shadowbeast-horror - Tumblr blog

[shadowbeast-horror]

City Lights

Here’s the one that (sort of) inspired my URL. I’m not sure if it’s 100% done, but If I keep fiddling with it then I’ll never be happy.

Most people will give you the same reasons over and over why they don't like the city: it's bright, and it's loud. Me? I'll never move out of this shitty downtown apartment for exactly those reasons. There's always some light or another shining in your bedroom window, always someone shouting at someone else, sirens wailing in the distance, even ancient air conditioners groaning and wheezing their white-noise sonatas. Hell, some nights i wish i could join in the symphony of the streets, but not having a voice makes that difficult to say the least. Thank AgriDam Agricultural Pest Control Solutions for that little gift.

See, I'm not originally from downtown. I was raised on a farm in the middle of Bumfuck, Georgia, miles from what most would call “civilization”. Country boy, born and raised, i guess you'd say. In fact, that's where i lived, laughed, and loved until i was eighteen. The day i turned eighteen and got the hell out of Dodge, as a matter of fact. After what I'd seen, and what I'd survived, i was never setting foot outside of a major metropolitan area again.

It all started when i got back from the hospital when i was, oh, nine or so years old. I had just learned that i would never speak again, due to “severe chemical burns on my trachea and vocal chords,” or something like that, and i think the severity of that diagnosis was still setting in. I would sit in my bedroom, day and night, subsisting on an all-liquid diet, just to be safe. My parents had brought me books on sign language and they wanted me to study, but i still clung to the belief that i would never need to know it. Instead, I would stay up late into the night, listening to my little portable radio and imagining myself on stage with whatever band was playing, performing to crowds of people. Hell, sometimes I would even stand by my bedroom window, imagining the rows of corn to be my adoring fans. The distant tree line, bathed in silhouette, played the part of the walls of the arena. This fantasy would end when either the trees waved in the wind, reminding me that they weren’t walls of concrete and steel, or I would actually try to sing along.

It was in the middle of one of these fantasies that my radio’s battery died one night. Normally, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. My dad kept a healthy stockpile of batteries of all sorts in his bedroom, just in case, but he was definitely asleep by now, meaning that I would have to wait until morning to have my entertainment back. I glanced back at my desk and the small pile of books laying, unopened, on its surface. I looked back out the window, trying to think of a way to distract myself from the silence without actually doing any work. I took in the shadowy landscape of the family farm, past the rabbit hutch, beyond the corn, out to the utter blackness of the trees swaying gently in the wind. Thinking back, I think I noticed that while the silhouette of the trees was moving slowly back and forth, the corn was still as the grave; I just was too preoccupied with my boredom to think anything of it. Ultimately, I decided that sleep was better than studying, and I went to bed.

The days passed quickly, as my parents started talking about getting me back to school. They wanted to put me in special classes where my muteness wouldn’t be as much of an issue; I wanted to stay home entirely. Maybe I was worried about being made fun of, the kid who was in “special” classes who couldn’t even argue his case? Maybe I liked staying home when everybody else was in school, what kid wouldn’t. But I think, when it comes down to it, I was just waiting for my voice to work again. So I could laugh, sing, tell jokes, everything that everyone else can do. I would turn up my radio as loud as I could without waking my parents up, dancing around my room, performing to the silent, screaming crowds of corn and rabbits outside my window. The next time the batteries in my radio died, though, I definitely saw it. It happened suddenly, one moment there was music and the next moment it was pure silence.

The acres of corn stalks swayed in the wind, and the dark beyond swayed with it. But as I watched, frustrated at my lack of foresight in not getting extra batteries, I saw the corn slow to a stop while what should have been the trees only moved faster. Faster than any wind should have moved them, not without some kind of incredible storm. Curious, I opened my window, and heard nothing but more silence. No leaves rustling, no creaking of wood, no cries of animals in the night. Just… silence. But the trees kept moving. I ran to my bedside drawer and pulled out my emergency flashlight, pointing it as far into the trees as I could, only to find that they weren’t moving at all. In fact, the shadows of the trees outside the beam of my flashlight seemed… different, somehow. Smaller. Not shaped like they were just moments ago. I chalked it up to the trees being funny, I don’t know. I closed my window and, for once, my curtains, and went to bed. I still didn’t need sign language.

My dad woke me up early the next morning to get my help with some chores, saying that if I was going to be out of school for this long, I was going to at least make myself useful. We cleaned the rabbit hutch, pruned some less-than-healthy corn stalks, made sure our bird kites were in decent shape, and then I was given free roam of the farm. When asked, I told my parents that I had been reading my sign books, but acted like I couldn’t remember anything useful when they pressed me. That evening, my dad, seeing through my lie, forced me to sit down and work on learning how to sign. He watched me for a time, then went to bed without my noticing. I never did ask him for new batteries.

The night was as silent as ever, but it creeped up on me rather than appearing suddenly; when you focus on learning something new like that, you kind of appreciate the quiet. I only got up from my desk once before bed: I went to my windows, pulled back the curtains, and prized open the pane to get a bit of fresh air. The only things on the air that night were the smell of corn, still air, and… just a hint of something else, I never could identify it. If you had asked me back then, I would have said it smelled like the storage shed after we let it air out for a bit. Nowadays, I don’t like to think about what that smell could have been. I noticed the corn dancing about, as if a stiff breeze was blowing. I looked up at the trees, and they remained still. I remember thinking that was odd, and decided to ask my dad about it in the morning.

Instead, I was awoken from my sleep early in the morning by a sharp scream; my mother’s scream, from outside my bedroom window. I got up as quickly as I could and raced to the window, yanking the curtains back to see what the problem was. I saw my mother running from the rabbit hutch, towards the house, and shouting for my dad to come help her, please, it’s terrible. I ran downstairs in my pajamas and went straight to the rabbits, where I saw a terrifying and gruesome sight: All the rabbits were not just dead where they lay but… caved in, almost. Their skin and fur clung to their skeletons, as if they were literally nothing but skin and bone. My dad came in a minute or so later and he started turning them over, he and I both noticed that the rabbit didn’t seem to have been injured or harmed in any way. He picked one up and brought it into the kitchen, but my mom refused to let me in to watch. From the little I could see form the doorway, my dad performed an autopsy on the rabbit and found that it was exactly as I had thought: it had no internal organs at all, only a pelt wrapped around a skeleton. He ran to get a second corpse to perform the same procedure, and I was able to take a closer look at the body on the counter. Aside from the cuts my dad had made, I couldn’t find any sign of injury, animal attack or otherwise. When my dad returned, I was discovered looking at the body and was forced into my bedroom until they were done investigating.

After what felt like hours, my dad came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. I reached for the pad of paper I had started keeping on my bedside table, but he seemed not to notice and started talking anyway, not making eye contact with me. He told me that all the rabbits had been attacked, and that he wasn’t sure what did it. Possibly coyotes. He assured me that I had nothing to be afraid of, nothing could get in the house to hurt me, but he also told me that he knew I had been staying up late and urged me to let him know if I saw any animals out my window after dark. If we had a predator problem, then that was something he would need to take care of. I nodded at him and reached again for my paper, but he reached over and stopped me. He told me to try studying a bit, and that he would bring me some food in a little while.

Not wanting to put any more stress on my dad than he was clearly already under, I sat down at my desk and opened the sign book I had been flipping through lately. I tell you, I tried my hardest, but something felt off. Was it my concern about what had happened to the rabbits? Was I subconsciously remembering something from the previous night? I’m almost certain that both were true, but I quickly realized that the main reason I was having such trouble focusing was because I was trying to study in relative silence. Sure, I had the dull tweeting of the birds outside my window, and the faint sound of machinery on the farm, but my radio was still dead! I grabbed it off my desk and rushed downstairs to get more batteries from my dad before I forgot again.

As I approached the dining room, I heard my mom and dad quietly arguing. I slowed down to listen in, knowing that they probably didn’t want me to hear what they were talking about. My dad was whisper-shouting that he didn’t know what had done it, he didn’t know what could disembowel a dozen rabbits without leaving a mark on any of them while my mom begged him to go outside and look for any kinds of tracks or anything. He replied that he already looked and he didn’t see jack shit, but she pleaded for him to go look again because surely there must be something. Dad gave in at this and went back outside, muttering to himself, and I saw my opportunity. I walked slowly into the dining room where my mom was standing, facing away from me and trembling slightly. I walked up to her and waved at the edge of her vision to get her attention, trying my best not to startle her. She jumped anyway, but softly asked me what I needed. I pointed to my radio and I saw the understanding in her eyes, but she told me to ask properly. I rolled my eyes and struggled to think of what I needed to say, and did my best to sign what I thought was “music dead”. I could tell that she hadn’t been studying either, because she smiled and took the radio from me as if she had understood completely. After replacing the batteries, she sent me back up to my room. I turned the radio up decently loud and returned to studying, with much more success than mere minutes before. Occasionally I would glance out my window and see my dad either working or walking from one end of the yard ot the other, presumably looking for tracks like my mom has requested. I couldn’t hear him, but I could see his frustration growing throughout the day.

Eventually, I got lost in my music and my books and only realized the sun had gone down when my mom told me that she and my dad were going to bed, and not to stay up too late. True to her wishes, I recognized when tiredness started to creep over me. I clicked off my radio, closed my book, shook my tired hands, and walked to my window to close the curtains. Of course, though, I couldn’t help but look down at the now-empty rabbit hutch and wonder what could possibly have happened to them. Surely I would have heard my dad exclaim that he found evidence of something, right? As my mind wandered, so did my eyes. Across the tree line, down to the corn fields, blowing with the wind. I distinctly remember thinking the wind must be strong that night, because that’s when I remembered that the wind had seemed strong the past few nights as well. Sure, I couldn’t see the plants themselves in the pitch darkness, but the contrasting shadows danced and waved like nothing else. I’m not sure if that’s when I first considered the idea that there was something in the shadows, making everything move like that, but I knew for damn sure that whatever killed our rabbits wasn’t a coyote, mountain lion, or anything my dad might consider. Either way, I yanked my curtains closed and slept with my radio on that night.

My dad woke me up at the crack of dawn the next morning, as was quickly becoming normal. I was so used to the way my dad woke me up that I was surprised that I had trouble waking myself up, and realized I must have had some bad dreams that I simply wasn’t remembering. By the time I sat down at the table for breakfast, I had made up my mind. I had brought my paper and pen downstairs with me and started writing hesitantly, trying to use the best, most accurate words that my young mind cold conjure. After a couple minutes of writing and ignoring curious questions from my parents, I read over what I had written and handed the message to my dad. He read my explanation of what I had seen the previous night with only a faint look of concern on his face, but didn’t seem to give it too much thought once he had finished. He handed it back to me with a gentle smile and told me that I must have been more tired than I thought, and that combined with the drama of the previous day, my eyes were playing tricks on me. We would double check the bird kites, maybe put up one or two more, and he told me to get my flashlight the next time I saw the corn moving like that and see how many crows I could spot flying around.

That night, I didn’t get much studying done. Partially because of burnout, since I had gone from not caring about learning to sign to at least trying to get the basics down in a matter of days, but mostly because I was too preoccupied with my window. I would sing along to my radio to help keep myself calm while I swept my flashlight beam across the trees and the corn, looking for crows that never showed up. I don’t know what it was about the previous nights that weirded me out so much, I can’t put it into words now and I sure as hell couldn’t back then either. But dammit, I was going to get to the bottom of this mystery. My dad followed up with me over breakfast the next morning, but I could only report that while I didn’t see any crows, the corn wasn’t waving like it had been either.

By this point, home life started to settle into a new routine, one where I didn’t go to school. I liked that, because it made me feel like my return to school was some far-off thing that I didn’t have to think about for the time being. Learning to sign got easier, probably because I was learning on my terms. Well, for the most part. I would be woken up around dawn to have my breakfast smoothie before helping with chores, and we would work until near lunchtime. If we finished early, I would have some extra leisure time before lunch. Then I would sit down with some yogurt, a banana, and a nutrition shake at my desk and study some more sign, before having time to do whatever I wanted around the house. Come four or five, my parents would sit down at the table with me for their sign lesson, when I would teach them what I had learned that day. They were slower to pick it up than I thought adults would be, but I like to think I was patient for a kid. Then we would finish up a couple extra chores while dinner cooked, we would all eat together, and then I would retire to my bedroom. On good days, I would study a bit more, but most days had me dancing around my room and desperately wishing my parents would knock on my door, just once, and tell me to stop singing so loudly, they were trying to sleep. I tried not to think about the fact that they never would. The only sure thing about my nighttime routine was my flashlight examination of the shadows just outside my window. I remained vigilant, but I only ever caught one more strange thing outside.

It was during a break in my studies, I had gotten up for a couple minutes to stretch my legs and give my fingers and hands a break from their constant maneuvering. I turned my radio up a touch louder, as loud as I was comfortable making it without fear of waking up my parents. I paced about my room, letting my mind wander, when I realized I had inadvertently made my way to the window. I glanced back at my desk, where my flashlight sat waiting, and decided to forego it, just this once. I really ought to appreciate the moonlit landscape, I probably thought. Or whatever a nine year old’s version of that would be. And, for a couple moments, I was glad I did. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness outside, I began to make out a buck walking along the edge of the trees. A decent size one too, if my dad was to be believed. Seeing deer was less common that you might think, personally I chalked it up to a fear of the machinery and the people. But every now and then, I suppose. I took a second to appreciate the deer before something in my head told me that I should shut the radio off, for fear of scaring the thing away. Lord, everyone knows how skittish they can be. I took a quick couple steps back and clicked the radio off completely, it was the quickest and easiest solution. I never once took my eyes off the window, just in case the deer decided to run off. I caught a hint of movement in the shadowed trees behind the deer, but I was focused, dammit. I hurried back to the window, not wanting to miss a moment of its presence.  It was taking its time, and I wasn’t about to complain about looking at it for a bit longer. I felt a slight smile begin to creep onto my face, maybe the first genuine smile since the burning coughing fit that got me sent to the ER a month or two beforehand. But then, that glimmer of happiness vanished in the blink of an eye.

Though my focus remained on the buck, I couldn’t help but notice the silhouetted treeline, must have been force of habit. It looked unlike anything I had ever seen - the best way I can think to describe it would be angry. The shadows looked like flames licking up at the night sky, as if the forest itself was a hungry toddler throwing a tantrum. And then the shadows collapsed. The tops of the trees became perfectly pronounced against the sky, all motion stopped. Suddenly, the shadows lurched forward and engulfed the buck whole. I gasped and held back a scream, and by the time I composed myself enough to get back to the window, I couldn’t see hide nor hair of the majestic buck. I clicked my radio back on quicker than anything, hid under the covers, and fell asleep with the light on that night. In the morning, I wrote out to my dad that I had seen a buck outside my window the previous night, leaving out its, well, disappearance. He seemed amused, and gave me a smile. His reply, though, chilled me to the bone. He told me that it was funny I mentioned it, he had found the body of a buck just that morning, just past the tree line. It wasn’t particularly rare for him to come across one, but this buck in particular had given itself to nature in an unusual manner: whatever scavengers had happened across it has totally cleaned out its internal organs before much of the skin had been eaten at all.

After that incident, things were relatively quiet for the next two weeks or so. I stuck to my routine, I got better and better at signing, and my parents began seriously talking about sending me back to school again. I was able to fumble through weak arguments most of the time, but there wasn’t much that I could do. I had known that my days of staying home when I shouldn’t would be numbered, and I resigned myself to my fate fairly quickly. Well, quickly for a nine year old. But until the fateful day of my return to society, I remained steadfast in my routine. Most importantly, I would always, always look over the landscape with my trusty flashlight and drift off to sleep with my portable radio playing on my bedside table. In fact, it got to the point where the sound of my dad turning off the radio in the morning would become a critical part of my waking up. Most people would love something that could reliably wake them almost instantly, I certainly did.

So when my brain realized that my radio wasn’t playing anything in the middle of the night, it must have clicked into wake-up mode and my eyes fluttered open. I rubbed my eyes and was immediately disoriented by the darkness of my bedroom. Sure, my curtains were drawn, but sunlight still shone through well enough in the mornings. I was further thrown off by my dad, who wasn’t standing where he usually was. Every morning, I would open my eyes to see him standing over the side of my bed, one hand on my bedside table beside my radio, the other on my shoulder. But this time, he wasn’t there. Instead, I could see a silhouette at the foot of my bed. I assumed this was my dad, but something was off. As I woke up and came to my senses, I realized that it wasn’t moving at all, and it wasn’t even shaped like my dad. It wasn’t shaped like… anything, really. It was a shape, a shadow, that shouldn’t have been there. Almost instinctively, I reached out to grab my flashlight and clicked it on to find out what the hell was watching me, only to find that nothing was there. I shone the beam into every corner of my room, on every inch of every wall, but absolutely nothing was out of place. Nothing was out of the ordinary, and nothing could possibly have been casting any kind of shadow across the far wall. For good measure, I even pulled back the curtains and performed my usual search twice over. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. I tried going back to sleep, but without my music to distract me, I couldn’t even sit still. I turned on the lamp on my desk and sat in bed until my dad came to wake me up. I tried explaining to him what I saw, but again, he chalked it up to a bad dream. Rather than arguing, I asked if I could get a night light next time they went to the store, and they brought me one that very day. Oh, and plenty of batteries for my radio. There was no way it would run out of power for more than thirty seconds again, not on my watch.

Time passed and I never forgot everything I had seen. My parents could make all the excuses they wanted, but I knew what was out there. I was the only line of defense between it and everything I loved. I went back to school, I adjusted to a proper life without a voice, but I never let my nightly routine miss a beat. I never let the radio die, I always kept a light on, I always scanned the area outside my window for any sign of the thing that was out there. And I knew it was out there. I remember standing at my window, music playing behind me, with only my flashlight for light. All I had to do was click off the flashlight, return the outside to its near-complete darkness, and watch as the fields of corn seemed to begin to boil. The shadows no longer waved, they rolled and fumed like the ocean in a storm. But as soon as my flashlight beam turned on it again, I saw that the corn itself was still as the grave. It was angry, now. It had started hunting me and my family out of convenience, but now it was a personal vendetta.

Despite all this, I never let it get to me. You would think that being the only thing standing between your family and certain death would cause insane amounts of stress, but I think my being so young was what allowed me to handle it as calmly as I did. It was just another thing I had to do, like brushing my teeth and doing my homework. Plus, I don’t think I realized how serious the situation was, the permanence of the consequences if I slipped up even once. Now that I’m older, and I’ve seen so much more of life, I’m surprised I’m still sane. I still sleep with a night light, and I still look out my windows at the cars below, the lights in the other shitty apartments across the road, and I simply can’t sleep unless I have something playing. Pointless now, I know, but you know what they say about old habits.

I’m not writing this now just to scare you, though. And I’m not exactly working on a memoir. “The Silent Farmboy” or something? Don’t make me laugh. See, I never put much thought into what kept it from going after my parents. By the time I was old and cognizant enough to consider it, my routine was so ingrained into me that I had half-forgotten why I started doing it in the first place. The knowledge of the thing was there, but the fear had stopped having such an effect on me. Protecting everything I held dear was just something I did, I guess. But I got a phone call today, one that made me think back on my experiences with it and reconsider my actions. It was an innocent enough call, my mom getting in touch to keep updated on what was going on in our respective lives. I told her about recent drama at work, the debate I’d been having with my neighbors, nothing too major. My mom told me that life back home was as boring as ever, nothing much to report. The most exciting thing, she said, was that they finally had enough set aside to pay for a surgery my dad had been wanting for many years, to take care of a persistent snoring issue he had had for most of his life. The surgery is scheduled for a few days from now, and once all is said and done, he should be a silent sleeper for good. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I couldn’t get it out of my head for hours and hours after hanging up. Then it finally hit me, the reason my parents had stayed safe even after I had left home and couldn’t perform my nightly ritual: my dad’s snoring had the same effect as my little radio. Without knowing it, he had kept himself and my mom safe from the thing that stalked our farm for nearly a decade. As soon as I realized the implications that his surgery would have, I texted my mom, but she didn’t answer. I messaged her again, and again, and again, until finally she answered. They were trying to get to bed, what could be so important? I asked her if she still had my night light, and I asked if she could find it and put it in their bedroom. The excuse I used was that they were getting older, and the last thing I wanted was for one of them to trip and fall in the middle of the night and not be able to get help in a timely manner. She distractedly told me that she would look for it in the morning, but she really had to go because she needed to go to bed. Rather than try to argue the importance of a simple night light, I let her go. I’ll just have to trust her, I can’t go back to visit on such short notice. I tell myself that she’ll listen to me, that she trusts my judgment, but you know how parents can be sometimes.

[shadowbeast-horror]

Intrusive Thoughts

This is just a little one-draft, stream-of-consciousness thing I threw together

Let me start by assuring you that intrusive thoughts are normal. Everybody has them, and they’re usually not indicative of serious mental issues. For those unfamiliar with the term, intrusive thoughts are those kinds of thoughts that you hate yourself for having, those brief flashes of “I could do this terrible thing right now, it would be so easy.” Common examples are the urge to jump when standing on a high ledge, or to drive off the road into danger. If you’ve never experienced thoughts like this, one, you’re a goddamn liar. Two, these thoughts sound horrible, and they are in a way, but again, they’re completely normal. Most people are able to dismiss intrusive thoughts, telling themselves that that’s ridiculous, often feeling disgust or horror at the thought.

Of course, as with most mental curiosities, it’s not symptomatic of serious issues in most people. However, conditions like OCD and PTSD can aggravate these thoughts and make them more difficult to dismiss. In such cases, the brain can have a tendency to latch on to these thoughts, regardless of how the individual feels about the scenario. Think of it as the thought persisting with a “Yes, but what if…?” In cases like these, mental health professionals try to coach coping mechanisms, teaching those afflicted different ways to banish these terrible thoughts. In some cases, medication is prescribed to make them even less prevalent.

Like I said, most people deal with these thoughts without any issue, so it can be difficult to imagine how they can cause problems. Maybe I can help: I’ll give an example.

Let’s say you’re waiting at a subway station late at night. You’re catching the second-to-last train of the night, wanting to go home after a long day at work. You’re tired and hoping you don’t fall asleep and miss your stop once you’re on the train. You glance at your phone, maybe you’re hoping somebody texted you? You sigh and remember, for the third time that night, that the underground station doesn’t get reception. What the hell is taking the train so long? The driver (Driver? Engineer? Pilot? You should look it up when you have signal again.) must be taking his time because there are barely any people taking the subway this late. Looking around, you see only one other person waiting with you, a young woman in a stained Waffle House uniform. Oh yeah, she must work at the one you walk by. You keep meaning to stop in there some time. But just the two of you waiting? The train must be nearly empty, of course the guy driving the train (Hey, might not be a guy, don’t assume those kinds of things, you ass) is gonna feel like he can take his time. Pretty inconsiderate of the people who had to work late and just want to get home. You lean in to maybe see if you can spot the headlight beam from the train around the bend in the track, but there’s no sign of it. You’d probably hear the tell-tale screeching of the train on the track before you could see the light anyway. But who knows. What even makes that sound, anyway? Is it the wheels rubbing against the track? Is it the brakes? If it’s the brakes, then seeing the headlight before hearing the train approach might mean something bad. Maybe the conductor (Maybe conductor? Hm.) is tired too. It is late, after all. What if they forget to stop here?  Shit, then I’d have to wait even fucking longer. That’d be just goddamn great, wouldn’t it? And with my luck, I would have misread the schedule, or the transit authority would decide to cut costs, or something, and the train you’re waiting on (unless it just drives past) turns out to be the last one until morning. What would I do then? I can’t afford a Lyft home. Walk? Sleep on the streets? Wait, no, that couldn’t happen, there’s also Waffle House lady. They’d miss one person, but not two. Except, why not? If the train person really did forget to stop, or didn’t slow down enough, they could miss seeing two people. I mean, those trains do go pretty fast. They have to, right? To get people around in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah, sure. No wonder people jump in front of them so often when they want to die. Pretty quick and painless, probably. Maybe a split second before everything goes black, tops. Thinking back to high school physics, yeah, even at a fairly low speed that’d be a ridiculous amount of force onto your tiny, fragile body. Hell, Waffle House lady would probably have it even worse than you if she were the one to get hit. Would they have to shut down the subway if someone got hit by the last train of the night? Could they have everything cleared up in time for the morning? Would they close down the whole system, or just this line? Maybe just this station, who knows. Would they just, like, take a hose and spray down the front of the train after everything is said and done? Jesus, you might never know if the train you’re sitting on ever killed someone. How common is that? One random person getting hit by a train, this late at night? If it doesn’t impact service the next day, would it even make the news? Would there be an in-depth investigation into what happened? You glance around the station and don’t immediately see any cameras, that would probably make things difficult for police. True, the cameras could be hidden, but if they’re that well hidden, then how well could they see? Surely you couldn’t have a comprehensive system of cameras that obscure. And how many stations are part of the transit system, anyway? Ah, you don’t remember. Would it really be cost-effective to outfit every single one with security cameras that can see every part of the station and be hidden? It’s already hard enough to get funding for it, they’re always asking people to vote on more money. Plus, when’s the last time anyone heard about a death like that on the news? A murder, no less? Ever? Does it just never happen? Do they always chalk it up to suicide? Does the transit authority just sweep it under the rug? You’re getting lost in your thoughts, but it’s okay, at least it passes the time. You’re not even sure how long you’ve been standing there. Did the train come and you somehow missed it? You look back at the bench Waffle House lady was on and you don’t see her. Your heart skips a beat or two before you see her standing a few feet from you, just to your right, not paying you any mind. Huh, okay. Guess she got tired of sitting and waiting. She’s checking her phone, does she have signal down here? Maybe she has a different provider than you. She’s pretty close, actually, if you lean over you could glance at her phone to see. But no, that would be weird. You don’t just look at a stranger’s phone like that, don’t be an idiot. Without fully realizing it, though, you’ve inched a bit closer. Just a peek, she’ll never notice. At this point, in fact, you’re close enough that you could tap her on the shoulder and just ask. She’s less than an arm’s length away, after all. But alas, she clicks her phone’s screen off and tucks it into her bag. You tell yourself that you’re not a little disappointed in not solving that little mystery on your own, but oh well. What’s she looking at now, anyway? Is the train finally here? You look in the same direction and see the faint light of the train’s headlight against the wall of the tunnel, so sure enough, your long wait is finally over. You take one last look around the station, thinking back on the cameras and where they may or may not be. Not that you care, it’s not something that impacts you one way or the other. Those cameras are only to catch purse snatchers, and drug deals, and pushers, and you’re definitely none of those things. You’re just a normal person, and normal people don’t think about those ridiculous things. You’d never do something like that. There’s no reason for you to worry about security cameras really ever. You shift your weight and reach out as you see the train come closer, it is going decently fast, but it is slowing down, you feel more resistance than your thoughts might have expected, but it’s done now, Waffle House lady went toppling forward, and you start to think about how you should really respect those waitresses a bit more, they work long hours and you never realized how rough those shirts are,they must be uncomfortable, and you hear the brakes squeal louder than normal, and the scream is distant, you’re lost in your own mind, wondering how much she makes an hour, and is it enough to live on? How far outside the city must she live? And on the subject of shirts, I hope this doesn’t stain...