Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 2 ~ The Train (JL)

HT2 - TASK TWO

His mouth tasted of lingering orange stickiness. A drink someone'd given him before his entrance upon special request; the past week had been full of that carbonated little beverage, and, well, if he was to die on this very day, Joelle Lacroix was going to die with the taste of sweetness, not copper, on his tongue.

Not that he planned to die in any sort of way on this very day. Visions were nothing to throw aside and disregard and, in every sense of the word, he believed deeply with his heart and soul that the dream he'd had just a few days back had been a premonition, a vision of what was to come in the near future. The great He had blessed him with such vivid imagery, and the feeling he'd awoken to - that pleasurable sense of meaning and drive deep in his gut - only pushed his beliefs up into the sweaty underground air above his head.

It wasn't anything particularly inviting, this beginning. The subway itself had been like an omen come to take these children all away. But that was the way things were to go, so he held no complaint between his smacking gums.

Hmph. Now that he held the taste in his mouth a little longer, it was less sweet and more of an uncomfortable watered down sort of deal. Perhaps he should've asked for water instead.

Water - that was what he needed above all else. Two redheaded children were depending on him pretty heavily for help, and while the quiet blonde one could hold her own, she had joined up with him for the sake of protection, and damned be the rest he would protect the three of them. Three wasn't large, either, but it was nice. Symbolic, in a way. Three wise children and a man settled up top to guide them along. Yes, he quite liked the sound of that in his own head.

But what was that incessant blazing right beside it?

A few blinks. Right and left he looked. Most of the line had taken either the frontwards or backwards route, leaving him here, looking a bit clueless in the midst of everything. It was kind of peaceful out here, if he really listened. There was either the distant crunch of footsteps running away, or the muffled noises of shoving and pulling and, in general, a crowd within the subway cars. It was dark out there, too, lit up only by a few lights set up periodically on the tunnels tops and the bright white coming through the windows of the subway train.

He could see everything out here, really. A blonde girl with her hair tucked up in a ponytail took her nails to the throat of a brunette around her age, pulling her head forward and back against the window as the girl choked all the while. That was in the third and final car. In the middle windows, a large, rather daunting figure wrapped the straps of a backpack around the throat of some little boy. That boy looked all around him for assistance, eyes bulging, but nobody seemed to care, not really. Then he looked out the window, and Joelle was staring right back up at him, a little unsure what to think of the circumstance.

So he did not think. He simply waved to the boy inside. The response was a downturned lip and ruffled brows, all confused and a little bit betrayed, if Joelle's interpretation skills were still at their peak.

The boy had wanted his help, he knew that much. But this whole thing was really too far out of his reach to offer any assistance. It was a darned shame, that it was. And Joelle bowed his head a moment for the boy, even though he was not yet dead, and then he walked off his pedestal and away from that window and away from the circumstance he wanted to get involved in but simply couldn't risk to deal with at this time.

And so he walked along the length of the train, staring up through the windows at the carnage and tsking to himself about the nature of things. The front car seemed to him to be like the seventh layer of Hell, rocking back and forth upon the tracks in an intense fit of violence. Something red and runny slapped itself wetly - and loudly - against the window nearest him, and he jumped a few feet away, not expecting such an explosion of color. He thanked his lucky stars there was glass to catch it all.