The Great Below

The Escape: Part 3

Commuters waited outside the Metra ticket office, hugging the building to avoid the rain. Octavia pulled on the door and went in, flip-flops squishing water onto the tiles, to approach the system map. The last stop on the green line was Union Station in Chicago.

The ticket booth was empty, lights out. Octavia swallowed, cursing the way her mouth had gone dry when her clothes were drenched. She could have taken a bottle of water, something, from the apartment. She should have spent more time planning and less time fantasizing. Fingers tight on her album, Octavia opened a second set of doors leading to the platform and leaned out.

A little girl gaped at her. She looked only four or five and her tiny pigtails were tied with yellow ribbon. The girl stared, not like the convenience store clerk did, but with unabashed curiosity. Her big brown eyes didn't hold any judgment. But when the mother caught sight of Octavia, she pulled one tiny hand until her daughter had all but fallen against her pantsuit leg.

"Is anyone selling tickets?" Octavia asked.

"They close at one," the mother replied. "You buy them on the train after that."

Octavia thanked her, moving far enough away under the narrow slice of roof to alleviate the mother's paranoia, and leaned against the wall. She was still being judged. There was nothing menacing in Octavia's appearance and if she considered it – the weather inappropriate clothing, a stray bruise on her face, the photo album – she looked more mentally ill than dangerous. She wasn't sure which was worse.

Everyone stayed close to the brick wall, eyes on the empty track before them, while the rain slowed. Waiting for a train was like waiting for a school bus when Octavia was a child, and that was exactly how it made her feel. Taking a car would have been more liberating. She might as well have carried a lunch made by someone else or wore a bracelet with his address on it – if found, please return to Victor Gallo. Maybe adults longed for that feeling; maybe that was the allure of commuting.

But independence was coming. Sure, she only had seventeen bucks and change in her pocket, but her album was a blueprint for happiness. She was certain of it. Octavia was going to step off the platform in Union Station, find some help, and then do every god-damn thing in that book until she was happy. Her future was unfurling in front of her, unblemished and new, the length of the universe.

On Octavia's other side, a young couple stood together hand-in-hand. The woman's hair was woven into a thick brown braid and when she turned away from her boyfriend to anticipate the train, Octavia admired her smoky eye makeup. The man told her a story in low murmurs until she giggled, then he pulled her hand to his lips and kissed each sun-tanned knuckle in turn.

Octavia stared.

A bell rang in the distance and the crowd was moving, pressing toward the open edge of the platform. Octavia got up cautiously, as if realizing that she was one of them, and brought up the rear of the group while wiping rain away from the top edge of her album, which was already swelling with damage. She hoped it wasn't ruined.

Then the train chugged to a halt in front of them.

It was more than a train. Or at least, it was more than she'd expected. A beast, easily three times her height or more, constructed from the smoothest silver steel. It could have been a bullet. The two rows of windows were sea-green and glowed from within, revealing two sets of blurry profiles: those above and those below. Octavia was going to sit up high. She was going to watch Chicago's south suburbs drift away, a flimsy nightmare that would disintegrate with the dawn. The other commuters rushed to board but Octavia waited. Appreciated that this mythical creature, which looked like it might have risen from the depths of Lake Michigan, had come to rescue her.

When her cheap sandal touched the first stair, her heart fluttered in her ribcage. It was hard to believe that this station had been such a short walk from the apartment the entire time – none of Victor's windows faced the correct way – and that the train had been coming and going each day without her. When she'd woken up that morning, she thought it was just another day. Not, as she was just starting to realize, the last day of her captivity.

Octavia climbed a short staircase and went to the back to take her seat. When she looked down through the open center of the train car, she could watch the little girl and her mother getting settled. The mother had pulled a stuffed unicorn from her purse for the girl to play with and Octavia was finally starting to relax. She'd made it. Her blood no longer seemed to reach her head and her fingers trembled, but she was grinning. She wanted to smile at everyone who'd boarded, to wave. To grip the hands of strangers and feel invited back to the human race. We missed you, they might have said, but we knew you'd make it. Octavia wanted to hug each passenger in turn and feel their different shapes, their warmth and texture. Smell their perfumes. I missed you too, she might reply, tears welling in her eyes.

A few stragglers made their way into the car, but one in particular walked with purpose. He ducked quickly inside and climbed the stairs with a clang.

Victor.