Short Story / Underground

Ugly, it is ugly. People all around are cast down in misery, dejection, pain, fear, loneliness and suffering. It’s an evil and contagious plague, a pandemic afflicting the drudging masses. I don’t know what I’m doing here. ‘Get out of it! Run away. Do anything,’ he said. And in that one moment he incited a revolution in me. His words scorched a passionate message of freedom into my soul.

‘OK!’ I shout. ‘I’m doing it! I’m getting off this fucking steel coffin now!’

Overwhelmed by my newfound zeal, I struggle to my feet as the people around me stare, shocked, their weird brooding silence shattered by me, a half-crazed infiltrator; an outsider. Like a scene from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers they stare slack-jawed, even pointing, and I make a run for the door.

Lunging headlong into the crush of people, with the lust for life translating into a deep, violent, atavistic rage inside me, I fight these moping ghouls which cling like napalm. I scream like a tripped-out junkie gripped by the fear, flailing my arms wildly, painfully aware of the need to hurry.

There isn’t much time.

The doors are closing.

They won’t let me escape.

Weighted down by their oppressive melancholy, I can feel the passion ebbing away. Their apathy paralyzes me. I feel the flame in my soul quenched by a sea of sludgy gloom. What else can I do in the face of this inexorable adversary? I have succumbed.

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