If You’re in New York City, Don’t Take the 9 Train

I recently moved to New York City and I love it. The hustle and bustle of a city that never sleeps. When you do sleep, you dream of the crowded streets, the endless conversations of millions of different lives all in the same place at the same time, and the smells that fill your stomach before the food reaches your lips or bile. The bright lights of advertisements while you realize Times Square is its own nightmare and skyscrapers that are on their way to touch the heavens. 

I had moved here for a fresh start and to escape the life I had left behind. My life was going nowhere in my hometown. The dead- end job, seasonal depression that had become year round. I still don’t know where it’s going now. Now, I’m in a place I feel is home despite being the most alone I’ve ever been.

I got a job as a waitress in NoHo. Rich people and men trying to impress their dates tipped well. It’s how I barely made my rent without solely relying on credit cards.  The pace was busy yet exhausting, the customers were mostly kind but always blunt and honest. I didn’t really know my coworkers. We were always too tired to speak even the smallest of things. I wish I had known at least one of my coworkers now that I reminisce. They never seemed to be unkind or unapproachable. Maybe they thought I was. 

The rain was pouring last time I was outside. I don’t know when that was. The clock still reads 3:21am, I don’t recall seeing it change. I got out of work late. The restaurant I worked at closed at 11pm. The last customer didn’t leave until 1:32 am despite the last call being 11. It was a busy night. After dividing tips to bussers and cooks, dropping my bank and organizing my receipts, then rolling silverware, I didn’t make it out of there until 2:31am. I fucking hated riding the subway during this time of night. It felt too active in a realm I couldn’t see. 

With my hoodie tied tight to protect some of the rain from myself, I quickly walked down the stairs into 14 Street-Union Square station to begin my ride home to Brooklyn. The humidity and warmth of being one layer closer to Hell felt better than the rain closer to Heaven. I jumped the turnstile, there was no one around. Why was I gonna pay three dollars to ride in a metal container? I found my way to my first train, the R. It was due to arrive in five minutes. There weren’t many people around. Homeless guys sleeping under some advertisement, strangers with more social distance than necessary with earbuds in all encapsulated into their own realities. I can’t say much about them. I am one of those strangers. 

All seemed normal except for one stranger. He was dressed in all black dress pants, peacoat, an Italian wool fedora, penny loafers and socks. His side profile seems to match? Maybe, I was sleep deprived and imagining it. There was no way this was real. No one else was batting an eye, so I should do the same and be another bystander. 

The train arrived on time. Everyone’s eyes looked up from their devices as they watched the doors open. We let people step off the train before we stepped in. There wasn’t a crowd so finding a seat was easy. I tucked myself in a seat under a map and near the doors for safety. Nothing had happened to me in the three months I’ve been here but there was no such thing about being too safe. 

The ride was mundane. No human noises were made. All that could be heard was the train moving the announcement made at every stop. With each stop I looked up from my phone, waiting to see if the man in black stepped off. He never did. With new passengers that got on and old ones that got off no one noticed him. They even looked in his direction and nothing! I must be hallucinating or something! Maybe, I’ve finally lost my sanity and I’d be finding myself in an institution instead of my apartment. I tried not to stare. I really did. Something kept grabbing my eye and forcing me to stare at him, not being allowed to blink. I felt like a test subject for the Ludovico technique. 

The dot lit up on the map, thank God. 42 Street and Times Square. I’d transfer to the C train here and escape whatever the man in black is. I got up as quick as the train stopped and made  a b-line out and checked the time. 2:58am. Fifteen minute wait, whatever, fine. Anything to get home. I was away from the man in black and that is all I cared about. The feeling of blinking is something that’s taken for granted. 

I had found a bathroom where I could splash water on my face, stare at myself. I looked the same, disheveled and like I haven’t slept in days. Nothing was behind me. I was safe and intended to keep it that way. 

After my little pep talk, I made my way out of the bathroom. 3:03am. I had ten minutes to get to my connecting train. I walked through the small New York City crowd in the station. My eyes stayed up but darted around reading the signs. The C train caught my eye. While I made my way down to the platform, I looked around. Anyone I saw dressed in all black, I made sure they had a face. They all did. 

I stood with my back against a pillar, staring down at my phone. “No no no fuck!” I whispered. The train was delayed with no time set. How could it be delayed? It was one minute before it had to arrive! One! I heard train brakes come to a stop. I furrowed my eyebrows. The train wasn’t supposed to be here. Why was there a train here? Maybe it was a fluke with the MTA app. I was looking at the wrong thing. All I knew was I had to get out of here. I stepped onto the train and looked around. The seats by the doors were taken. I made my way down a little where I saw the man in black again. The only empty seat that would be comfortable was across from him as fate would have it. I took my seat hesitantly and sighed. I told myself once again, I’m probably paranoid over nothing. 

3:19am, the train moved. I stared down at my feet, glancing around as best as I could. There was something off. The shoes. They looked out of season by a few decades. I wore black non-slip shoes due to my job. Everyone else around me wore converse, which isn’t anything to write about, Air Jordan’s 4, and Reebok..pumps? When did they stop making those? When was the last time kitten heels were in fashion along with wedged flip flops? My eyes went back to the man in black. He was less of a man. I could see the outline of his figure but his shadow radiated off him like a photo of the sun, slowly taking up space around him. As I looked up I realized all of him was like that. This dark, absorbent aura surrounding him. 

I turned my head to look at those around me. I saw some people holding mp3 players, walkmans, discmans, and boomboxes? Blackberry phones, brickphones, flip phones. I looked down at my iPhone. There was no way I couldn’t have been imagining this. Imagining guido’s and guidettes looking as if they were going to the Shore, girls looking like they were heading to a Madonna show at MSG, guys in old Knicks jerseys and old Yankees baseball tees. Where the hell was I? 

I looked at the man again. His shadow took up more space. It was slowly touching the shoe of the person in one seat next to him. He didn’t move. My eyes went wide but I didn’t say anything. I could feel the bystander effect kicking in. I didn’t want to be the one to say anything. No one else needed to know I was losing it. I watched as his silhouette didn’t move but this black void that surrounded him did. I looked at the man in the Knicks jersey. It was starting to touch. It..covered him? Absorbed him? I couldn’t standby. I quickly got up from my seat and touched the shoulder of the man being absorbed.

“Sir! Sir!” I said panicking. “Sir!” I yelled again, only louder. No reaction. No movement. He kept his head tipped back as if he’d fallen asleep and didn’t have a care in the world. “Someone help me!” I cried out, panic setting in more. I looked over my shoulder and to my dismay no one noticed. No one stopped to look, to get up and ask what was going on. Hell, some people were even continuing their conversations as if I wasn’t even there! I looked again at the man who was being engulfed into this void. I moved away from him quicker than I could think and stared as he disappeared right in front of me. My chest raised frantically as I struggled to maintain a steady breath. The same thing that had taken the man in the Knicks jersey was spreading in the opposite direction. It was heading towards the business woman texting on her blackberry, 

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” I screamed thinking it would do something. I stared as the void continued to spread. “Oh fuck this.” I said and went in the opposite direction. I headed towards the doors that would lead to a different car. Maybe I could jump to the next and tell someone there. No one watched me which helped in a weird way. Not having judgmental stares allowed me to do whatever I felt was necessary. The world is dog-eat-dog. 

As I made my way to the doors and pushed the button to open them I was met with a sight I didn’t want to see. The opposite end of the same train car. My breath hitched as I felt my eyes almost leave my skull. 

“What the fuck?” I whispered shakily as I slowly stepped back into the car I never left. I looked over my shoulder while my breath quivered. I saw the other end of the over my shoulder, people sitting in their own worlds. In front of me, it was the same. The void crawled and expanded in both directions. I had no out unless I jumped through the passenger doors. I don’t know what awaits me after death. I don’t know what the void holds for me either. I walked forward the void still far away surrounding the man unmoved. I reached the doors doing what I could to open them but to no avail. I stared out the window at my reflection, the panic and fear shooting a look back at me. 

As the train moved the walls surrounding it became covered in graffiti that came from decades I wasn’t alive to see. Worth Street? There hasn’t been a Worth Street station, well not since 1962. Why would there be and; why are there people? All standing on the platform? Waiting? Waiting for what? A train that wouldn’t arrive? What was so different about them too was they looked at me. Every single person. All of them matching the man in black who had a void growing off of him. These people were a mix of what they used to be and whatever the man was . Only certain parts of them were black and had the void radiating. There was something inhumane about the way they stared back at me. The way I mouthed help and they all smiled eerily, their eyes moving with the train. 

I didn’t know what to think. I felt panic disappear as I slowly turned to see more people had disappeared into the void and it was coming closer to me. I don’t know where I’ll go when it gets me. I’ve accepted that. There’s no time to worry when the clock still reads 3:21. I felt the defeat take over me, my shoulders slumped as I took a seat in what I assume will be my final resting place. I took in the surroundings of my new home. The 9 train. A train that only ran from 1989 to 2005. I don’t know how I ended up here. I wish I wouldn’t have been so impatient. Death is unavoidable. The void is. If you’re reading my final words, thank you and whatever you do. If you’re in New York City, do not take the 9 train.