Colonies of commuters swarmed from the sliding rails and filled the station platform before I even had a chance to breathe. It was almost surreal, the cold shadows that flung itself upon my back, weighing me down the way bats pull down cave ceilings. When I finally had the chance to look up, it was only to see the train crawling away. No, too fast. It was travelling at the speed of sound. By the time it had groaned its mocking farewell, the wheels had kicked off their metal shoes, to go swimming through that thick black tunnel. Glowing yellow lights and the echo of that flickering exit sign at the bottom of my curtained eye reminded me I was where I was. Living. Underground. Buried away like an old, defective toy, like a head of cabbage strangled in plastic wrap at the back of the fridge. I thought of the crumbling summer sky that awaited me at the foot of the escalator, and willed myself to get up - take the bus - call somebody.
A familiar mechanical breeze lifted your hair from your face and soon the tunnel faded into life, a golden stream pumping air into the murky veins of this city. You were an antibody, a goblin immune to these abnormalities, immune to this chill. Only quivering shivers escape warm shells, protecting your false hoards, running parallel this false gold. Careless. Just doing your job with alien precision, but this has made you tired now, too tired to ride this bloodstream, to crawl inside the compartments of this boxed lung and steal atmosphere from the choking stones that sway with every inhalation.
When they came for me, and lifted me up from within this asphalt Earth, it was overcast. Who knew that the world could be so much brighter underground?
