Ouroboros II | The Wolf

13 | Not Exactly Ira's Dream Vacation

When Ira turned thirteen, Father Pine began letting him take the subway on his own. Provided he follow all the standard safety rules, of course. No talking to strangers, no unnecessary sightseeing, stand five feet from the tracks, and always carry an Ossein dagger. The sort of guidance all protective parents gave their brand new teens. And Ira had obeyed like his Father had been watching for the first few months. Until summer began to end, rolling forward into the frosty beginnings of September. 

Maybe it had been pure boredom. Maybe it had been the stuffy air inside the cement tunnels under the city. Maybe it had been their laughter. Ira could no longer recall what inspired his tiny act of rebellion--but he could remember how the children sounded. How they had pushed and shoved, their little violences sweetened by an understanding of playfulness between them. Well, maybe it was that. Ira had only paused for a moment, turning to stare with his wide eyes at the fight breaking out on the middle platform only to find that it wasn't a fight at all--and that he could remember had confused him most of all. 

His feet stuck to the sticky cement walkway, his body frozen. The endless crowd continued around him, flowing onto the east-bound evening train ahead of him. And Ira stayed behind. The train doors squealed as they slid shut. The train peeled off down the track, leaving a rush of sour tasting air behind. 

The children--no, not really. They looked older than Ira. Maybe by three or four years, he wasn't sure. They stayed behind, too. Huddled into a circle, chattering about something Ira couldn't exactly hear. There were four of them. Three boys shoving and barking at one another, and a girl who was red-cheeked and giggling. As mesmerized as Ira was--although he didn't know why. 

Ira backed away from the train platform. He found an unoccupied bench and sat down, pretending to be waiting for the next train. He leaned forward, his palms on his knees, and shut his eyes to listen to the sound of their voices echoing through the gray tunnel. 

He didn't know exactly how long he waited. Long enough to miss one more train, and long enough to hear the hearty whine of metal as the third began to approach. It was then that the oldest of the three boys, or at least the tallest, ran towards the edge of the platform. 

Ira's spine had stiffened, his heart thudded, he nearly shouted out at the boy to stop--that it wasn't safe so close to the tracks--but the boy stopped on his own. He turned to his friends and lifted his left hand, displaying his red can of soda. He shook it up, shaking as hard as they were laughing, and threw it onto the steel tracks. 

The train rolled into the station, crushing the soda can like a rhino to a beetle. And they roared in delight. But Ira didn't know what was so funny about that. Nor did he know why he stayed to watch the train pull away, revealing the squashed tin corpse of the soda. In the end, Ira missed five trains. He stayed until the teenagers had long since left. Sitting beside the tracks, breathing in the slight scent of oil and spilled soda. 

Ira felt like that now. Like he was a little tin container that had been crushed by a speeding train, leaving him flat and emptied across the nails and bolts beneath the tracks. The world came back slowly. Buried beneath the pain screaming in every cell of his being. Under his skin which burned and itched, there was cool ground and warm grass. Above his eyes, which hesitated to see the world through the foggy white clouds stamped into his vision, there was inky-black nothingness. Ira turned over onto his side, groaning in displeasure as all his joints popped and bones creaked. From the ghostly memory of sugary and stale air, he could smell salt and smoke. 

"Good morning, sleeping beauty." 

Ira winced, lifting his trembling palms to cover his ears. Her voice was sharper than Ossein against his skull, digging into the soft squishy material of his brain. He laid on his hips for a moment, breathing in deep gasps of surprisingly crisp sea air.