Subway

The subway station was abandoned. Compared to the average subway station it’d be considered large. Warrick sat in one of the abandoned cars, starting at a stuffed Pikachu in the row of seating adjacent to him. He didn’t quite know what to say. Behind the stuffed Pikachu there was a defaced window; scratched initials, teenage carvings. The floor of the car Warrick was sitting in—his hands in his lap—was streaked and clawed with blood, as if someone had been dragged while marred.
Warrick had explored most of the subway. There was no exit. Out of service escalators, ponds of cigarette butts; the usual things you’d come across in a subway station. Except for that one room, with the woman whose corpse was mutilated in a freakishly grisly manner. She was disemboweled, her intestines strangling her throat, and her hands were cut off, stapled to her ears. It was quite a bizarre sight. The room was in a state of disarray, and the woman was slouched in a secretary’s chair.
There were post-its stuck to the walls and windows and seats and floor in the car Warrick was sitting in. Illegible scribbling on each one.
Warrick stared forlornly into the Pikachu’s eyes. He knew he wasn’t in shape enough at the moment to engage in sexual activity. Despite the direness of his circumstance, this greatly bothered him. He stared at his beer belly helplessly, as if staring at it long enough would make it go away. He knew that it would only take three weeks for him to get back in shape, but he wasn’t able to initiate anything progressive in his life at the moment. The last book he started was a zombie survival guide; he can’t remember the last one he finished.
There was something lambently intimidating about the Pikachu. Warrick expected it to move or twitch in some manner, but it refused to. He thought about getting up and facing it away from him, but he couldn’t bring himself to get up. He’d already wandered throughout the subway station for hours. The only notable thing he found aside from that room with the woman was a broom. There was nothing particular about the broom. Something inspired him to pick it up and start sweeping dust and grime off the dilapidated tiling.
He had taken the broom with him, just in case. In case of what? He didn’t know. You never know when a broom just might come in handy, he thought to himself. He now realized there was a far chance that the broom would ever come in handy. It lay next to him, useless.
Warrick got up from sitting and stretched. He knew he couldn’t go much longer without food, let alone water. He had scavenged for food earlier but had only found a couple half-eaten candy bars and already chewed gum. The trash cans scattered around the station were all mysteriously empty. Warrick had the feeling that something else was in the station with him; something probably not human. He caught himself looking behind him every now and then. He had a high tolerance to gore and exigency, but that came from watching too many horror movies.
The last thing he can remember before being banned from society was standing upright in a bathtub. The water was running. He was naked; he leaned against the wall. Warrick gnaws his forehead with his fingers, trying to remember. There was a hole—a crawlspace. Not one that a human could fit into. There was no light at the end of it. He remembers the gray polka-dotted shower curtain; he hadn’t tucked it into the tub. It reminded him of a woman’s nightgown.
The Pikachu’s eyes began to ripple and circle around, its white pupils swirling madly. Warrick got up from his seating row and picked up the Pikachu. Again he stared directly into its eyes. There was something that drew him to them. Madness.
He tossed the Pikachu aside, onto the floor. The streaked blood quickly seeped its artificial fur. A bloody Pikachu; absolutely hideous, Warrick cringed. He walked out of the train car and onto the deserted platform. The only thing amiss was the lack of vandalized advertisements. Recently graffiti artists have resorted to rearranged the ads into ironic and political statements. He moseyed his way to a staircase, stepping over a disheveled and empty locker. Glancing back at the train cars, he notices they’re mangled and enmeshed. Some of the cars have lights flickering inside them; others derelict and penumbral.
Instead of going up the flight of stairs he returned to the car he had been sitting in, only to find the Pikachu and broom gone. On the floor written with the smudged blood there was troubling schizophasia. Grammatically the sentences made sense, which was even more troubling. Could they be some kind of code? You know bear mama just said keep boxing bitches. He mused this line over and over but could make no coherent sense of it. He was sitting down with his hand cradling his chin, hunched over. Black tar Listerine help yes thanks deep cleansing this could be serious witch hazel. Obviously someone was trying to give off the impression that they were indeed stark mad or perhaps ingeniously psychopathic. It was like an elderly woman writing through the first person about a younger girl, hanged by a contrived stick-figure.
Something slammed against the car window, cracking the glass like a frenzied bird. Warrick turned around but whatever it was he couldn’t catch a glimpse of it in time. He got up, looking for some kind of unorthodox weaponry. The words on the floor of the car seemed to swirl into new sentences; more and more abstract until they all seemed to unite into one sentence, one word. It wasn’t a tangible word but Warrick dashed out of the car in time before the thing that initially slammed against the window smashed through it.
He sprinted towards the staircase, not bothering to look behind him. On the third step up he tripped and scraped his knee badly against the shin of one of the steps. Regardless, he trudged towards the top of the staircase. On both sides of the walls I’m only trying to help you was being written, exactly at the pace that Warrick was running so that every word appeared emphatic.
The next floor was deserted as well but Warrick continued to sprint down grime-lathered corridors, gum sticking to his shoes. The farther he ran the darker the subway became, until he realized that flickering light bulbs don’t hang from the ceilings of underground subway stations. He finally turned around.
Warrick had the vague notion that nothing had been chasing him the entire time he’d been fleeing. There was nothing behind him. He’d have to run back to the train wreck he’d be dwelling in before the light bulbs flickered out and he’d be completely in the dark. He was having palpitations all throughout his body now; his heartbeat was like a baseline to a Goth song, thumping insanely.
Suddenly the bloodied Pikachu crawled out from behind the corner on the other side of the corridor. Warrick backed away, nearly stumbling over a flight of stairs again. The Pikachu waddled into the middle of the corridor and planted itself stiffly. The stuffed toy had a natural smile on its face but as Warrick looked closer it seemed to be actually grinning maliciously. Its pupils began to slowly swirl; it’s ears perking up like horns. Something inside him knew that if he turned away it would be gone. Why was it haunting him? I’m only trying to help you.
How? Warrick wondered, panic-ridden. His mind raced with ideas of how to escape the subway station; all he could muster was finding the materials to set up a bomb and blow apart one of the gates leading outside, but where the hell would he find ammonium nitrate in an abandoned subway station? That didn’t matter yet; first he’d have to backtrack his way to the train wreck he’d sequestered himself in.
As he suspected, when he looked up from his brooding the Pikachu was gone.

During his former life he’d been an elementary school English teacher. Recently he’d been fired for sleeping with his assistant teacher on campus; a fifth grader had stammered onto the scene taking place in his personal office; he’d forgotten to lock the door. This was some time ago, come to think of it, and he’d only done it because she was so demoralizingly clingy while he was high on some kid’s prescribed amphetamines that he’d stolen from their backpack during recess. Shortly after he became an unemployed hermetic alcoholic, most likely unintentional.
He continues to brood, this time about what happened between him standing in the shower and waking up inside an empty subway station, befuddled by rats. He remembers sticking his head into the hole in the wall, akin to Alice In Wonderland. Warrick had a library of books but he mostly hoarded them instead of reading them. He could never focus on one thing at once; only two. When he formerly taught English he’d have his most favorite student grade the class’s papers, meanwhile writing his own stories while teaching those written by others, mostly the classics, sometimes his own.
After sticking his head into the hole he remembers turning on the shower and smoking a cigarette, ashing onto his feet. Then he stepped out of the shower, reached for his toothbrush, and brushed his teeth in the shower. He tried throwing the toothbrush into the sink but missed; it fell into the wastebasket. Then he leaned against the shower wall…
Something in the station was hunting him, playfully. Chances are he’d end up with his hands stapled to his ears. The woman’s corpse had been smiling; rather, her cheeks had been carved into a smile from the sides of her mouth. Whatever was chasing him, it had set up some kind of game for him to endure before its final ruse, if the entire situation wasn’t a ruse to begin with. Had the dead woman been planted? Had he even checked if she was a doll?
No…stuffed toys couldn’t possibly walk on their own, unless manipulated by a puppet master.
Blood, however, could definitely not form sentences. He got up and started to wander again; up and down escalators, staircases, snatching candy bars from unattended urban bazaars. He still felt something after him but nothing seemed to be chasing him now; he looked over his shoulder less frequently.
Eventually he found an exit turnstile gateway that he could blow up if he had the materials to make a bomb. However, instead of being black, the bars of the gateway were stony white. He’d never seen bars like this before. He reached out to touch one and a piece of it crumbled away. He sniffed it. It smelled like…something synthetic. He kicked three of the bars through; enough so that he could climb out. Sighing with relief, he turned towards the staircase that lead to the surface of the city.
As he was walking up the steps he saw the stuffed Pikachu again, bloodless but still grinning, pupils ricocheting like ping-pong balls. It stared down at him from the top step. He approached it despite its bizarre and eerie quality only to see it whisk away once he reached the top step. Closing his eyes and stretching with relief, he hopped onto the street.
Rather, the train car he initially woke up in. Everything was exactly the same: the blood stains, the stuffed Pikachu, the shattered window. I’m only trying to help you!
There was an exclamation point now, added to the end, which sent shivers down his spine. Why won’t you let me?
Suddenly he heard a thud from the car next to his. It began to jolt, rocking back and forth. The other car next to his began to do the same. The doors to his car bolted shut. It too began to jolt, toppling over onto the ground. Whenever he tried to get up the car would knock him over; the Pikachu sat absolutely still, unaffected.
“You’re being quite silly, you know,” the Pikachu giggled. “Trying to escape so desperately. You should calm down.” Even though it was talking, the Pikachu’s mouth wasn’t moving. Warrick found this to be utterly disturbing. “If only you weren’t so busy trying to escape so many things, maybe you wouldn’t be so trapped.
“Escape with that which you long to escape from. Solve your problems…with even more! Humans, such a pity.” Warrick could hear the Pikachu grinning. He closed his eyes, having stopped attempting to get up.
“Just kill me off already. From the looks of it, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh, but isn’t that the joy of it all? You no longer have any method of escaping and therefore give up. Well, in a sense. Now you desire to escape through means of death.
“It is the ultimate escape, after all.”