The Purple Line

chapter 2: smoke on the tracks

I'd bolted out of that bar and I hadn't looked back. My legs were sore from the effort of walking and my head had cleared up quite a bit with the cold night air, so I had already made a plan. I just had to get to the subway and then I'd have a long ride home, around an hour or so. If whoever it is that's following me is gonna keep tabs on me tonight, they'll almost certainly have to be on the same train or bus as me, which will make it easier for me to spot them. Tonight, I'm catching a weirdo.

I was getting ahead of myself. This was my third time going over the plan in my head, but I was still far away from the subway station, and nothing guaranteed my safety once I was underground. God, my mind had been racing so fast that I didn't even take the time to check my surroundings. Without slowing down, I zoned back in and started to subtely look around for any sign of life that could possibly be my stalker. I let out a small gasp as it became clear to me that not only was I being watched, but that someone was walking very closely behind me. In the shop windows, I could see him, he was walking in a relaxed way, his long limbs didn't need to make the effort my own did to keep up this pace. For such a big man, his footsteps were almost completely devoid of sound. I think that somewhere along this odd race, I lost all sense of logic or critical thinking, because I stopped walking.

Slowly, I turned around to face him. He was close enough to me, maybe two or three meters, but the dim lights on the street made it hard to get a good look at him, and all I could really see was the outline of his spiky hair and of his hand going back and forth fro him to take drags of his cigarette. We stayed there fro quite some time, more than I really think is appropriate for the time you should wait between being discovered as a stalker, and the time you assault someone. I almost thought, maybe I should just run or charge him while he least expects it! but I knew that was a bad idea, so I stayed put. When he finished the cigarette, he let it drop to the ground and, before starting t walk over to me, he sqaushed it under his foot. He was getting closer now and for every step he took towards me, I took one back, stepping blindly into the night. 

"What do you want from me!" I yelled, but he didn't respond. Instead, he only furrowed his brow in an annoyed expression and put his finger over his lips. I got the message. He extended his other hand towards me, as if to say "please don't attack me", but I was still thinking about it. Finally standing right in front of me now, the difference in our height was so apparent it almost gave me vertigo. Grabbing onto my shoulders, he leaned down to whisper something in my ear: walk. That's exactly what I did, and the weird dude followed suit, his arm now over my shoulder and the other in my pocket. 

"You're being followed, did you know that?" Anger boiled up inside me. Was this guy not only a stalker but an idiot too?

"Yeah, you." I said it in a cold voice, but he laughed as if it was a super funny joke. 

"No, The Commission is following you. How haven't you noticed that?" I shot him a confused look and he seemed to relax against my shoulder, even though he was still pulling me along. We were already going down the stairs to wait for the train on the platform, I chose not to ask questions about what he had just said. 

What is The Commission? Mostly though, why do they want me? There was nothing special about me. Sure, you could say I had some cool hobbies like being in a band or writing, and a few different clubs at school, but really that was it. I wonder, what could this organisation's criteria be if I was their target. More so, how do I know I can trust this guy, what if this was all just a ruse to get me to trust him and he's actually part of them too? No time to ask yourself silly questions, I thought, this is a serious situation so just go with your gut feeling. In this moment, my gut feeling was that:

1- I should just follow the guy who seems to know more than me.

2- I'm about to pass out

Pretty soon, I noticed a few extra pairs of feet hitting the pavement, and I'd understood that I made the right choice to follow this guy. I didn't try to look up at his face, it would have been to much effort to look at his face under his hood. But, when I slightly turned my head to get a glimpse of whoever was following us now, he took his hand out of his pocket and gently grabbed my face and turned it towards his own.