Twice a day, five times a week, 47 weeks each year.
That was how often Azalea took the subway. One way to work, the other way home. The same time each trip, the same train and, usually, the same ordinary crowd of people.
She didnt like the subway. The stations she used were neglected and filthy. Every wall was covered with either grime or graffiti, most of them both. The restrooms were crowded with the belongings, if you could call them that, of the homeless who had coalesced in this area. There were no friends while waiting on the platform, just potential threats. She hated that she had to have a weapon on her when she came down here.
She also didnt enjoy the trips. They werent long enough to read anything substantial and they werent short enough to be trivial. The tracks were as neglected as the stations and the carriages themselves hadnt been cleaned or improved in a very long time. The only positive, in her view, was that her particular route was not busy. Most days she had a carriage to herself. A moment of unsatisfying quiet – besides the noise of the old train shaking as it rattled down the line – for her to scroll mindlessly through one of a few social media apps she had on her phone.
As far as she was concerned, this was her life. Wasted away doing nothing, thinking about nothing on her way to and from her nothing job with other nothing people. It dragged at her sometimes. A pang of guilt when she saw a Tweet from some 13 year old genius who was living up to their parents dreams. A moment of deep dissatisfaction with her own life when she glanced out the window and saw the walls of the tunnel flying past as a metaphor for her own life. The stab of jealousy when, at some of the more upkept stations, a couple bid each other farewell with a kiss. But each of those moments passed, and she knew that each of the moments she would feel in the future would also pass. She sunk back into her seat and flicked her thumb, sending the offending post, like the rest of it, into the past.
Each and every day the same. A routine forged into a rut. Everything about Azalea was the same. The same alarm at the same time indicating another day that was the same as yesterday and would be the same as tomorrow. Even the weekends failed to dull the malaise that brought her from her dreams which were, of course, always the same.
The same shower. The same shampoo. The same clothes. The same cereal. The same coffee. All of it, each day, the same.
Except today. Today was different. She felt it when she woke up and sat upright in bed wondering why she felt so different. Her short bob of hair hung down over her face and she swept it back to turn off her alarm when she realised. There was no alarm. There had been no rude awakening from the dream she had been having, and now that the thought was in her conscious mind, she realised there had been no dream at all. She had slept soundly. Deeply and completely. For the first time in she didnt know how long, she was actually refreshed.
Which was quickly replaced by panic when she saw her phone reading an hour after she was meant to have started work.
She had never been late for work before. She had never taken a day off sick. She had always maintained a predictable schedule and any time she did take off – her entitlement of vacation days, evenly spaced throughout the year – was arranged and approved well ahead of when she would take them. She was, in her own imagination, the perfect employee. On the days when she was on time and her routine ran like clockwork, she had imagined a day like today. Where she would be late for some reason – which was never her fault – and would not be held responsible since, clearly, this was not a habit for her. It wasnt something like those others would would push the boundaries of their contracts. She would be able to claim external factors, and she would be let off the hook thanks to all the previous times where that hadnt happened.
All of that was not running through her head as she rushed a cold shower, forewent breakfast, and dressed in such a hurry that two of her blouse buttons were in the wrong holes. All she could think about was why no one was answering the phone at work. The secretary of her section, the old woman whose name was immediately forgettable, should be there and would be waiting to pounce on a call on its first ring, lest the noise upset the workers in their little cubicles. But there was no two-packs-a-day voice rasping a canned greeting down the line at her. Just the constant ringing of an ignored phone. There wasnt even a switch to voicemail, or to another phone somewhere else. Surprising herself with the venom she felt at being ignored, she smashed the red circle, shoved the phone deep inside her purse and escaped her tiny single bedroom apartment and head down the stairs – the elevator was actually slower – and out the door onto the street and into the bright light of this Friday in the middle of autumn.
The day was different. There were other people, for a start. Intellectually she knew that would be the case. She had to leave somewhat early for her train and the associated travel time between home, the stations and work. In the depths of winter, it was still dark even as she entered the office building. So seeing more people out when it was bright and the day was underway didnt bother her. Seeing these people did. They werent her people. They werent the people who stood, gloomy and dead inside, the same as her, on the side of the platform. They werent the homeless who never actually asked for anything, but looked expectantly as you approached and didnt hide their disgust as you passed and ignored them. They were real people. They were people who had a goal in their step. The people who had places to be. Obligations to meet. People Azalea only thought existed in movies. These people had lives. Some of them, most of them, in fact, looked happy. Some of them were jogging, pushing prams or just sitting outside cafes that Azalea had never seen open. She tried not to look at any of them as she passed them, rushing towards the familiar sight of the darkened stairway that led to her subway platform.
But even the subway was different. There was natural light coming in from the windows that lined the upper walls at street level. The shadows they created on the floor and rail line were more whimsical and artistic, with flecks of dust, a few seed balls and even a butterfly than the creepy, dank and full of unknown things that she saw from the fluro lights that were on when she usually came down here. Even the people who waited for a train were better than the others. They were dressed nicely, some had dogs. A cyclist was helping an old woman fold up her walking frame so she would have an easier time of boarding. More real people.
The train came from the other way; away from her work. She had never seen the other way train before. She watched it hiss to a stop, heard the doors open and felt, rather than saw, all the people enter. The doors hissed closed again and slowly, almost as if it couldnt, the train pushed out of the station and headed further down the line, onto places Azalea never thought about and would never see. By the time the last wagon slid past Azalea on the opposite side, it was up to full speed and with a small sound from its horn, it disappeared behind a slow curve. The limit of Azaleas existence.
She looked up and over the line. Expecting to see people who had disembarked carefully making their way up the stairs and back out into the light, ready to set to the next part of their day. Ready for more obligations, more exercise, more dates, and other such things that were not a part of Azaleas life. Instead she saw…
People. They werent the real people she thought shed see. They werent her people either. They stood opposite her, each of them dressed in a dirty,long white gown which went all the way to the floor, some of them had the hoods of these gowns up over their heads, others down. Each of them wore a bright yellow mask with a simple smiley face drawn on each in black paint.
They were lined up as if having been corralled for a photo; at the back, in the middle, the tallest of the group of about a dozen stood. Azalea couldnt tell whether this person was extremely tall or if, from her perspective, he just looked that way. Similarly, the smallest one, right at the front, couldnt have been bigger than a large dog. If that was a person, they couldnt have been more than seven or eight.
They all stood silently, watching her. None of them moved. None of them said anything. She stepped back from the edge of the platform. Looking around, she saw there was no one else on her side. The natural light of the daytime had been replaced with the dingy fluro lighting too. It was familiar, but she did not feel comfortable here at all. She looked back towards the masked people. They hadnt moved. They still stared.
A noise from her left made her jump and the train rolled into the station, slowing down to disgorge its complement of travellers who wished to get off here and pick up the one lonely woman who needed to leave as fast as possible. The doors hissed open in the same way as the previous train and Azalea rushed aboard. There was no one here. No one got off and only she boarded. The doors closed and she sat so she could see out to the masked people. Of course, they had gone. The orange daylight was again shining down the stairway and through the street level windows. There was a young man, dressed in a fresh basketball uniform jumping down the stairs but nothing else.
Azalea sighed and dug her phone out of her purse. She tried ringing work one more time.