sarah masen
The Silence
by Randy Hofbauer on Sun Aug 10 23:03:28 +0000 2003 in Melting Pot
Walls in the subway tunnel at the Armitage station were cracking away and flaking as gothic walls should. Well, they werenit really gothic, but they were walls. It made you feel enclosed underground inside a rumbling sarcophagus that didnit face refuge until the next line came down. Peopleid make their transfers but before arrivals, it was a devastating wait.
He sat there at around one in the morning with barely anyone else, let alone anyone who was sober. After a night walking the streets with friends, going out for a couple drinks at an Irish pub nearby, heid decided to take the subway back home. Chicago systems can be hell to get through at times, there were always the risks of meeting up with unsavory people and getting mugged or shot in the face, like an unfortunate soul did the other day. But the worst part was the wait in a tiny empty area below ground that only contained a few lights to illuminate your path.
He saw a bum here or there sleeping on the nearby benches and stayed a bit away, though they were perfectly harmless if they were asleep. They didnit ask for money anyway, the ones who have money did. But he faced this silence in question of a night of filthy living and testing to see if God really exists. It was a question that you canit push too far, you may go over the edge.
Speaking of edges, it was only a few days before that a woman decided to leap to her death onto a track in front of an oncoming line. When those types of things happen, pieces of their body shoot up onto the side of the rails and the walkway, they need to get the paramedics down there (which takes forever with those turn styles and such to get through) and they always end up dead for sure when theyire found. Then thereis the whole ordeal of putting white cloth over the mess left over so that no one sees it whois on the train, or getting on, for that matter.
Some people he knew knew some people that knew the woman. Sheid apparently grown sick of the idea that she didnit hear God speaking in her life and because of the constant frustration of sin and silence, she decided to take the ultimate step and take away something that she thought God had given her but assumed that now he didnit exist…or let her take over her own life. Like it mattered, anyway, God had plenty more to worry about than one single personis life.
The light flickered above him as he leaned up against a post, contemplating these things. Heid always tested God but never questioned if He was actually there.
There was practically no noise in the tunnel. He kept thinking heid heard a small metallic cling of the tracks way down, but those were just wishful thoughts. He didnit know where the train was and kept on wondering until he realized his watch had been set back five minutes. The guy who made the watch mustive been a fool, it already sped up to what was now three minutes back instead of five. So now he could be fashionably two minutes late. It was a risk, but one of those things you gotta accept at times with mechanical watches. They were so complex, still.
One of the bums lying ten feet from him turned around on the bench and grunted. It seemed inconceivable to actually be able to toss and turn on a bench, but he did it.
iExperience, I guess.i
There it was! A clang echoing way down the tunnel…no it was just his mind playing tricks again. By this time he was wanting it so bad, he could feel it in his bones. He could feel the rattling and the shaking that he so longed for, he wanted to exit this dismal underground sanctuary, it was beginning to grow on him. He could picture the bums being stirred awake and coming after him like in those monster movies, wanting to feed on him and…well, his mind was getting the better of him.
A rat ran right past his foot when he moved it and accidently bumped into it. His feet were beginning to ache as he waited and he started to whistle a tune under his lip, attempting to destroy the silence he so loathed. One of the bums grunted louder and he suddenly remembered he wasnit alone. Well, the train wasnit here but these urban peons were. But the silence was still killing his mind. He felt like he just needed the sound of someone speaking, singing, even just moaning or agitated. Not to mention that his bag that hung about his shoulders felt as if it was gaining weight just standing there.
The graffiti on the wall was all symbols and names he couldnit recognize. Plus, you had your typical sharpie writing on some of the tiled areas that just said slanderous things or gave phone numbers ifor a good timei. But as he looked closer, he discovered the Nietzsche-an phrase iGod is deadi inscribed on the wall. He suddenly came to understand the quote a little more now that he actually had the chance to read it in this light. There werenit ever many people who could prove to you that God was alive through anything down here. Youid have those folks complaining on the subway cars out loud that iThe Bush Administration is lowering job opportunities and raising your taxes for world domination!i that made you want to shout out, iGeez, I wouldnit have voted for him if I knew THAT!i
It had to be faced and noticed, he felt like he was one step closer to hell. How ironic, the location, too. Hallucinations could happen down there, too. I mean, you had your general speed freak crowd down there, all the addicts and skeletons that hung around. But when you were down there long enough, you got lightheaded.
It was the feeling of sinking down, like the room was, like he was. He looked around and noticed burning cinders falling from the ceiling onto the tracks as he heard a chopping sound of metal in the back of the tunnel. Small flickerings of light and fire would come from the darkness that you could not see beyond…but he shook his head and comprehended the situation. He needed to assume the mirage.
It was still just a dark station underground with a tunnel on each side of him, left and right with an opening from side to side. He wondered if it was a prison or something, if the trains actually didnit come when you donit pay (he jumped the turn style) but then cleared his head of the nonsense because its not like this was his first time.
God, where was the sound? It was still completely silent and he wondered whether his ears would pop. His brain was screaming like mad and his heart beat faster with every groan…it was so closed in there! Was that it? That noise…no, it was his imagination again. He wondered if the train maybe wasnit going to come for him, or maybe that it once existed but died long ago. Or maybe the concept of train traveling was since disproved by educated physicists and engineers? Who knows, it had been hours since he came uptown on it, it wasnit far fetched at all! Ok, it surely was, just not something easy to accept as false.
The bum tossed again and grunted even louder but not quite killing the silence, it was so human. So fleshly, the man was just agitated in his sleep, perhaps he was dreaming of better times…or worse times, or whatever he could be dreaming of, where was the train?!!! He looked at the tracks, merely a way for the train to arrive, shouting,
iSpeak, damn you, SPEAK! Kill this silence, murder this stillness! Are you mute or are you an idiot child?i
He was displeased with the outcome as nothing happened at all. It had already been a half hour and no train had arrived and he was stranded in the Armitage subway station, no one around except the two bums, grunting and turning to the sound of…well, nothing. Nothing at all was happening and no noise was there to bring hope, to bring peace. He stood up and walked over to the wall again, reading the graffiti, reading Nietzsche and sighing to modern culture, smacking his back against the wall and sliding down until he hit the floor sitting.
