Flash. Flash. Flash.
The lights go by the windows periodically in bursts, illuminating the passage down this yawning throat beneath the city, this infinitely looping chasm carved by the hands of man, and by those same hands unceasingly fed tube after tube of screaming metal, precious sacks of vlood and meat tucked safely inside, oblivious to the ravenous darkness swarming constantly around them.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
The light pours in the windows, bathing the interior of this little car with its pale, sick light. We shake and rattle inside this box as it descends deeper into the maddening dark, sheltering our bodies and minds from that reaching abyss. We feel safe.
Flash. Flash.
There should be another.
Flash.
Gone. No one notices. There are more seats now, in our little subway. We feel safe. We don’t ponder the space that surrounds us here. We huddle in, attend to our own business. We look away from those windows, away from each other. We look toward safety. The safety of ignorance. Never counting those that we lose on the way.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Back to normal. It’s sated, for now. But what is it? What is it? Long have I sat and pondered, watching - not too closely - and thinking on this thing, this entity, this hunger that dwells beneath us all. Does the dark creep in, slipping past these panes of glass, these false shields that keep us meek and calm? It always happens in the dark. In the spaces between one flickering light and the next.
Flash.
Not good.
Flash.
It’s aware, now. Something is wrong. I’ve been on board too long. It’s been days since I got off. It knows. It knows.
Flash.
I’m alone. But has it taken them? Or has it taken me? Perhaps this is where they all end up. But no. I can feel it. I’m not yet gone. Not yet, but soon. So soon. Until then I sit and I write and I ponder. I observe this thing that scurries beneath our feet, carrying us in its belly, gorging on us at a whim. I can hear its muscles groaning, flesh sliding along rails, pushing past things I don’t wish to contemplate. Not gone, but not home. I lool out the window, but there is none. It’s darker now. I stand and something squishes beneath my foot. I don’t look. I can hear it louder now, groaning and moaning, howling into the black and whimpering in its pain. It is pathetic, but it is so much more than I. It is pathetic and I know it and in that knowing I know that I am nothing. I am nothing, but I exist here to this pathetic thing and it disgusts me. There is something else, from the other direction. The whimpering increases, frightened and huddling but there is nowhere to go but forward, on into the dadk toward whatever awaits. I cannot breathe. It’s hot, sticky, and I am terrified but damnit I know now, I know. Where I have been all this time, where I am, and what is coming. I know.
Flash. Flash.
This is not a train.
Flash.