"Things aint what they used to be." The grizzled-faced man, prattled into his beard. Ice collected along the bottom edges of his small, dirty crawl space. It had an old wooden railing on the outer -most edge, that kept him from rolling onto the subway tracks...preventing his pulverization. He shivered and thought of long ago- warm meals, family, his wife smiling and their children flitting about the house.
All that was over now. The stock market had dropped like a thermometer on a clear January night and weaker men threw themselves out of windows to the filthy concrete below. Some abandoned themselves to alcohol & opiate armor. He had lost everything and now found himself in squalor. Squatting on the slimy stones, he pulled a urine-stained, wool blanket around himself, then covered his ears as a train shrieked by, nearly vibrating him out of his spine.
The hollow tubes of the subway system were shelter for the increasing numbers of homeless that clustered together for warmth, in boxes, alcoves & strange rooms. There, among the abandoned rusting machinery, they exchanged lice & other vermin, along with the accumulated filth of a lifetime. It was a netherworld. Screams shuddered through the night. No moonlight reached here. Three years ago, life had come to a grinding halt for this man. He couldn't believe that he would never see his sons again. The thought of them on holidays and the images he retained of them sleeping, haunted him nightly. His wife had cut ties and only God knew where they now were. He had shuffled around the state alone, the last few years. He found that the more he wandered, the less he got by.
It was increasingly difficult to get through his days. Nights were an inky blackness in the tunnels. The deep night held its breath, the air was fraught with menace. Every sound spoke of danger and doom. Last week, he had been attacked and lay in a puddle of gore for hours. He didn't think that he could continue any longer. Groaning, he climbed to his feet and shambled down the frigid corridor in the direction of the subway platform. He climbed the twenty terrible steps toward the cold sunlight. Hoisting the burden of his broken existence onto his own frail shoulders, he blinked as salty tears ran down, cutting a path through the dirt of his ravaged face. The tears ran off his skin...
The platform began to rumble and he wiped the snot from his nose with a crusty hand then turned --boldly-- toward the rails. Headlights painted a pale glow on the tunnel walls as the approaching train rushed and burned its way toward him. The blinding headlights' eye & the screaming wheels blasted into view around a granite corner and the man stepped into his destiny. The steel wheels clattered and receded into the distance, the light faded and silence reigned again. Somewhere, a rat squeaked hungrily. - Ozzie
