On September 22nd, 2018, Michael met a girl on the subway. She entered his life as mysteriously as he left mine. On that day, he found something he had always been searching for, and in payment, he lost his future. I don’t think Michael’s friends and family know what really happened since that first meeting and why it was so significant. The police certainly don’t know. Only Michael really knows, and me. I know because I was there. I saw it all, or most of it. I don’t know if they really want to know what happened to their loved one and they probably wouldn’t believe me if I told them. So I’m writing this down for someone to know, so that someone out there will know their story. I think it’s what Michael would have wanted, and maybe Madeline too.
On that Monday morning, Michael sat down on the L train with his headphones on, making the commute to college that he made almost every weekday. He was a shy kid, still unsure about being a grown-up, but not a kid anymore. The in-between is hard to navigate. I know that all too well.
Michael never talked to anyone. He often did homework or read a book. His fiction of choice was usually horror or short story collections, or both. I always like to take note of what people are reading on public transit. It’s so rare these days. On that morning, however, a girl sat next to him. She walked down the aisle, looking left and right for an available seat, and she made eye contact with him. He moved his bag for her, and she smiled and nodded and sat down.
The girl had chin-length, lavender hair with lovely dark eyes and prominent, dark eyebrows. She had on a huge backpack that she clutched to her chest when she sat down next to him. She had beat-up combat boots on and gray tights that were ripped. Her charcoal denim jacket had pins on the front and an embroidered patch on the back. The patch showed a cartoon red devil woman. Over the top, it said “La Diabla.” Her flannel shirt underneath was also ripped. I noticed that the knee showing through the ripped jeans was bruised and scratched, like she had taken a bad fall. She really was a beautiful girl, if not a little rough around the edges. She looked about the same age as Michael, possibly a college student as well.
Call me a creep. Call me a voyeur, but I love people-watching and there was something magnetic about the two of them. I’m an old woman and I’ve had plenty of love in my life, and I remember what it was like to be young and infatuated. In truth, I wanted to see if the polite, shy boy from the subway would succeed in talking to the attractive young woman. It sounds strange, but I was rooting for him.
The girl stared at him unapologetically. She had a happy smirk on her face that told me she was going to be a real firecracker. Most people on the subway kept their heads down, but not that girl. She was radiating warmth and energy. She wanted to connect. If she were an older man or not quite so lovely to look at, it would have been off-putting, but there was a goodness about her and I hoped he would look up and see what I saw in her face.
I could see the back of Michael’s neck getting red and I knew he had sensed her looking at him. Finally, he looked sideways and up into her face. She was sitting up very straight and he was hunched over, pretending to look at his phone. I saw them lock eyes and it was magic.
“Hi,” she said.
“Um…” Michael said as he fumbled his earphones out and let them flop down onto his lap.
“What… sorry?” he said, straightening up at last.
“I said hi,” she chirped. Her smile was infectious, and he smiled back, a big goofy grin I had never seen on him.
“Hi,” he said after he pulled his lips back over his teeth and regained the ability to speak.
“I’m Madeline,” she said, and held her hand out over her backpack to shake his. She looked back at me for a moment, clocking my presence. She did not make eye contact. I pretended to look back down at my novel.
“Michael,” he said and squeezed his arm over his backpack to meet her hand in the middle.
They shook hands and I could see something pass between them. He looked at their entwined hands like he wasn’t sure if his arm belonged to him anymore.
“Nice to meet you, Madeline,” he said, shaking her hand with the slow movements of someone under deep hypnosis.
“Ew, it always sounds weird when people say it. It’s too formal. Just call me Mads. That’s what my friends called me. I don’t know why I don’t just open with that,” she said, releasing him from her grip but not her gaze.
“Mads. Okay. That’s a… cool nickname,” he said, pulling his hand back to his side across what now felt like an abyss between them.
“You want one?” she said, with a devilish grin.
“One what?” he said.
“A nickname! Mike, Mikey, Mick?” she started.
“No! No… I hate all of those,” he said, laughing and relaxing a bit.
I was feeling proud of him, I really was. At each stop, people would file off and no one got back on. I think that made him feel more comfortable, too. It was like they had their own private train car to get to know each other. Except for me, there was no one else in that end of the train car and they didn’t pay me any mind. That’s what happens when you get older. You become invisible. I don’t mind it, though. All the better to people-watch.
“OK, you’re fancy. I get it, Michael,” she said in a mock aristocratic tone.
“I’ve never seen you on this train before,” he said before he could stop himself. I could tell he was embarrassed for mentioning it. The way he said it was so full of admiration that it would take an idiot not to know that what he meant was: how could I have never noticed you before?
“I just moved here, or I just moved to this area,” she said.
“So, you’re from Philadelphia?” he said.
“Yep. Just started taking classes at the community college,” she said.
“Oh, me too!” he said with a face glowing with hope.
“I mean, not the community college. The other one– the state college,” she said quickly.
“Oh, right. Penn?” he said with a heart full of the blackest, deepest pool of disappointment that they wouldn’t be classmates.
The girl’s face reflected his own disappointment, but in a much more profound way. It was hard to look at her in that moment. It was a look of regret and of sorrow with a lightning bolt of anger ripping through it. I wondered what she had gone through and what she wanted.
I couldn’t stop watching them, but when my stop came, I had to get up. I walked past them to the subway door and looked back over my shoulder just as I started to step out. I saw her looking at me for just a moment and then she looked back at him. As I walked by the windows, I saw that she had gotten him smiling again and she was taking one of his ear buds and putting it into her own ear. With their heads tilted close together and her foot tapping in time with the music, they looked like a perfect couple. I was happy for him, and worried for her, but I wasn’t sure why.
The next day, I saw them again. I sat right behind him that day. After three stops north, Mads got on again. She stepped into the subway car and looked disoriented for a moment. Then she looked around and spotted Michael. She smiled, and the world lit up around her.
I can’t describe her without describing the way she made me feel, and I’m sure he felt the same way, if not stronger. The subway car moved to her emotions. That’s how some people are in this world. They feel things so deeply that everyone around them catches it too. It was impossible not to be happy when she was happy, and equally as difficult to not feel the greatest sorrow and hopelessness when her smile faltered.
Mads pranced towards him, using the dingy metal poles to propel her down the aisle. She plopped down on the seat next to him and Michael ripped his headphones out and grinned sheepishly. Never had I seen a young man so enraptured by someone as he was by her.
“How are you today, Sir Michael?” she said in a terrible British accent.
“Stop that,” he said with a blush and a downward glance. The self-conscious hunch was back, and I implored him in my head to sit up straight and look her in the eyes. I admit, I invested too much in those two strangers, but it was so much better than my book and I wanted this young man to be changed by this young woman in all the best ways. Just like in the movies. But life isn’t a movie, you know. The sooner we all acknowledge that, the sooner our expectations will quit destroying us.
“Okay, Mikey, so how’s the music scene today?” she said, taking one of his earbuds again.
“Um… well, I have a lot of options. I mean… I like a lot of different music, so you know…” he stuttered, trying desperately to impress her.
“No, what were you just listening to? I want to know what the soundtrack to your mood is today,” she said earnestly. He locked eyes with her and did straighten up a little bit.
“Well, I was just listening to…” and he turned his phone screen towards her.
“Lola! I love this song! Wow, you like the Kinks?” she said, grabbing his phone and restarting the song.
“Well, I… I don’t know a lot about them. I don’t know much about music to be honest, I just hear something I like and download it. There are a lot of…” he paused, chuckling and blushing a little. “…soundtracks on here,” he said with a wince of deep regret at the end.
Meanwhile, Mads had unplugged the earbuds and turned the sound way up so that Lola was playing out loud. She got up and danced with the phone in her hand. Michael looked around in embarrassment and realized there was just one sleeping homeless man at the end of the car. Everyone had already gotten off at their stops. He didn’t even notice that I was grinning and bopping my head behind them.
Michael looked back at Mads dancing. She danced with wild abandon, her eyes closed, and heavy backpack and worries left on the subway seat next to Michael. He smiled brilliantly and watched her sway to the music.
I got up as quickly as my old legs would move me and walked to the back exit of the subway car. I suddenly felt like I was intruding, and my stop was coming up soon, anyway. I was tempted to stay on and watch them and just take the loop all the way back to my stop, but I couldn’t be late for work. Being a librarian at an elementary school wasn’t exactly fast-paced, but a group of eager 2nd graders were scheduled to be in the library that morning. I knew those kids would be eager to hear the next installment of Charlotte’s Web, read by yours truly.
On my way out of the subway car, I saw Mads pull Michael up out of his seat. With a little hemming and hawing, she got him to join in the fun. He attempted some jerky, awkward moves that absolutely delighted her. The last thing I saw before I headed towards the stairs that day was the homeless man looking up, bleary-eyed, at the dancing lunatics at the other end of the car. He coughed and went back to sleep and I watched the subway pull away. It was filled with light and youthful happiness. I went into work smiling that day.
The next day was a Saturday, so I didn’t see them again until the following Monday. When I got on, Michael was sitting up straight, with no headphones on and a neatly wrapped package on his lap. Mads got on at her usual stop, flitted down the aisle and unceremoniously dropped down onto the seat next to him.
“Morning, Mikey,” she said with the low register and lowered lids of a woman talking to her lover. Michael swallowed audibly. Perhaps they had crossed paths that weekend as well. They seemed like peas in a pod.
“I wanted to give you something. It’s something that’s important to me. You were asking me last time about… um… things I treasured, or… things that mean something to me… I guess this is one of those things,” he said, and handed her the package.
Mads lit up and my heart fluttered with hers. The wrapping paper was lavender, with pale green vines winding over and under it. There was something beautiful and heartbreaking about it, just like her.
“For me? Wow!” she said, and ripped the paper off, but then thought better of it and folded it neatly and put it in her backpack. She was left holding a book.
“The gift is the book, not the wrapping paper,” he laughed.
“I know, I know, but the paper is so beautiful,” she said, looking at him with real admiration and maybe love.
“Well?” he said, nodding to the book.
Mads looked down at the paperback book in her hands. It was lovingly worn at the edges, and I knew it must be his personal copy of a beloved book. She looked back up at him, the smile gone from her mouth. I dared to inch a tiny bit forward in my seat to see the title. It read Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I had seen him finish that book on the subway a few weeks before. I remember him closing the back of the book slowly and then holding the book to his chest for a moment. I knew it was dear to him.
Mads looked at him with her lovely eyebrows bunched into a frown. Her eyes were alive with tears. Her mouth tried to work out a sentence for a moment and then fell slack. The lights in the subway dimmed for a moment and then went back to a ghastly, neon white.
“Are you okay? You don’t have to read it. I’m sorry. Some people don’t like horror. I shouldn’t have assumed,” he said.
I felt my joy draining out as Mads stood up. She was holding the book to her chest and then she handed it back to him and picked up her backpack.
“It’s okay,” she said, regaining some control so as not to devastate him. “I just have to go, it’s my stop soon.”
I realized then that I had missed my stop. Somehow, the time had gone so fast during this seemingly momentary exchange. We were all the way to Race Street already. Michael tried to stand up and looked around confused as well.
“Shoot. I missed my stop,” he said.
Mads was moving away from him towards the subway door. Not a soul was left in our car. I could see people in the car behind us and in the car in front of us. The lights seemed warmer in those cars, and less harsh. I wished I hadn’t been so goddamn nosy and had gotten on any car but this one.
“Mads… hey… look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he was saying, trying to follow her down the aisle. The subway car was rocking back and forth and seemed to be going much faster than safe. I saw the lights in the tunnel whizzing by like we were on a space craft in an old movie going the speed of light.
Mads stood facing the door, unfazed by the speed and rocking of the car. She wasn’t holding onto anything and she didn’t seem to hear Michael at all. She just stood there, stock still, looking out the windows of the door, waiting for them to open with a look of panic and fear and acceptance. I realized that I, like Michael, had probably never seen her get off before. It’s possible that these two people had spent time together outside of the subway, but I didn’t think so. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. I also sensed that Mads was terrified to get off the subway.
“Mads!” Michael was shouting now, trying to hold onto the pole without falling over, as the train suddenly came to a screeching stop. Michael was thrown back onto his seat. I stayed seated, gripping the metal bar in front of me, too stunned and afraid to move. I could feel her fear and I think he could too.
The doors slid open at a horrifyingly-slow speed. They creaked with rust. The platform was pitch black. She stood staring at it, gripping her backpack to her chest. Finally, she stepped onto the platform, and dim, flickering, yellow lights lit up her path to the stairs. She stood, her face devoid of emotion, and slung her backpack onto her back. She walked as if towards the guillotine and did not look back. Once she climbed enough stairs for us to only see her boots running up one after the other, three figures moved slowly out of the darkness and up the steps after her.
The subway stuttered and started up, going the other direction. The sound of the old doors sliding shut snapped Michael out of his shock. He ran towards the door and tried to pry it open.
“Mads!” he screamed. He looked around the subway car, which had regained its normal speed and light, looking for a witness. Finally, he looked at me and we locked eyes. I had almost forgotten that I was there. It was like being in a dream, or an audience in a play. I didn’t think my presence was known.
“Did you see…” he asked me, gripping the pole in front of me with white knuckles. His eyes were full of tears and he was shaking. I was too, and I knew we were feeling what she was feeling. We looked into each other’s eyes and let the wave of fear, desperation, pain, acceptance, and finally, nothingness wash over us. When the nothingness was gone, and we pulled up to the next stop, he blinked, looked confused, and moved away from me. He picked up the book and his backpack and got off the subway. I rode it all the way back to the stop near my house and decided I needed a personal day from work.
One personal day turned into a week and whatever I had experienced on that subway car had left me drained and depressed. Nothing had happened that couldn’t be explained with a little effort, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Michael’s face looking at mine, reflecting the same awful emotions I was feeling and knowing that she was feeling them too. I wondered if I was losing my mind, because I couldn’t explain what was so awful about that day, except that I felt deeply that it was so. That it was something awful.
The next week, I got back on the subway and I chose a different car. I decided my people-watching days had come to an end and that I should concentrate on minding my own damn business. As I was getting back into my long-neglected novel, I heard the door that connected the cars open behind me. I looked back and saw her.
Mads had thrown open the door at the rear of the car and the cold air drifted through, lifting the hair off my forehead. She wandered down the aisle looking left and then right at each set of seats, even the ones without people in them. She seemed lost. She looked at the seat next to me but not directly at me. When she got to the front end, she opened the door, and passed through the open-air connecting platform to the car where Michael always sat. It was dangerous to pass through that way; the subway walls had signs warning against it. People had apparently fallen between the cars and onto the track before. The doors were also incredibly heavy, and worse than that, it was a loud and windy crossing that alerted all the other passengers to one’s brazenness.
I was never one for attention and neither was my friend-from-a-distance, Michael. Mads, however, was unafraid. That’s what made her so irresistible. She was brave and bold, except for that moment when she exited onto the Race Street platform the week before. That had stripped her of the fire that blazed through her now. It had reduced her to one of us, the meek.
I watched her because I couldn’t help myself. She found him and sat down next to him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, of course, but I could tell Michael was shocked to see her. She smiled and hugged him and reassured him enough that he gave her an earbud and let her rest her head on his shoulder.
I skipped my stop without a second thought. Yes, I had intended to stay on and watch her get off again. I don’t think I was in some rush to save her, nor do I think that I could have if I had wanted to. No, it was more that I needed to see it happen again, if it would happen, for my own sanity.
I watched as Michael prepared to get off at his stop. She walked him to the door and kissed him. I could tell it was the first time. He stood with his eyes closed for a few seconds after she pulled away and he didn’t open them again until she gently touched his cheek. She shooed him off the stop and he got off, looking euphoric.
He walked to the left, with a grin permanently attached to his face, and I lost sight of him. After a moment, the doors closed, and I watched Mads back away from the door. She turned to her left and looked right at me. My breath caught in my throat as she looked into me and through me, and I knew that she had been aware of my presence the whole time. Her look was also a warning to stay away.
She sat back down, and the passengers from my car and her car slowly faded away, one after the other getting off and going about their days, unaware of the tragedy that was about to emerge onto the curtained stage of the subway cars behind them.
Finally, it was just me in my car and her in hers. The train sped up, and before it could accelerate any more, I hauled the connecting door open, pushing through a gust of rancid subway air and moving across the two foot divider to the next door. I pulled the next door open with all my strength, feeling the subway going faster and faster, tilting and bumping along the slick tracks of the city’s underbelly.
I pulled myself through on legs like jelly and grabbed onto the closest pole. Mads didn’t move at all. She just sat with her back to me, waiting for her stop.
I sat down five seats behind her and waited with panic growing in my heart. The subway started to slow down with a screech like a banshee and I held on with both hands as it rattled to a stop. Mads stood up, clutching her backpack to her chest, wearing that same uniform of boots, ripped jeans, and her devil jacket, all of it worn and punctured with holes and rips. The flannel shirt hung open, its buttons ripped off and lost somewhere forever.
Mads walked to the grime-crusted doors and waited, tears rolling down her cheeks. Just as the doors cracked open like a corpse’s mouth, revealing a dark and rotted tunnel leading down into its putrid stomach, the rear car doors behind me opened with a slam, and Michael walked through.
He hadn’t left at his stop. He too, I supposed, had to know like I did. He had to see it again to know if it was real.
Mads turned slowly and looked at us.
“Don’t follow me,” she whispered, and stepped onto the platform. The orange lights flickered and illuminated her path into Hell.
Mads ran up the steps as Michael and I followed her. As soon as we stepped onto the platform, I felt a wave of nausea so intense I crumbed to all fours. It was like being whipped around on a violent rollercoaster and then spit out on a dirty tile floor.
Michael seemed to have the same affliction. When it passed, we both got up and moved towards the steps. We could hear voices echoing along the tunnel that the steps ran through. We started to run but I could barely keep up, my bones screaming out against the exertion. Still, we pushed on, going up and up, following voices and shadows. They sounded like men, maybe three, and they were laughing. I could hear Mads’ ragged breathing and her boots stomping as she ran from them. We kept running up and up, gulping for air, trying to keep up.
“Come out, come out wherever you are…” one sang out. The musical tone bent and ruptured as it echoed along the tunnel, coming back to our ears like notes on a broken piano.
Finally, we turned a corner and saw it all. Framed perfectly by an orange globe of light encrusted in dirt and mold above them, were four shadows, Mads and her pursuers. The bulb lit up their silhouettes so that we could see the play acted out, like children watching shadow puppets on a wall.
“Grab her!” the deepest and gruffest voice said. His voice too sounded slightly distorted and unnaturally deep.
Mads was screaming. That was a sound that I will never forget. She was screaming and fighting for her life. She hit one of the men and he hit her back so hard that she fell to the ground and was out cold for a moment. They started to rip and pull at her clothes and then she gained consciousness and kicked out and struck the shortest one in the face. He cupped his nose and fell back against the wall.
“Shit! Shit! My nose!” he was wailing.
“I said fucking grab her!” the obvious leader of the trio barked.
And they did. They all grabbed a part of her and held her down and took from her everything that she was. They took her light, and her hope, and all the love she would have given to some lucky people in this world. They took, and they took until she was dead and then they left her there. Their shadows dissipated, and Michael and I just looked at the heap that was laying on the ground.
I wept for her, and Michael sank to his knees, doing the same. I put my head in my hands and when I took them away and looked up again, I was on the subway. I gasped and looked around at all the people and at the normal scene in the subway car around me. I looked at my watch. It was 8am. I was showered, dressed, holding a full lunch box and my purse. My novel was open on my lap.
I stood up, and walked around the train car, looking left and then right at the people sitting there, looking for her and looking for Michael. Finally, Michael got on. He looked happy. He looked unbelievably happy and I couldn’t stand to see that smile on his face after what we saw. He walked past my seat, looked down at me and made eye contact. He gave me a pitying and knowing smile that unnerved me deeply. He walked to his seat a few rows in front of me and sat down.
A few stops later, Mads got on and danced her way over to Michael. She sat down and they kissed deeply. I noticed that Michael was wearing the same clothes he had on when we followed her through the tunnel. Was it the day before? I was disoriented and afraid of the time-lapse.
I stood up and walked over to their row. I looked down at them and saw that Michael’s clothes were bloody and mangled. Mads’ clothes were the same as always, torn and dirty. Her knee remained scraped. No one in the car seemed to notice, or maybe they just didn’t care.
I looked down at them and they looked back at me. Solemn and patient. They looked at me to help me understand. I looked away from their stare and around at the other passengers, but the other passengers had disappeared. It was an empty train car, except for the three of us. In the car behind us, the homeless man roused from his sleep and stood, swaying at the door, anticipating with deep horror his exit onto the platform.
I looked back at Michael and Mads but they weren’t there. I turned around and saw that they were by the subway doors and we were speeding toward the cursed platform again. They were holding hands and waiting.
I gripped the pole as the subway careened towards their destination. It stopped with a neck-snapping lurch and I nearly lost my balance. The doors, which were not so decrepit now, slid open with ease. Michael and Mads looked at each other with love so overwhelming that I couldn’t help but weep. They stepped onto the platform hand-in-hand, and their combined light radiated out and away from them, lighting that dreaded platform with warmth and safety. They walked together towards the stairs, and I watched their feet disappear up and out of this realm. I sat back down, alone in the car, feeling a great sense of relief.
The next day, I had my daughter drive me to work, and she did so from then on. She said she was worried about me taking the subway every day at my age. On the car radio, we heard the report that a young man, Michael Freeman, had fallen (or jumped) in front of a subway on that same line the day before. He was twenty years old and an only child. I prayed for his family, knowing their grief must have been insurmountable. But time makes grief more bearable. It doesn’t erase it, but it shows us a feasible path by which to climb the mountain of hopelessness and despair. With that, if we’re lucky, we can go on with our lives until our own time of passing arrives.
I am writing this down now as I lie in my hospital bed. It has been some years since I watched that love story unfold on the L train. I witnessed a love grow so strong that it blurred the line between our world and the next. A young man, having finally found the vibrant spirit he had been looking for, gave up his future and his life to be with her forever. In so doing, he protected that poor soul from having to repeat her ungodly death over and over again. At least, I hope that’s true. How can I know? How can any of us really know? Maybe she had wanted his sacrifice all along. But without that hope of goodness, I fear I’ll go insane. God knows what they are experiencing now and what kind of loop they must endure together, but I think it must be less painful with a partner to hold your hand.
Sometimes, death is so sudden and so violent that it warps the natural path of things. Now that my time is drawing near, I had to write down what I saw so that my daughter might read it and understand that there is so much more in this world than what we understand. There is no real understanding, maybe not until you experience it firsthand and even then, everyone’s path is different. I don’t know why I was able to witness that phenomenon. Maybe I didn’t really see it at all, but it changed the way I lived out the rest of my life and how I looked and loved my precious family all the years afterwards.
I can only hope and pray that my own loop will not be so torturous, and that my husband, who I have mourned since he left this world fifteen years ago, will greet me and hold my hand through the journey. It’s all we can really hope for, after all.