The number one risk of being a metro-driver is a sad and pathetic one, I guess you can say. When some sad mother fuckers decide that there isn’t anymore to live for, and rather than ending life alone, they decide to end it with hundreds of people right above them.
Metro suicides have been on the rise in the past decade and in a way, I guess you can understand why. Why die alone when all your life has been spent alone? Wouldn't you rather burn out? Problem is, though, that metro suicides (or “tire-tracks” as we call it in the business) severely interfere with the routine of getting people to places on time. Routine and principle has no need for these exaggerated emotions of death, these uproars of hate.
I never understood this need for death until this past week. My fourth and final week driving metro trains around began today, and it’s as if my outlook has just completely changed. Maybe it's the lack of sleep or lack of anything really... emotion, fear, love... I feel like everything is starting to move backwards instead of forward, like these fucking trains gotta’ get the fuck off these tracks.
Co-workers have also began to look at me funny. The bloodshot eyes due to the lack of sleep, the constant drinking of "Irish" coffee and the rare occasion of unplugging my iPod headphones. The feelings that shaving and grooming is unnecessary; I think it’s been four days since my last shower. And I couldn’t give a fuck.
I avoid eye contact with co-workers and make my way into the driver’s seat of my cart.
Like I was saying though, this fascination with death that never struck me as important finally began to. What was the point of life with the known-fact of death? Was there really a point to anything? It's like being a Gold Fish; everyone is told that they're golden and unique, but really, we're all just drowning over a prolonged period of time while the stars watch.
I began to think these strange things and weird poetry that never mattered to me before grabbed me by the neck and dragged me in. Like in Dante’s Inferno, the tablet written on the gates of hell, “Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eternal woe; through me is the way among the lost people. Justice moved my lofty maker: the divine Power, the supreme Wisdom and the primal Love made me. Before me were no things created, unless eternal, and I eternal last. Leave every hope, ye who enter!”
All this weird shit began getting to my head and I began to realize their significance to those with purpose. With ideals. But I had none of that, I had schedules and times to worry about. None of this eternal art garbage.
But the tension pulls, and then I finally feel like I have reached insanity of the mind in its depth dimension. I feel claws and daggers tearing at me and I can’t help but imagine the gates of hell as I watch the shadows enter and leave behind me.
As I approach the nearly empty McGill metro station and slow down, I notice two young people, a man and a woman both wearing fashionable 'chic' clothing and waving at each other from the distance of the tracks. Their love being separated from opposite ends of the tracks and such and such. Fuck, they could be just friends. But not in my head. They’ve fucked a dozen times at least and he’s beginning to get bored of it by the pathetic limp of his waving hand. It makes me sick.
The shadow gets on my metro.
He is probably the only one on here.
I drive slowly thinking carefully.
I have no reason for this thought. There is no reason for this besides watching the world crash and burn; the world at my fingertips. This is insanity and I can’t do this.
There is no way.
No way at all.
Yet, I do it.
And so as we reached “Place Des Arts” station, the train track twisted to the right coming up right before it, this being the time to toggle the controller right to follow the aligned tracks and the glowing sign above me which told me to do so.
And I toggle left.
The whole world at my finger tips, crashing and burning.
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4 comments:
Jordano, I think this is one of the most mature pieces of depressing literature I've read in a long time. Still, I think that I would have wanted more detail in the last moments. Go into the precise movements of the train driver, I feel that this last scene sped up just at the last second, like you almost rushed it. I think it should slow down at the end to contrast with the natural speed of the moment.
I liked the gold fish line alot. Dante's Inferno reference was fun. In the first part, there was a repetition line about "everything being laid out in front of you" really close together.
I agree with Max. I was hoping that pressing the button would be epic and not the crash itself.
I really really reallllyyyy like this. I couldn't stop reading, it drew me in right away. Like Max and Mike said though, I truly think that you should focus on the last scene because it does seem like you rushed that, after spending such wonderful detail on the beginning. Although it did give it that feel of accelerating past all the stuff mentioned before, like a metro does, and like a crash does, I think it would be even more effective if it were extended. That said, I also loved the goldfish paragraph and the Dante reference - it went surprisingly well with the piece, not at all in a pretentious I'm-going-to-make-an-allusion kind of way. It was perfect. And the beginning was great, about the suicides. It could have been cliche, but in the context it worked fantastically. God it was all great!
This is what HeartRapeClub is about.
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