Change

Change.

Sometimes it is good, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you get the job and sometimes you get fired. Every day is different.

My day started as it always did: a whining alarm followed by a lukewarm shower, then a quick coffee and a half-run to the tube station for the train to work.

I daydream about how each day will bring something different to me and brighten up my life. But usually nothing changes. For months I wanted something to change, for something exciting to happen to me. My mother says I will sit around waiting for so long that I will wake up dead, wondering where my life went. ‘Now, that’s change!’ she used to proclaim when I was a teenager.

You may wish for change, but in this life you don’t know what kind of change you will get.

I sat on the seat in the train, facing others – I imagined – like me: sour at the fact work forced me up before eight, and hoping for a miracle cure to the nine to five slog. We are a team, companions’ on the mighty Tube Quest. Our newspapers shields against the outside world, our hidden eyes catching glimpses’ of our fellows – hiding our mutual thoughts of the journey, yet helping us become one.

The usual stations broke up the morning papers sensational headlines – it’s so dull, the pain of others. More people on the same journey enter and I try to steal fleeting glances at any hot women without the others on the train catching me – yet we all secretly know we are all looking at each other, wishing for something to happen.
Twenty minutes in, we hit the central city. Soon I will leave my fellows behind and enter the overflowing streams of commuters as we swim up from the underground stations like salmon in mating season on the journey home.

But not today.

The train burrowed deeper in to the suffocating darkness of the underground. The lights winked on and off, keeping pace with monotonous thumping of the wheels on the track. I remember thinking to myself, not long now. Indeed.

Just as the lights dulled, a thunderous explosion tore through the train.

Each day brings something different to each of us.



Those lifetime-long moments later, the world blackened and a dull ringing throbbed in my ears. I had been flung to the floor of the train, pain enveloping me as I did so. Just as suddenly, someone tripped over me and swore as they collapsed to the ground. The ringing dulled to a background whine, and screaming took its place. All around me, people yelled in fear and confusion. I planted my bruised hands on the floor, trying to drown out the noises around me with sheer force of will. I had to take stock of the situation and find my bearings.

What had happened? Was it an explosion or a crash? An earthquake maybe?
Then the lights flickered and a bolt of fright rippled through me. God, what if the lights go out down here? What if...?

Suddenly, a violent booming rocked the train once more, tearing all conscious thoughts from my mind.

Yells, prayers and yet more screaming filled the carriage. So too did black, choking smoke. Like a nest of air-born, venomous snakes, sinuously, yet lazily, moving through the train, poisoning each person it touched.

The screams and crying immediately turned to panic and the passengers, as one, started to move throughout the train, trying to find an escape.

Yet, what escape can one find deep underground, in a dark and confided train, stranded in a tunnel?

I knew that lying on the floor amongst such violent confusion would not be good for my chances of survival, and so with effort, I pulled myself up, grabbing at one of the hand-poles for support and pushed people out of my way – what else was there to do?

I looked around the carriage, looking to make some sense of the situation I now found myself in. In front of me I saw the window into the next carriage – all I could see was more scared people rush towards the part of the train I was in, running from thick, black smoke. My carriage was slowly filling with the smoke, so I turned to find an exit. The doors near me seemed closed tight, as others were trying to open them to no avail. Most of the crowd moved to the other carriage, away from the smoke.

The people around me had changed from the mundane companions they had been minutes earlier – now they felt like enemies, barring my way to freedom. Panic reigned and in an instant the society of our shared journey had degenerated into a primeval fight for survival.

How things change.

I turned away from the smoke, its tendrils finally catching me, causing a burning cough. The reality of the events around me swiftly hit – I was in real danger, and my life was at risk. Along with the others around me I fought my way towards the next carriage, suddenly my only reason and thought in life.

It was then that the lights flickered off, drowning me in darkness and despair.



Fear rippled through me in a torrent of electricity, lighting up my darkest thoughts.
Again, everyone around me pushed and shoved, wailing and cursing for freedom. I fumbled for a pole and held on, wishing desperately for the lights to reawaken. Fate had other ideas.

Suddenly, a sharp, booming sound vibrated through the carriage and assaulted my senses like an invisible avalanche of noise. My mind, quickened in fear, likened it to a gunshot. Yet it did not sound like the movie pistol, no, this was a real sound. The personification of evil in sound waves.

Screams followed.

Then the lights flickered on.

Once more, the day changed, bringing yet more terror. Through the scores of fleeing and frightened commuters I saw a man move into the carriage, wielding some form of firearm and shouting inaudible threats to whoever was closest.
A close by man moved toward the gunman. The dreaded sound belched forth once more, and the man fell backwards in a spray of crimson.

I think I shut down momentarily. My mind refused to believe what my eyes were seeing. This could not, should not be happening.

Suddenly I was pushed forward – in my split-second hesitation my grip loosened on the metal pole, and I fell forwards, a piece of human driftwood in a raging sea of people.

Even as these events unfolded, the creeping carpet of smoke continued to fill the carriage – in itself a form of change: turning the life-giving oxygen into a choking death.

I pushed, gripped, bit and shoved my way through he crowd, and finally found more peaceful currents. I stumbled and fell to my knees, finally free of the storm, only to find myself kneeling in front of the gunman. He had wild, glaring eyes, and sweat glistened off his pale, white skin. As he fired yet another round off into the innocents around him, I saw into his open jacket.

I saw strange packages strapped to his waist. Immediately, my mind thought: Terrorist. Explosives. Why? Blame countless nights watching films; blame society. I don’t know. But why was he shooting people and not blowing them up?
Strange thoughts tear through the mind in stressful situations, I am told, and I guess this was one such time.

Suddenly, my mind calmed, and my thoughts became more focussed. The explosion only minutes ago must have been an accomplice, his mission successful. Maybe this man’s bombs didn’t work, and so he decided to murder us one by one?

I didn’t have time to think of such things any longer, however, as the wild gunman suddenly turned his weapon toward me. I looked into his eyes, and he mine…

Change can be for the better. But it also can be deadly.



His stare bore deep into my soul. It felt as if I was being judged, like a God looking upon his flock and wondering if they were worthy enough for life. And that was the power this wild-eyed man had over me: that of a God, and a vengeful one at that.
Slowly, I raised my right hand in submission, trying in desperation to placate him and stop his brutal assault on the train.

He laughed. How can a human lose all mortality and mock the essence of life with such frivolous violence and disabandonment?

My life did not flash before my eyes. The imminent feeling that it was all over did, however, and a rage built within me. It was as if a hidden volcano of feeling erupted within me. The fleeing commuters seemed to vanish around me, as did the swirling smoke and the sounds of pain, and a deep hatred penetrated my soul. This should not be! Why could something like this happen?

The lights blinked out once more, and darkness reigned.

I leapt forward, piling into the gunman with all the force I could muster, using my rage of the unjust situation as fuel for my fiery attack. The gun barked wickedly once more, burning and numbing my hearing simultaneously. We crashed into the train wall, a frantic, jumbled mess of limbs.  I furiously punched, pushed and beat at the man, hoping to injure him in anyway possible, my fear showing itself in violent action.

Again, the lights winked on weakly, and I saw the gunman’s bloodied face. He looked shocked, but the fire still burned in his bloodshot eyes. I had no feelings – only a dullness that muffled my senses and thoughts.

Suddenly I realised that the gun lay mere inches away from me – the terrorist having dropped it during my attack. Without thought a snatched it up. The change of circumstances gripped me: now I was the God, the man with power…

I wish I could say I controlled the situation well and left a hero there and then, capturing the villain.

That did not happen.

I picked up the weapon awkwardly and hammered it roughly into the mans face. Blood burst from his head.

Then I remember hearing a woman’s shrill scream. It brought me back from the numb world I had found myself in, and the grim reality once more filtered into my consciousness.

I dropped the gun and scrambled for an exit. Several people had broken one of the windows and hurried out of it into the soupy darkness of the tunnel beyond. I decided to follow, to escape this living hell I found myself in. I remember hearing cries for help as I fumbled through the window, the palms of my hands ripping on the jagged, broken glass.

How the voices haunt and hunt me in my dreams, like clawing ghosts demanding the life that will never be.

I hit the side of the track hard, a blinding pain exploding through me as I landed awkwardly – later I would find I snapped a rib. I remember continuing to here shouts for help. I know now that I could have turned and helped those trapped inside the train, who were too injured to escape , but the reality is that I didn’t. I wanted to live and be free of the nightmare, and so I ran away from the train, following others like me who were free of the hell, scrabbling for freedom.

I ran for several minutes, blindly following other in the darkened tunnels, and suddenly I heard – and felt – a loud booming sound. A forceful wave sweat over me and I toppled painfully to the ground.

Another bomb had exploded.

And I knew, sickeningly, where it had come from.

*

Months later, I sit here, on the train, hoping that my morning is mundane, dull and boring. I hide behind my newspaper still, almost enjoying the fact that others are suffering and not me. I glance fleetingly at the other passengers, guessing at their thoughts. Are they ordinary commuters, like me, or wild-eyed monsters?

I revel in the monotony, and the lack of change.

Above all, I wonder what I could have done on that fateful day. What could I change if I had been brave enough to help those crying out for help, or if I had stayed to make sure the terrorist gunman had not managed to detonate his explosives.

Maybe I could have changed something.

Maybe many of those who had died would be here today, and not have perished in the fire of insanity?

There is no true way for finding out, is there?

What else could I do?