Untitled Project

1. A lapse in sanity

Ivy Larken scrambled aboard the train just in time. She fell into a seat as the doors heaved shut and the train began its journey to the next underground station, a great mechanic creature burrowing its path beneath the city. The train picked up speed, then something strange happened. Ivy's bones chilled with fear even before anything happened. It was as if her cells sensed the impending event, and braced for it, warning the rest of Ivy that all was not right in the world.

For a moment, the train lurched forward in a most unusual way, and Ivy felt a unanimous ripple of tightened muscles and dropping stomachs wash through the crowded subway car. Time slowed, then ceased, and the moment stretched on.

Ivy's eyes traveled throughout the crowd, watching the train-goers react to the train's motion, which was decidedly out of character, even for an old train in a congested subway system in a tired old city. Squeaky brakes? Fine, as long as they work. The occasional light flickering? Expected, and only troublesome if you're trying to read. Some grime on the windows and germs on every seat? Just part of the charm. But this lurch, this forward tug... it was anything but normal. Every eye was dilated in fear, every muscle tensed, every fist clenched, every hair standing on end. The elderly man clutching his groceries next to her gasped aloud. Nearby, some teenage girls in a cluster all shrieked in an over-the-top sort of way. The surly drunk in the corner seat flinched, his eyes darting left and right, as if suddenly sobered by this unexpected lurch. A service dog's ears perked up as he surveyed the train car; he was perhaps the calmest passenger.

Ivy felt her heart fall through the earth as the train staggered. Her hand tightened on her coffee, which was shitty and lukewarm, and a bit of the brown liquid bubbled through the cheap plastic lid and sprayed out, propelled by the sudden shift in gravitational force. It all appeared to happen in slow-motion, so that Ivy could see each dark brown droplet as it hurtled through the air like gelatinous bullets. After all was said and done, she figured it was only a moment, maybe twenty or thirty seconds total, but the lurch felt like an indefinite stretch of time.

People glanced from face to face, registering each other's reactions, then quickly resumed their reading, scrolling, talking, or snoring. Things went back to normal for a Wednesday afternoon, sunny up above ground, in late fall when the leaves are brown and crunch underfoot. Ivy thought about asking the elderly man if time had stopped - or at least slowed down significantly - for him, too, but refrained. At the next stop, he shuffled off the train and disappeared with his grocery bag of raisins, shaving cream, and rolled oats.

Though normal had been resumed, Ivy felt shaken and confused. It hadn't felt like an everyday lurch, but rather it felt like something completely different. The only way Ivy could explain it to herself was one thought, which kept repeating over and over again in her head, like a flashing banner plastered in her brain.

It was like we were being sucked forward without moving at all.

It didn't make sense, but the sensation of forward movement remained with Ivy all day. The train moved along down its track, normal as could be, and eventually deposited Ivy at her stop, where she walked home through the crisp air, her mind hardly leaving the thought of the train lurching.

The lobby of Ivy's new apartment smelled like dirty feet, and her mailbox was empty. Ivy had been at yet another interview that morning, and the emptiness of her unpacked apartment reminded her of how little she had to cling to in the city she now tentatively called home. The strange incident on the train made the city feel larger and Ivy much, much smaller. Ivy made her way up to her apartment.

The moving boxes lay scattered through the tiny living room. The kitchen was empty aside from the coffeemaker, a mug, and one pot, which Ivy had used to heat up a sad can of split pea soup. As a result, her first dirty dishes in the new apartment were coated in violently green soup residue. Ivy ignored the dishes and the boxes and instead sat on her sofa and thought about the lurch.