The fluorescent lights of Carriage 4 hummed a bland B-flat with the same dilute blue that flickered above my cubicle an hour before. The carriage was oddly devoid of the usual Friday-night crowd. In fact, I was the only one who remained. My eyes met with a yellowing dental advertisement that presented a pasty woman with teeth whiter than the scleras of her emotionless eyes. Her wide smile smiled a fraction of an inch wider than when I had first boarded. But I blinked, and the image had reset. Or, maybe it hadn’t. This was the third time we had passed the station with a sign reading ‘London Euston’. And with each lap, from behind the glassy openings, I watched the elderly woman sitting on the bench, around eighty or so, and her olive knitted scarf, be engulfed by the withering embrace of the tunnel as I passed through once again.
My eyes darted to the navy straps of the digital watch that lay on my wrist. The glowing numbers read:
19:63
I felt a chilling bead of sweat trace the grooves of my face, finding its way into the corner of my mouth. The sharp pang of salt bit into my tongue, wrestling the bitter aftertaste of office-block coffee that still lingered in the very back of my throat.
As time passed, the tunnel outside the windows no longer stayed a blur between damp brick and mould-smothered grout. A pale, weak yellow shone, illuminating lacerated plastic chairs of a bright scarlet that stood against the walls in neat rows.
The buttery mellow light grew brighter and harsher, concentrating to a deep, musty
colour that had the appearance of sickly marred gold. The walls fizzed, the air tasting artificial and plasticky. Breaths became more rapid, heart beating faster
and faster
as the walls began to fade away
and the overwhelming noise of
TV static
pierced
my eardrums
I cried out for help, my throat hoarse from heaving. I thought that, if I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t feel it.
So I waited for something to happen. But nothing did.
The train came to a screeching halt, followed by a series of hissing brakes. A crackling loudspeaker voice of a robotic female listed an almost inaudible string of words, yet I could make out her whispering:
“Are.. you…. real?”.
The elderly woman in her olive scarf sat behind the doors – still in her regular seated position. Windows had retreated back from saffron shards into their original placement. I stepped over the bridge between my nightmare and the platform. Following her line of sight, I noticed a bulky, outdated television. Upon it, there was a young man wearing a suit, as if working an office job, with a navy digital watch on his wrist. He was looking at a pasty woman on a yellowing dental poster, whose wide grin had seemed to have grinned a fraction of an inch wider than before.