question. Faux hawk didn’t engage
“No brain damaged people here,” the man grinned. “I guess we can sit wherever the fuck we want!”
A pale light on the platform came on, and this time, it stayed on.
There were way more people than I’d anticipated. I counted 12 off the top of my head, but I could’ve sworn I saw more of them in the distance.
They were all dressed in black. Hoodies, leather jackets. Some had balaclavas, others had white scarves. All wearing gloves and standing perfectly still; distributed evenly throughout the small platform. I could see their chests rising and falling. It almost looked synchronized.
One of them stood out. She was a bit shorter and thinner than the rest, possibly a teenager. She had this dark grey windbreaker covered in white handprints. Her head was covered in a black stretch fabric. It didn’t even have a cutout for the eyes. It took me a few seconds to realize she was holding something.
She held a black and red cable; one in each hand.
A car battery rested on the dirt-stained floor tiles next to her.
Everyone jumped out of their seats to look out the window. Faux hawk sprung into action, reaching for the emergency phone; a line directly connected to the train operator. He tried it a few times, but couldn’t get a connection.
The woman of the couple pulled out her phone, but couldn’t get a signal. She held the phone up high and walked around, grunting with frustration. Every now and then she’d look back out the window, making her pace faster. Faux hawk pointed to the back of the train car.
“Reception sucks around Old Town,” he said. “Try the back.”
She did, but there was nothing. A single bar of reception flickered on and off.
Meanwhile, the people on the platform hadn’t moved a muscle.
The emergency phone rang.
We all looked at one another. The couple seemed paler, and faux hawk had a bead of sweat running down the side of his temple. The old woman squinted, as if trying to discern some detail about the people outside. The phone rang four times before faux hawk finally picked it up.
When he did, every speaker in the train car screeched to life. We covered our ears as the volume equalized.
At first, there was like a low, mumbling chant. A mantra. The same word, repeating over and over, slowly giving way to a voice. A young woman, speaking with a long, drawn-out drawl. Like someone stretching after a long sleep.
“You should, ah… step out,” the voice said. “First one out gets to, ah… walk away.”
We hung on those words. They bounced off the walls, finally settling in the back of my head. We passed looks back and forth, trying to figure out what was going on. No one moved a muscle.
“Just the first,” the voice continued. “Let’s, ah… let’s go.”
The man of the couple pushed forward. His girlfriend clung to his arm, but he pushed her away. Faux hawk raised his hands, asking the man to wait, and received a swift haymaker to the side of his face; breaking his glasses in half.
The woman kept yelling at him, but he didn’t even bother to respond. I could tell from context that his name was Roger. She tried once again to hold him, but this time he pushed back – hard. She was sent reeling back. She collapsed into one of the yellow seats.
The man, Roger, opened the emergency door, and stepped out.
Everything went quiet. The old woman shook her head and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Very dumb,” she said. “Very dumb man.”
I went over to help faux hawk get back up. He was still a bit disoriented, maybe even mildly concussed. He’d taken one hell of a punch.
Roger stepped up to the girl with the cables, quietly asking her something. She looked up at him, as the speakers sparked back to life.
“No,” she said.
Her voice echoed not only through the station, but through the speakers. Like she had some kind of microphone. Roger protested, pointing at the exit to the left; a spiral staircase leading upwards. It was obvious that she’d said something that bothered him. He paced back and forth.
“Because,” she continued. “I never, ah… like the first one.”
The bulbs started to flicker on and off, like a strobe light. It framed the scene like a series of polaroids; every flash bringing something new.
I saw Roger being grabbed by someone on his left. Then, fighting off someone grabbing him from behind. Somewhere, the click of a switchblade. Countless arms holding him down. Stretching him out.
And then, knives.
Screams. Some from him. Some from his girlfriend. Faux hawk did his best to hold her back as he yelled for me to close the doors.
Stabbings are silent. It’s not like the movies, where you can hear the ‘schwing’ of a blade. It’s quiet, and terrifying. It’s the people that make noise; not the weapon.
With every blink of the light, I saw another stab. Some to his legs. A few to his shoulders. Moments later, he was pushed onto his knees before the young woman.
She tilted her head, looking first at him, then at us.
“Too greedy,” the voice crackled over the speakers. “We want purebreds.”
She plunged the cables into his neck. It only took moments for the smell of burnt hair to reach us. I heard his muscle spasms as he collapsed onto the tiled floor, taking shock, after shock, after shock; straight to the neck. Even at a distance I saw how the skin contracted, blackened, and cracked at the seams. His girlfriend kept screaming his name. She couldn’t help herself. She collapsed onto the floor, her hands feebly smacking against the thick glass of the now closed subway doors.
The voice returned, now with a slight gasp. I couldn’t tell if it was exertion or excitement.
“We’re, ah… weeding bad ones,” she huffed. “Now, give us the one with the, ah… the most time.”
We all looked at one another but didn’t know what to say. My eyes kept getting drawn back to the remains on the platform; still bleeding from half a dozen open wounds. Smoke rose from his mouth. The old woman broke the silence.
“I am Eva-Lena,” she said. “I am seventy sixth year old.”
She held a hand out to faux hawk. He took it.
“Casper,” he said. “I’m 24.”
I introduced myself, telling them I’d had my 32nd birthday not two weeks ago. The final member of our group was too panicked to speak. She kept wailing, repeating Roger’s name and weakly clawing at the window. She’d reverted into some primal state, like a child crying for its mother.
“I have had most of all time,” said Eva-Lena. “Many years.”
“I think they mean who has the most time left,” said Casper. “That would be me.”
“Oh, I got the… the many years left,” smiled Eva-Lena. “I’m a… gunpowder lady.”
I tilted my head, but didn’t get the question out. Casper tapped me on my shoulder.
“It’s just an expression,” he said. “Like… son of a gun.”
“Right,” I nodded. “I don’t think that counts though.”
“Yeah,” nodded Casper. “Me neither.”
I walked up to the woman on the floor. I leaned down and asked her about her age, or some kind of identification. She burrowed her face in her hands, and I saw streaks of tears seeping through the gap in her fingers. She was shaking and kept rocking back and forth. All the fire had burned out of her, leaving only the remains of a mind behind.
Casper moved up to one of the windows and smacked it.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Do you mean the oldest or youngest?!”
There was no response. The people on the platform just stood there, their chests rising and falling in unison. Their excitement was palpable. Some of them hadn’t put away their switchblades yet. One of them had a one-handed fork, still dirty from toiling in the garden.
“You hear me?!” continued Casper. “I said-“
There was a loud smack as six pale hands pressed against the window.
They’d come out of nowhere. Three people looking right at him; as if responding to a challenge.
They seemed young. Two of them wore white scarves, while the third had some kind of turtleneck pulled all the way over his nose. Their pupils were dilated, making their eyes look completely black. At this distance, I could see them trembling with excitement. One of them kept stomping with his foot. One of them had a shaky hand, making it tap against the glass. One of them pressed themselves so hard against the window that I could see the fog of his breath.
Casper fell backwards, tripping over his own feet. His mouth was wide open, as if trying to force more air into his lungs.
“I-I… I don’t. I don’t know what to do.”
He shook his head, moving his mouth. Maybe the words would find themselves.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
As they backed away from the window, I grabbed the woman on the floor. I forced her hands down and stared into her face. She looked so different. Her mascara was running.
“I need you to tell me your age,” I said. “Please tell me how old you are.”
“I’m… I’m…”
She tried to get it out, but every word got stuck in her throat.
“H-ha… Hanna.”
“And how old are you, Hanna?”
She looked at the other two, as if trying to understand what I was asking.
“They want the youngest,” said Casper. “The one with the most time.”
“Are they letting us go?”
“Maybe.”
She took a few deep breaths, closed her eyes, and dropped her voice to a semi-whisper.
“I’m 21,” she said. “I’m… I’m the youngest.”
Eva-Lena smiled and moved over to help Hanna off the floor. Hanna took her hand and got up, leaning against a handrail.
“I am sure they will… do good,” said Eva-Lena. “That’s why they ask for most time.”
Casper nodded.
“It could be a… no women and children kind of deal.”
I could tell Hanna was uncertain. Maybe they’d let her go, maybe not. But after seeing what they did to Roger when he made a bad impression, I figured we ought to at least try to play along for the time being.
Hanna seemed to agree, as she put her hand on the emergency door exit.
A thought flickered in my mind. I could’ve kept it to myself, but my heart raced ahead and kicked my mouth open. Hanna was about to pull the handle when I put my hand on her shoulder.
“What year were you born?” I asked.
“What?”
“You’re 21. So what year were you born?”
She stopped. Her eyes moved back and forth between us, as if scanning for an answer.
“I-I… I can’t think,” she said. “What does it matter?”
“Just answer the question!”
“It’s… it’s… 2002?”
Casper stepped up, staring daggers at her.
“What month?” he asked.
“January,” she responded. “Just… just let me-“
“Oh!” smiled Eva-Lena. “We have same, uh… same star-sign.”
“Great,” said Hanna. “I’m going.”
Hanna gave me the side eye as I grabbed her wrist.
“What star sign are you?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything. She sunk her eyes to the floor, unblinking.
“What star sign are you?” echoed Casper.
She turned away, and he grabbed her neck. His voice pitched into a scream, as he asked her again, and again. Finally, he grabbed her arms, and nodded at me.
“Check her pockets!”
She didn’t protest. Turns out Hanna was born in ’94, making Casper the youngest of us. Whether “the most time” referred to the youngest or oldest of us didn’t matter to Hanna; she was neither. Casper moved up to the door.
“Why go out there at all?!” yelled Hanna. “Someone is going to notice we’re gone! Let’s just wait!”
“I’m not counting on the patience of a group of fucking murderers!” spat Casper. “And, this is… this is abnormal. You ever seen a fucking gang like… like that?!”
Casper pointed out the window, his finger shaking. Eva-Lena nodded.
“He’s, uh… he’s right,” she said. “Very very strange. Unnormal.”
Casper pulled the emergency door handle, and the crowd outside dispersed. Giving us one final look, he stepped out. The rest of us kept quiet. Hanna covered her eyes, trying to stifle her sobs.
They slowly gathered around Casper as he stepped up to the young woman with the live cables. A silence hung in the air, like she was contemplating something. The speakers crackled to life.
“Very, ah… brave,” she said. “You pass.”
Casper nodded and headed towards the exit, but the crowd didn’t move. Instead, they closed in around him.
“You, ah… you win.”
She stepped forward, dropping her cables. She grabbed the side of Caspers head, as if going in for a kiss. The others grabbed his arms, holding him still. A hand wrapped around his neck; another grabbed his hair.
“We did it right!” cried Hanna. “Stop, we… we did it right!”
“Rewarded,” said the voice from the speakers. “Greatly rewarded.”
In one motion, the young woman pulled up her black mask; revealing a wide-open mouth. Casper was pushed to his knees as she leaned over him. Underneath the black fabric of the woman’s mask, I could see her eyes shimmer with an aquamarine tint.
Then, something… wrong.
It was only a split second, but as she leaned over him, her jaw widened like a hungry snake. What looked like a hundred little white hairs extended through her mouth, reaching into Casper, as their faces locked against one another. Less like a kiss; more like the bite of a leech.
The electronics went fucking crazy.
The speakers cycled through radio channels, podcasts, police radios, phone calls – everything with a signal. They all burst through the static in a jumbled mess, like someone trying to tell a hundred stories at once. And somewhere in there, her words reverberated.
“Greatly. Rewarded.”
And then, a new voice cut through the static.
Casper.
“Thank you,” he laughed. “Thank… thank you!”
Hanna had stopped crying. We all stared out the window, seeing Casper still on his knees. One by one, the hands let him go. He didn’t make the slightest effort to run. He stayed there, looking straight ahead. The young woman pulled her mask back down, picked up her cables, and took a deep breath.
“They’re… they’re just gonna kill us,” said Hanna. “Fucking… fucking kill us. Or… that.”
Eva-Lena hesitated, as if trying her best to find the right words.
“We need to… wait. See what, ah… what them say.”
“So they can do it again?! So they can take me too?! No. No!”
Hanna got up and ran to the back of the train car. I tried to keep up, but Eva-Lena put a hand on my shoulder. Our eyes met, and she shook her head.
“She, ah… she needs to do what she needs to do,” she said. “She can still change.”
Hanna hurried to the second exit, and pulled the handle. There weren’t as many people on the platform there, but I could see over a dozen of them turn their attention her way. The doors creaked open, and Hanna pushed herself through. But instead of heading for the obvious exit, she dropped down on the tracks.
So many of them went after her. Some ran, some walked. One of them dropped to all fours and galloped like a rabid animal. The woman with the cables didn’t move an inch.
There were more of them coming down the stairs; at least six. Some of them laughed. Others howled. One of them kept repeating the same noise, over, and over again.
“Eo! Eo! Eo!”
As more of them disappeared onto the tracks to chase Hanna, I looked back and forth at Eva-Lena and the people outside.
“We can make it,” I said. “They’re spread out.”
“No,” said Eva-Lena. “We can’t.”
“Look, right there, if we just-“
She looked me deep in the eyes and shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “No.”
A minute passed. The screams and the howling stopped. People returned to the platform, one by one. Some of them had their switchblades out, leaving drops of blood behind. The one with the garden fork unceremoniously dropped a full fist of Hanna’s hair on the ground, like an offering to their leader. They all spoke to one another in hushed voices, teasing the speakers into a rough static burst.
Casper was still there, on his knees; staring straight ahead. He hadn’t moved an inch.
I contemplated our options. One of us could step out and cause a distraction, giving the other some space to run. That, or we could barricade ourselves. I could break down a handrail and try to use it as a club. We could try to lie, making them believe we’d made contact with the police. We had options; albeit not very good ones.
Before I could make a decision, Eva-Lena opened the door.
The air had a tinge of iron to it, and I could still hear blood drops hitting the ceramic tiles. Hanna’s scrunched-up hair bathed in a pool of blood, like a butchered wig.
I didn’t have the time to stop Eva-Lena. Before I knew it, she’d stepped out, and I’d taken a step to follow her. She turned to me with a smile, nodding for me to come along. Despite everything, she’d kept a leveled head. At most, it’d all been “strange”. She hadn’t cried, screamed, or begged. I guess that’s what made her a ‘gunpowder lady’.
I couldn’t leave her. There was a confidence to her steps that I just couldn’t match, and I had to see her plan unfold. She wanted me to follow – so I followed.
She made her way to the young woman with the cables. They shared a few looks, eyeing one another like two anxious cats.
“He leaves,” said Eva-Lena.
The two of them turned their heads in unison, as if looking into a mirror. The others nodded; their breaths still perfectly synchronized. I heard the others shift around me. Some moving in, as if to grab me. Others tightened the grip on their weapons. Whispers of ‘Eo’ swum through the crowd, like an infectious impulse.
There was a crackle coming from the cables. A hum from the car battery. It was ready to go at a moment’s notice. I tried my best not to look at Roger; his corpse dragged to the edge of the light.
I could feel them all smiling. There was a sickly excitement in the air.
“Yes,” wheezed the woman. “Yes, he leaves.”
Eva-Lena turned to me, giving me a quick hug. A slap on the back.
“You can go to… away,” she said. “It is okay.”
“What?”
It was the only word I managed to conjure. Everything else seemed lackluster.
“They only want the, ah… the locals,” she continued. “Not long guests.”
“That’s it? I… I can leave?”
Eva-Lena nodded.
“I, ah… I promise,” she smiled.
There was a glimpse. A shine of something aquamarine, deep in the dark of Eva-Lena’s youthful eyes.
“They respect their elders,” she sighed. “You did, ah… good.”
Eva-Lena’s words no longer came from her mouth.
They came from the speakers on the subway train.
They all stepped aside. I bolted for the exit, only glancing back for a heartbeat at the very last second.
Casper stood among them now.
A tint to his eyes.
Breathing in unison.
I hurried up the spiral staircase, up a ladder, pushed a manhole cover aside, and ran down the street screaming for help. I ended up at a corner shop, where I collapsed on the floor, knocking over a shelf of chips. I wept like a goddamn baby until they called the police.
But there wasn’t much they could do.
I only had a collection of vague first names. An approximate direction. They’d had no reports of disturbances on the subway, and they were quick to take note that I still reeked of melon ball shots.
The police took my statement, handed me a bottle of water, and drove me back to the hotel.
And that was that.
I’ve tried telling a few people about this, but as of yet, they all think I’m making it up. It’s simply too outlandish to make any sense of.
I don’t know what kind of bizarre recruitment drive I survived that night, but I won’t be back to ask questions anytime soon. I hope you never meet these people, in any capacity. But I ask you to look a little closer. Check their breathing. See their eyes. Search for a hint, and don’t turn your back on them.
And please.
Don’t try to run.