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the longest stop

It is raining. I am on a monorail. I am standing with my hand in my pocket feeling my phone, and the other holding my duffle bag. I can see the view of a dark sky and hills. It is only midday I think, the sky is too dark. It is also wet. There are, inside the train, lots of people, all wet, trying to hide their shivering. Most are standing, clinging on to odd poles sticking out at whatever angle. They are all quiet. There is the sound of the train’s rumble and the pitter patter of rain as it hits the window. Splat, I think, and then there is no more raindrop. It comes from the heavens, descends for a fleeting second, then splat. It gets hit by a train. No more raindrop. What a climax; what a fate.

The train approaches the station and I take out my phone. I look at the clock, and its pixilated hands tell me nothing I don’t already know. I have an incredible sense of time. I know what time it is whenever I think about it. I know just how much time has been wasted since I last thought to think about it. Yes, it is exactly the time I thought it was. This next is always the longest stop, I think, so much dark sky and hills before we get into the city. There’s never any action on the train. The people are always silent, especially in the rain. These people live their lives doing nothing for a solid ten minutes, looking blankly out at the landscape, trying to avoid, heaven forbid, a brief awkward moment where two people are both looking at each other, both trying not to be misunderstood and completely misunderstanding each other. It’s like that quote from that thing… “Your soul is temporarily gone while on the subway, it takes a few minutes to catch up”.

The doors close while I try to remember the name of the author and the work. She is female, but the speaker is male, and it’s a play. The train begins its slow decent from the hill, which it must do before rising again, and falling again. For ten minutes they will be without soul. No, maybe she was wrong, or he was wrong, I think. I could bring their soul back. I could see how much one can possibly care while trapped in a box for ten minutes with people that one dares not make eye contact.

I open up my phone and punch in the national suicide help lifeline. This is the first time I have ever done this. I am put on hold. I lose my momentum. They have hold music. I am in some way disgusted. I am not sure why. I unzip my duffle bag just enough to slip my other hand into it. The gun is not as cold as I had wanted it to be. This wasn’t what I had imagined. This was not how it was planned.

I take a moment to justify what I am about to do. I look around and see all the blank, soulless stares, looking at literally nothing, all the bodies standing slightly aloof with the motion of the train. They are just living day to day lives, I tell myself. That’s the trouble, one can only guess that this is not their climax or their epiphany; only in retrospect can we see that an event was or was not, actually, the climax.

“Hello?” The man brings me to the present.

“Yes, I am considering committing suicide, right now.” I have the desired reaction. The soulless bodies begin to shift to give me room. They are now looking at me. I am suddenly important. Their eyes are no longer empty. I try not to crack a smile. It was going better than expected. I will have enough time, I think. I will get across what I need to say before the next stop. The hills will go unlooked. I am the focus. This is perhaps the first time I have ever been looked upon with such importance. My words up to this point have never been received with the desired impact. They would reach the ear, but they would not go any further. They were all plot, transition from one act to the next. I had to live with being plot. No longer. Words seem to have so much more meaning when someone is going to die. They are no different really; William Faulkner said “Yes Jim, I will.” And that was it. No more William Faulkner. It’s not the death that gives the words their importance; it’s the prospect of it. The person does not need to die. People just need to think he is going to die. They look at me with open eyes. They are ready to receive my last words. I drift off into the romanticism of it, and lose for however long my grip on time.

“Is there any way I can help you?” again, back to the present. I grip the gun. It is not cold, and it is getting hotter, my palms sweat. It’s not as heavy as I wanted it either. I hesitate and I think the window of my climax might be closing. I let the bag slip to the ground revealing the gun. It is a matte black. It should have been shiny.

“People get on and off the subway and no one cares. They could never get back on the next day, and no one will care. The train will keep coming regardless of its passengers. They build these walls up so no one cares. Everyone is an island. They’re all raindrops separate from each other, all moving in the same direction down, all independent and doomed. And in that moment where one hits the ground it simply creates the pitter patter of rain. So much falling at once, that it becomes just a background. It’s so desensitizing, watching ephemeral rain fall. One cannot care for every raindrop, so they care for none. What’s the value of one human life if nobody cares? …Right?”

I was not supposed to have said right. This was not how this was planned. The gun is not cold. My hand shakes. They stare at me. They do not drift off in the beauty of the idea. I have not incited epiphany. I am just plot.

“Come on, let’s calm down,” the voice crackles. I can’t calm down. I have gone too far. I grip the gun under the bag. I feel the trigger. Not enough resistance. I fumble for more words to come out. I do not know what I was going to say. I’ve spent my whole life complaining about how my words are meaningless, I think, and now that they might mean something I have nothing to say.  Where were all those words? Where were the romantic ideas?

“Hello?” says the man on the phone. The people are tense; they look at the gun. It is not heavy, cold, or shiny. I realize the train is approaching its stop. I hang up the phone. I lower the gun and my head, and fire off an airsoft pellet into the ground. It was not at all how I imagined it. It was not how it was planned. I am just a story, just someone on the train, free to come and go, and the train will just keep going regardless. What a fate.

The doors open and I step off, not daring to look at the faces of the people I had tricked into caring for a brief awkward moment. This is always the longest stop, I think.