The Last Subway Station

He learned early not to answer the phone, that the voice of violence would hiss and burn through the wire. Every breath was hidden and obscured. Every step was swept for unsettled dust.

He would listen late at night at the rooming house door, listen for footsteps in the still white-washed corridors, always aware of the second exit, always ready to break out a dead run.

If he let his guard down there was the chance the dark would lunge screaming at him like a horror movie slash scene, splintering wood and guttural profanities, shards of glass dangling overhead, sparkling with razor accuracy before littering the barefoot floor.

Through the doorway this disheveled and deranged old man, empowered by his demons, seeking revenge for the self-hatred that consumed his life, hunting from room to room. And he would have to be faced, last one out, leather belt distance from safety.

It was a great relief to be sitting alone in what some would call the abandoned hollows of the city. It was a great relief to find that place where no one desired to stop. They thought he had been left behind when what had really transpired was he had stepped outside.

Even now when he closes his eyes he can see the train tracks, his great wall of industrial defense, jumping from crushed stone to wooden tie, the trestles of antiquity his balustrades.

How ironic that the Boston Strangler had just been captured.

How ironic that the wolves of childhood would slide past him in the last subway station, staggering broken and abandoned by life.

He had learned and succeeded. Nothing stood now between him and the train entering the station waiting to take him to the center of the city.