Reflections

The 23:56 limped and swayed against the platform of Embankment station, her sad face covered in grease and graffiti, creaking and groaning, protesting as she dragged her empty cargo to a slow and uncertain stop. Her lights beamed dimly through a sepia tinge, like eyes that are downcast and downtrodden. Inside, the train was lit by several dull but luminous bulbs; they seemed to give off a sickly hue that appeared to naturally glow with a loathsome reek rather than by means of actual power, movement, or energy. The carriages appeared to be completely empty.
I looked straight ahead, peering through the windows at an advertisement for a whiskey – I forget which one. I licked my lips, tasting slightly of oil and ran a hand through my sticky hair. A drink would be a good idea soon.
To my right, the train diminished until I could fit it between my finger and my thumb. I lined up the last carriage between them both, closed one eye and gazed at it through this tiny space; and pretended to squash it from view. When I lifted my finger from my thumb again, the train was still there. A thick wind, light with the cold but heavy with the stagnancy of the underground hit me, leaving an oily taste again. I blinked and found my eyes watering.

In my left hand, I held a bunch of flowers, red with bright yellow centres, covered in a green wrapping paper. I could still smell them faintly when the wind blew down from the tunnel onto the platform, although the flowers would protest and seem to try to dart away – I had to hold them tightly. I clutched them, lifting them up to press them against my chest. I cuddled them. I immediately felt a pang of sadness; scared of crushing them to death. Such a stupid thought, they were already dying, cut from the roots that grew them, leaking water… leaking blood, through their stems and down onto the edges of my shirt and the thighs of my trousers.
I shook my head clean of the thought and loosened my grip. These flowers weren’t dead. They were alive and free to travel, instead of being rooted in the ground. Yes, alive and free.
The platform had long been empty, and as the train groaned and exerted her way to another destination, I heard the echoes of other trains in other tunnels. Somehow they seemed to be filled with more life, more lives than this one. I waited until the train had gone. I knelt on one knee near the yellow line. It seemed such a shame to be throwing them away now, so needlessly. Now I knew they were going to die.
I dropped them on the track and stood bolt upright. I felt my back click as I did so, and my posture became momentarily unsteady. Turning painfully on my heel, I left the flowers flapping and waving, crying for help in the wind on the track. Without a backwards glance, I walked away.

Earlier that day, I had looked at my watch; it had just gone 8o’clock in the morning. I stood at a bus stop on Baker Street, facing towards Victoria Station. I had been waiting for around half an hour or so, but every bus that had come past had been far too busy. No matter I thought, there are regular ones and (for a change), I was running early for work. My suit was neatly pressed; it was a Monday morning and I felt fresh. Clean shaven, my hair moving slightly in the breeze, one foot starting to get a bit sore from resting my weight on one leg. My skin felt smooth, I even noticed this myself; the pleasure I would get from running a finger down the inside of my arms, as smooth and pallid and cold as marble. I did this even now as I checked the cuffs of my shirt.
It was just as I was beginning to get anxious about whether or not a bus was going to turn up, that I saw out of the corner of my eye a taxi cab pull up to the bus stop. Inside, the driver sat staring forwards, seemingly unconcerned with his passenger, who leaned against the window in the back and fixed me with the most intense stare. I felt curious and at the same time, startled; I think I may have even physically twitched or jumped at making eye contact with this man. But his eyes fascinated me even more. They were cold and his face was pale. The man appeared bloodless, almost dead were it not for the look of fear in his eyes and the concentration on his forehead which threatened to wrinkle his skull as well as his skin. He remained there, transfixed with terror, staring at me. I wondered what I could have possibly done to make this man so scared. Had he seen me before? Had we met? The cab was still sitting idly in the bus stop; the driver was still facing forwards, not moving except to glance in his rear view mirror. I began to relax a little, with the initial shock of those eyes passing and then I felt annoyed, irritated by him. The mysterious man’s gaze was still glued to me. I took a step forward and leaned against the window. The other face leaned closer towards me. I put a hand up and pressed it against the glass and he did the same. I could see his eyes watering. I felt the window icy cold against my palm.
Suddenly, with a roar of the engine and the tyres squealing, the taxi accelerated away. I jerked backwards awkwardly, clattering into the Perspex screen of the bus shelter and fell to my knees dropping my briefcase. Several people rushed over to me and strong hands grasped me under my armpits. I was lifted up and dusted off. My briefcase was shoved roughly into my gut to hold. I turned to thank the other commuters who had helped me. The taxi had disappeared. I looked across the road into the crowds of Baker Street. A hundred collars, a hundred pairs of cuffs, a few hundred blouses, several pairs of thin-rimmed glasses, dead eyes, thin pursed mouths devoid of any of this mornings peach lipstick, other briefcases, lots of hair tight in bunches, a lot of aftershave and leather. I caught the next bus, even though it was busier and more crowded than the ones I had ignored before. I just wanted to be somewhere else; the shelter suddenly seemed uncomfortable. The people waiting, who had helped me up, clearly viewed me as some sort of smartly dressed drunk. I was ten minutes late for work.

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It was half twelve. I stood on my cigarette break outside the massive double revolving doors of the company I worked for. The entire outside of the building, from the entrance steps to the very last storey, seemed to be covered in one thick sheet of black glass. On certain days, it reflected London back down at you; a huge cinema screen, complete with all the surround sound you get from somewhere like Oxford Circus or Regent Street. Next to me stood another man in a similar suit, smoking my brand of cigarette. I hadn’t seen him before, but his suit looked new and as I usually took my cigarette break here, I presumed he was new as well. Before I had even caught a glance at him, he had approached me. He flicked his cigarette, the ash falling onto the floor, and I did the same. We shook hands.

“Robert” he said, smiling.
‘Nice to meet you’ I replied, politely.
He told me he had just started at The Company a few days ago, having left a very successful post with an enterprising business – one of the few to be actually making something like a profit in the currently hostile economic climate.
“I’m on the finance team” he explained; it is the department on the floor above mine. “We’re working on that six million pound debt that this place has achieved in the past four months”. He shook his head sagely. “It must’ve taken some crap decisions to make losses like that in such a short space of time”.
‘Positive decisions’ I said, grinning, quoting from a managerial presentation that had been given weeks before the slide started.
“Positive decisions” he repeated to himself, looking down at the bare floor.
“Still” he said, brightly “I like a challenge! Half the reason why I left my old place, to be honest. Just too fucking easy.”
I smiled and nodded at him, hoping that he was coming to the end of his break.
“I love to be ruthless you see” he confessed to me, with apparent relish. “I love making the hard decisions, whether it be about money or people… or both of course”. He nodded knowingly towards me, I did the same half-heartedly. He had an unfriendly glint in his eye that made me feel uncomfortable in his presence. I had been surprised at his extrovert nature in coming to talk to me, as if we had been friends or colleagues for years, and now this confident, arrogant personality was making me feel uneasy.
I tried to steer the subject onto something I felt would be more comfortable.
‘Family?’ I asked him, in a non-committal manner. ‘Kids?’
“Yeah” he said, as if not liking the reminder. “My wife and a young daughter.” He didn’t look at me when he told me this, but instead stared at the floor again. I was about to ask him about his daughter, when he interrupted me.
“I tell you what…” he said, pointing and looking me dead in the eye. “All the decisions I have made, all the people I have fired, all the money I have made and lost, the only thing that makes me feel guilty, is when I cheat on my wife”. He said this with such frankness, that I could not think of a response to it. “Only thing”, he reiterated.
‘An affair?’ I asked, and immediately regretted it. I began to wonder if this chap was mentally ill or disturbed in some way.
He only chucked to himself.
“Not just one, mate. Never just one”. He turned to me. “Casuals, I call ‘em. One night stands, friends, random birds in pubs.”
‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Not happy with your wife?’ It seemed like an obvious and stupid question even then…
“Oh, perfect” he beamed back at me. “I’m proud of her, proud of my daughter, proud of our happy home. But every time I am fucking someone else, I can feel the guilt. I don’t feel guilt for the people I dismiss, however unfairly. I can’t seem to feel any emotion any other way… I am numb”. He stammered the last part. “It’s my way of…” He tried to express himself with his hands, great circular gestures as he tried to reel in his point. “It’s my way of feeling the guilt y’know? The guilt that I should feel, considering some of the decisions I have made.”
I looked at him incredulously; it seemed far-fetched to say the least.
‘All that effort to feel guilt?’ I didn’t believe him. ‘Just sex with strangers, all to feel a bit of guilt?’
He gave me a look that made me feel as stupid as he undoubtedly thought I was.
“Oh fuck no. The kissing makes me feel guilty. The sex is just a means to an end.” He chuckled to himself and shrugged his shoulders.
“What’s the point in going so far and then stopping? A means to an end.”
I wrinkled my nose, and wished myself away from here, vowing to stop smoking so that I wouldn’t have to come out here for my breaks and meet him again.

There was an uneasy silence as we silently puffed away. He seemed pre-occupied with a thought or a nagging doubt in his mind. I was concerned that this dilemma that was brewing would be inflicted on me, and I had no wish to start another conversation with this man. I tried to hurry up my cigarette. I wasn’t far from the filter, when he turned to me with a question.

“How would you react if you were to meet the person who you knew was going to kill you?”
I blinked once at him – I frowned. I said I didn’t know. He asked me why, and I said I wasn’t sure about the question itself. I didn’t understand. Which is true, I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why he was even thinking about something like this in the first place.
“Well ok.” He addressed me with the gentle patience of a teacher with a student. “How would you talk to someone whom you knew was going to kill you in... say, a year? What would you ask them?”
I said I would probably react the same way a prisoner on death row reacts to his executioner or his guard. But he laughed dismissively, as if I still hadn’t understood the question. He took another long and thoughtful drag on his cigarette and tried again, pointing at me, with it jammed in his fingers. I felt alarmed at his seeming confidence in addressing me like this.
“Okay, but in a non-submissive situation, say… two friends in a bar. One of them finds out that he is going to be killed by the other one. How should he react?”
A brief pause.
“C’mon. Use your imagination. Stop giving me that wet look.”
I answered that they should go their separate ways. I was going to ask how he thought the killer would feel but he had already stopped me, waving his hand and laughing again
“No, no, out of the question. They cannot be separated. They are one, they are joined at the hip, they are all the other clichés you want to imagine… oh I don’t know… peas in a fucking pod, all that stuff.”
I said I really didn’t know.
“No”, he replied. He sighed and drew back on his cigarette again, now almost down to the filter. And then, almost to himself,
“Neither do I.”
There was a pause. I felt stupidly afraid of this man, and I felt cold. I shivered. I asked him, trying to be light-hearted, if he was planning on killing me. He chuckled and said no. So I asked him another question. I wondered where he thought of such an idea.
“Because”, he said, grinding the cigarette into the pavement with his shoe, “I’m going to die tonight. And I saw who was going to do it this morning.”
“Where did you see them?”
“Waiting at a bus stop actually” he said, grinning. “I was in the back of a cab.”
I froze, the gravity of the statement not sinking in at all. I wasn’t sure what to say. Was he suicidal? Had he upset someone? An estranged husband, probably.
“Do you know who is going to kill you? An estranged husband I suppose…?”
“No, you fucking idiot. You are.”
“Me? Why?”
“I don’t know” he said with a laugh, turning to go back inside the building. For the first time I felt as though he really was genuinely laughing.
“I was hoping you could tell me that”
Before I could question him further, he was gone. The revolving doors behind me spun. A woman emerged, talking on her mobile phone.
I stood alone on the pavement. My cigarette had long since been blown out.

The 03:46 underground train has just left Embankment, and I am drunk. I sit cross legged on the platform where I had stood a few hours earlier. Everything seems so contained all of a sudden. I am contained within my state of inebriation. I can barely walk. I can barely speak. I cannot sing. I cannot drive. I am entombed within this station. The station is likewise trapped within these walls. The trains rarely escape. The people rarely escape. They are like ants when their anthills are stirred. Only the boldest make a genuine escape. Most of them run around in circles near the shattered debris of their home, waiting for the boiling water or the unsympathetic boot. Ants cannot survive alone, it’s a fact. I think perhaps it should not only apply to them.
It’s taken almost a litre of cheap whiskey but I know now. I know the identity of the chap in the cab and outside The Company. I’m sure you do as well; I won’t spell it out for you. And I know that everything he has said was true. I am going to kill him. He was right to fear me in the back of the taxi and he was right to question me outside the building. I am going to kill him. I can feel myself sobbing, although there are no tears, my throat is closed and my shoulders tie into a knot before jumping, hunching up and down.

I am going to kill him.

I stand up, slightly uneasily. I look over the edge of the platform onto the rails. I see the red and yellow peeping out from under some wrapping paper. Reluctantly, I walk to the edge and sit with my legs dangling over. I can hear the cold air but I cannot feel it anymore. I am in a vacuum, a bubble and it passes around me, neither making me shiver or sway.
I look down and see the wrapping paper flapping furiously. I let myself gently down between the rails and lay down on the track; resting my head on the flowers I had laid earlier and I close my eyes.
Opening them again one last time, I look over my shoulder in time to see a pair of sepia-tinted eyes, no longer downcast and downtrodden but glaring urgently from the black void of the tunnel behind me.