How can I always be running late? Every day I leave home a little earlier, and every single day I'm late. How is that even possible?
Less thinking, more running.
And that's what he does. He closes down his mind and focuses on his legs. He needs to get to the subway on time; otherwise, he'll lose his job.
He pushes people on the street, on the stairs—he's sure one of these days he'll make someone fall off, but he can't afford to be careful—and jump over the ticket gate to not lose any second.
He enters the train the moment the doors are closing. If this were a movie, he would almost lose his hand to get his hat that had fallen off. But this isn't a movie, so he keeps his hat on his backpack; he hates the hat, but he has to use it while working.
He looks around; he knows is useless, but he looks around nevertheless. As expected, there isn't a single seat empty.
Every fucking day!
He curses while heavily breathing.
The run made him tired; life exhausted him.
He heavily breathed for a couple of minutes. Not because he was out of breath, but because he needed to try to relax. Commuting, he always fought against tears.
Every day was the same. Leave early, run for being late, heavily breathing to stop the tears, work, go back home, repeat.
Every day.
Repeat.
Every day.
Repeat.
Every day was a repetition, except this one—of course.
Today, his heavy breathing would not stop the tears. It would liberate them.
It started slow and small.
Fuck, do I need glasses or vacations?
He asked himself while rubbing his eyes. Everything was a little blurry, especially the other people's faces.
Glasses. Definitely, glasses.
But he asked if that was really the answer when the lights started to left trails on the air, like the missiles that he saw cruising the sky on television.
Or was it in the movies?
He couldn't know. Fiction and reality were the same at that time. There were wars in movies and on television; the world was ending in fiction and reality. The lights left trails over there and in here. He started to laugh.
It was a nervous, anxious and desperate laugh—a laugh that hides something, a laugh that reveals a truth.
The blurring faces soon become melting ones. The subway was not a train anymore, it was a Salvador Dali painting, and everybody was a clock.
The Persistence of Memory, I remember that. Why do I remember that?
Of course, he didn't note the irony. He was too desperate to note.
It didn't take long for the first scream. Like a dam breaking, after the first, others followed.
He could see the air flowing from everybody's throats. The air trembled with the screams. From the mouths, melting AAAAAAAHHHH flew and flooded the wagon.
He felt like floating. The top of his head soon hit the ceiling of the train; he took a deep breath, and knowing that was inevitable, he dived into the melting screams.
If I'm going to die, at least I'll choose how and when.
He opened his mouth, not to scream but to suck the other's screams. He wanted to die from the misery and despair of the others. Not his own.
He didn't die. No one did.
Death wasn't the objective.
THE END
*****
Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), some of which were illegal. Experiments on humans were intended to develop procedures and identify drugs such as LSD to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Other code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
