Subway

James still had his eyes closed… he was afraid… he was afraid of opening them. He felt something on his lap. He didn’t dare to touch it. But he had to do it.
The lights came back.
He opened his eyes…
And there it was.
Yes… just as he feared.
Bill’s decapitated head was on his lap.
He restrained himself… he did not scream.
One small tear of fear appeared on his right eye.
Bill had a surprised, terrified look on his face.
His hair was messed up, and a dry tear lay on his face.
The other passengers looked at him, in a mist of shock, fear, anger…
“Oh my God… another one… another one…” said Bella, sobbing on Harry’s shoulder.
It had been the fifth one, today... the fifth one that had been killed... decapitated.
Reuniting all the self-control and courage he had, James grabbed the head and took it to the compartment where they had been taking them… the headless dead bodies, and their respective heads.
On his way, he found Bill’s body. It was lying in a strange position… like if he had been sleeping on the ground, before it came, and killed him, separating his head from his now bleeding and completely broken neck.
But he knew that that wasn’t how it happened… he knew that Bill was wide awake when he was killed.
James saw him, just before the lights went down, they all became silent, and it entered the compartment.
In less than a minute, James felt something on his lap, and he heard the door that led to the compartment being closed again.
It had been so close to him… he did not see it… the darkness filling the compartment did not allow it… but he smelled it… he smelled the…. thing… that had been killing the subway’s passengers one by one.
It smelled like blood… like dirt… a smell that he was now praying never to smell again.
He had taken Bill’s head and body to the compartment where they had been placing the bodies.
He looked at all those dead men… children…women… for some seconds he imagined himself in there… dead… headless… with the same look filled with fear and surprise.
And then, only one thought came to his mind.
How could it have come to this…?
So many bodies… so many lives taken…
He turned back and started to slowly move back to the compartment where the other passengers were.
James had hoped that he would not find a head on his lap… but everyone else had found one on their laps… it was now his turn to feel the blood covering his jeans. To feel how shocking and scaring it was.
Not even the children had escaped it…
He was sorry for Bill… they had become friends over the days they had been stuck there… those six days without food or water…
He arrived at the compartment.
Bella was no longer sobbing on Harry’s shoulder… but she looked pale and shocked… Harry was hugging her, whispering on her ear, trying to comfort her.
Carrie, the mother of two of the killed children, had her last remaining child on her lap. The small boy had his eyes wide open… like Bill’s… and was paralyzed, in shock.
He had looked at Bill’s head, escaping his mother’s hands who had desperately been trying to cover his eyes.
James knew all of the ten remaining passengers…
Ten…
So many people had been killed… so many lives had been taken…
They no longer cared about the why… only about the when, the where, and the who.
The blind man, Paul, was on the far side of the compartment, away from everyone else.
Still not talking… still not moving, ignoring everyone else around him.
He stopped saying anything on the third day, when his ten year old grandson was taken from his arms.
James sat on his seat.
He took his wallet from his pocket, opened it, and looked at the pictures that were inside it.
Yes… the pictures of his family… they did not make him smile, but they gave him hope… hope of, perhaps, talking to them one last time before it came for him.
His eleven year old son, Richard… so much like his father… so much like himself… and his wife, Ana… the beautiful woman that took his heart…
He missed them in a way he never thought he could. James grabbed his mobile and looked at it… no battery… how he wished he could call Richard… or Ana… not to tell them he would soon return to hem, but to simply say that he loved them, and that whatever happened, he spent those six days thinking about them.
And that they had no fault in what was going to happen.
He placed the mobile in the pocket of his coat and continued to look at the pictures.
There it was… his son looking at him, smiling… and his wife, looking at him, also smiling…
He kept those smiles on his mind, and placed his wallet on his pocket again.
Six days… for six days he had been trapped on that subway…
How bright it seemed, the day when he entered the compartment, and sat on one of the free seats.
How bright it seemed… how quickly it turned into a nightmare that had now been lasting for six days.
He remembered when it happened… the subways stopped… everyone got confused… they were in a tunnel, why had it stopped?
Then the lights went down.
And when they came back... six headless bodies were found.
The conductor of the subway was one of those six people…
So much panic, fear, shock, appeared on everyone’s face…
On every compartment, someone had been killed. One of the passengers died of heart attack, when he saw the head he had on his lap.
Some people broke the windows of their compartment and jumped to the tracks, trying to escape… but they immediately died electrocuted.
They tried everything to escape… everything… but there was no way to communicate to the outside, no exits… and people continued to die.
Every time the lights went down, they knew that someone was going to die. And every time the lights went up, they knew that someone would find a human head on their lap.
And now, after six days… they were the only ones left.
“Do you think that someone else is going to die, today?” asked Bella, with dry tears on her face.
“I don’t know…” answered Harry, still hugging her.
John was seating next to James, looking at the couple. His wife had jumped to the tracks and died electrocuted on the first day. However, he was not sad… they were on their way to their lawyer, to take care of their divorce.
The love they had once felt for each other had disappeared long ago…
“How is he?” asked James to Carrie, whose son was still paralyzed, with his eyes wide open.
“He’s in shock… I told him not to look… I told him… he’s the only thing I have left, and now look at him… he’s… he’s…” said Carrie, in a low voice, that reflected the sadness she was still feeling… and that she would feel until the end of her life…
Three children… two of them had been taken, and one of them was now in shock.
“Did… did anyone see it? James, Bill was right next to you, maybe you…” said Vernon, who was seating next to the Paul, the blind man who did not talk. No one knew much about Vernon… except that he was a small nervous man, and that every time the lights went down, he was sure that he wouldn’t see them went up again.
“No… I couldn’t see it. I smelled it… it smelled like blood… and dirt…” answered James, looking at the nervous man who had once again started to bite his nails.
“We still don’t know if it’s human or not… if…”
“I prefer to think that something that can break someone’s neck and then rip the head off is not human” said James, interrupting Harry.
“But we don’t know… it might be one of us… it might be you” said Henry, looking at James with a serious face.
Bella looked at him.
“How can you say that? We’ve all had… a human head in our lap, we’ve all seen people die one by one… we’ve all been together… and still you don’t trust anyone, still you think that one of us is the one that had been killing…”
“No… not one of us… one of them” said Harry.
It was not the first time he said that. Since the first day he had insisted on blaming anyone for what was happening
But, deep inside, he knew… he knew just like the rest of them that it didn’t matter anymore… it didn’t matter why they were dying.
How much they had screamed on the first day… how much the question “WHY?” filled the subway… how much they searched for the… creature… that was killing them.
How much silence filled each compartment. No answers… no reasons… and soon they no longer cared about it.
Whatever was killing them was doing it, apparently, for pure pleasure.
It did not make any sense…
Trapped in a subway for six days. Someone should’ve found them. Someone should’ve noticed that it didn’t arrive at its next station…
Maybe they had noticed…
James had many times wondered if Ana and Richard were looking for him… desperately…
Or maybe no one noticed… but that wouldn’t make sense…
But nothing seemed to make sense.
Bella was still looking at Harry, her eyes showing confusion and disappointment.
“I’m sorry… but… it’s just that with everything that’s been happening…” said Harry, with the same excuse that he had been using since the first day.
Bella hugged him.
“What time is it, Henry?” asked James.
Henry’s watch was the only way to see the time, since no one else had one, and they couldn’t see if it was still day, or if the night had come.
It was always dark… except for the subway’s lights.
They rarely slept.
“It’s three in the morning” he answered, looking at his Rolex.
“It’s late…” said James.
“I don’t really… feel like sleeping, right now” said Harry.
“Me neither” said Bella.
Carrie ignored them, and continued to hug her son.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it? Everything that’s happening… it’s so…” said James.
Sometimes, he still expected to wake up… to find out that it had been just a bad nightmare.
He looked at the marks in his arm… the marks he had done to himself, thinking that it was all just a bad dream.
But he was still living it. He was still afraid.
It wasn’t a dream… it was real.
“Yes. I still don’t think that we’re all here… being killed by some… man or creature” said Harry.
“I wonder how we’re gonna deal with it, when we escape from here” said Bella, smiling with the idea of escaping from the subway… from that murdering prison.
“Yeah… me too” said Harry, with a faint smile… he did not believe that any of them would escape. He had lost hope some time ago… and Bella seemed to be the only one who still believed that they would escape.
James didn’t dare to look at her. His face would reveal what he was thinking: they were all going to die down there.
“So… you we’re getting divorced?” asked James to Henry, trying to have a conversation with him… trying to make all those terrible thoughts that were now in his mind to disappear.
“Yes. We were always arguing… and then I found out that she was having an affair” said Henry, in a low, but not sad or angry, voice.
“Did you confront her with that?” asked James.
“Of course. She asked for forgiveness… she said that she was sorry, that after five years of marriage, she wanted something more… she wanted to have her small adventure, and, apparently, she thought that I couldn’t give her that” answered Henry, in the same tone.
“But… did you still love her?”
“No. I couldn’t forgive her. I couldn’t face her for what she had done… “
“And now, she’s dead… will you miss her?” asked James.
Henry waited some seconds, before answering.
“Yes… I’ll miss her. I’ll miss her for those beautiful moments we spent together, before she had her little adventure. But, in a certain way, I’m glad she’s gone” he answered.
Then, he looked at Bella and Harry who we’re holding hands, talking to each other.
“It won’t last forever, you know. What they feel for each other… they’ll get bored soon, and then they’ll want more… they’ll want their little…” said Henry to James, in a low voice, trying to make sure that the couple couldn’t listen to them.
“Not all relationships are like the one you had with your wife. I do not think that it’s possible to truly stop loving someone… you still love her, don’t you?” asked James, looking at Henry and Bella.
The face of his wife beautiful wife, Ana, appeared in his mind.
He remembered how much he still wanted to live with her… how much they still had to do…
Henry looked down at his knees.
“In a way… yes… I think that I still love her” he answered.
James looked at Carrie, who was still hugging her son, and imagined his own son in her arms.
He quickly closed his eyes, trying to forget that vision.
“Can we get married, when we escape from here?” suddenly asked Bella to Harry, who looked at her, with a surprised look on his face.
“Yeah… we’ll get married” he answered, after some seconds.
“I don’t want to waste any more time” she said, with a calm tone on her voice, then placing her head softly on his shoulder.
Harry said nothing more.
Suddenly, the lights went down.
They all became silent. Except for Bella, who had started to sob once more.
Footsteps…
They heard them…
Getting closer…
The door that led to the compartment opened.
They heard it again… the excited breathing…
Someone was going to die.
James thought about getting up and attacking it.
But the last man who had tried that disappeared… no head, no body… the man just got up, started to scream… and then suddenly disappeared.
The footsteps had now stopped… and they all felt those eyes… looking at them… choosing…
And all the breath left James’s body… when he suddenly felt something touching his face…
Fingers… hairy fingers… inhuman fingers… and inhuman smell…
The words “Oh my God” would’ve come out from his mouth… but he was too shocked… too scared to open it.
Then, it stopped touching him.
His heart was beating… beating like it could explode at any moment. Beating like it could escape from the chest at any moment.
He couldn’t move his hand. He couldn’t move his mouth. He couldn’t move his leg.
Those actions demanded an amount of strength that, at the time, he felt like he would never possess.
Suddenly, he heard something…
“Take me! Take me now! Kill me!”
Something far away…
“Take me!”
He regained his strength… his heart slowly started to calm down… but the fear… the shock wouldn’t go away.
“TAKE ME!”
Someone was shouting… a woman’s voice…
“KILL ME! KILL ME NOW!”
Carrie…
Suddenly, it stopped, and James heard nothing more.
He felt some tears escaping through his closed eyes, and running down his face.
All of a man’s courage disappears when he faces death.
All of a man’s hope disappears when he faces death.
But for those terrible seconds, James thought that he was about too lose more than just that.
He opened his eyes.
The lights had returned.
There was something in the floor...
Carrie’s beheaded body laid in front of him. Her head placed upon her chest, with that surprised, terrified look that they all had seen before.
In the seat where she had been seated was her son. A tone of blue filled his face.
He was dead.
Suffocated…
Carrie had done it, while the lights were down. And after killing her own son, she made sure she’d follow him…
They all looked at young boy’s body, with a look of shock in their faces.
Carrie loved him… she loves her son… was that why she killed him? Because she didn’t want him to die decapitated? Because she didn’t want him to feel any more fear?
Or maybe she had just gone crazy, and killed him in a moment of madness.
Or… maybe she did it believing that something better awaited him…
Heaven, perhaps. Maybe the act of killing her own son had came from her own faith.
Maybe she had killed him in the name of God…
James thought for a moment, and realised that it didn’t really matter which one of those possibilities it had been.
Because, after thinking for a moment, he realised that the reason behind every one of them was the same: madness.
He slowly got up from his seat.
He grabbed Carrie’s head and her body, and took them to the compartment where they had placed the other bodies.
He closed the door that led to the compartment and turned back.
There was still one more body to carry…
The body of a child.
A child that he could not stop to compare with his own son.
Suddenly, the lights went down.
He knew what was going to happen.
He was alone in the compartment that made the connection between the one where he had just placed Carrie’s body… and the one where the others were.
He felt scared.
Terrified.
He was alone.
In the dark.
In the silence.
Standing up, he waited.
His legs shaking.
Not a sound.
No one sobbing with fear, no steps…
Just silence… darkness.
The others were not that far away… but they seemed miles away for James.
What if… it came for him, now?
He gave one step.
He had to reach the compartment…
Another step.
He had to reach the others…
One more step.
He felt defenceless… more defenceless than he had ever felt since it all begun.
He could die right now. It could kill him.
It could grab him from behind, grab his neck, bite it, and then break it.
James grabbed his neck with both hands.
It could come from any place… any direction…
Maybe it would touch him again…
James relived the touch of those inhuman hands.
Once again, he felt tears running down his face.
He fell to the ground on his knees.
He slowly walked to a corner...on his knees… like a dog, knowing that it’s about to die.
He waited... with his hands on his neck.
He tried to remember his son.
He tried to remember his wife.
Their faces didn’t appear.
Instead, he relived the sensation on those hands… touching him… grabbing his neck.
The lights went up.
The darkness went away.
The same didn’t happen with the silence.
He got up… Slowly… using the strength he had left.
Most of the fear went away.
Only the fear he had always felt since it begun was now left.
Someone had died.
James walked towards the door.
Slowly...
He opened the door, and prepared to himself to find out who had died… knowing that once again another body would have to be carried.
And then he fell to his knees again.
The fear came back.
A sound came from his mouth…
And it grew…
Louder…
And James’s scream of horror echoed through the subway, as he looked upon the dead bodies that were in front of his wet eyes.
They were all dead…
The beheaded bodies were in the floor.
The heads were in a corner… piled…
James’s scream continued.
A scream of fear.
Anger.
Horror.
The scream of a desperate man.
He walked away from the compartment.
Bella… Harry… everyone else, dead.
And now he was alone.
He sat on one of the seats.
The feeling of those hands grabbing his neck returned.
Only his imagination…
The image of those bodies wouldn’t go away.
All those heads… in a pile… those surprised, terrorized eyes…
Suddenly, a new image came to James’s mind.
His own head… on the top of the pile.
He felt the hands on his neck.
Another scream echoed.
No… just his imagination.
He took out his cell phone.
Not working.
He threw it against the floor, in a mist of fear, anger, and desperation.
The tears wouldn’t stop running down his face, now.
His legs wouldn’t stop shaking.
And now James wanted to die.
He wanted it to be over.
And he knew he was gonna die.
There was no hope.
And he would die without knowing why he was dying… why they had all been dying…
James waited…
With the feeling of the hands grabbing his neck, with a fear that seemed to be freezing his heart, he waited… knowing that he could die at any moment.
He looked above his head.
He thought he had heard something… but no… imagination.
He looked to his right… he had heard… no, just his imagination again.
Two hours later, he could barely move his neck
The fear was still there.
He was paranoid…
Please… I just want it to be over… please…
James couldn’t take it anymore…
Maybe he could kill himself…
Suicide…
No… no… he couldn’t do it…
But he wanted it to be over.
And the face of his son appeared in his mind.
He needed to talk to him.
The wanted it more than he wanted it to be over.
Suddenly… a noise…
A cell phone...
James got up and ran towards it.
He grabbed it.
He answered.
The words wouldn’t come out of his mouth.
Then someone talked from the other side of the line.
“Dad…?”
A small tear ran down James’s face.
A tear of happiness, not fear.
“Richard… son…”
“Where are you? It’s been so many days, are you alright? Please Dad… come back. What happened? Mom and everyone else are so worried, she went with the police look for you again, but…” he stopped talking. He was crying.
“Listen to me… I love you. I love you mother too, say that to her. I didn’t run away. I can’t… I can’t go back home, son. I… I…”
“Dad? What’s happening, please…”
Suddenly, the lights went down.
“I love you, Richard. I love your mom. I love you all. You have to be a big boy now… take care of your mother. I love you”
The cell phone stopped working.
He had talked to his son…
It had given James the chance to do what he wanted to do…
He heard steps behind him…
The fear came back… not as strong…
With it came relief…
James felt those hands grabbing his neck…
Stronger…
Stronger…
And then it all faded to black.