The Loop
by Anya Carter
Every city is known for something. Singapore is known for its extravagance, Los Angeles for its eternal summer, Sydney for its Opera House; the list is endless. Our city is known for The Loop. If only we were as glamorous.
There are fifteen stops on The Loop, but there’s no beginning or end. I don’t like this train—the seats make my back hurt, and the offensive scent of pee has seeped into the seat cushions, unsettling my stomach on most rides. The ventilation isn’t even working in my train car. Every couple days, I think I see a rodent scurry under the tracks. It’s basically a shitty merry-go-round.
Some portions of the train track are above ground, and the whole city blurs past you, leaving you dizzy with wonder. These are the only parts of The Loop I enjoy. The anxiety bubbled up in my chest finally settles, and my eyes scan over as much as possible, like it’s the last time I’ll ever see the world as it is. I feel myself breathe again, and for a few seconds, I don’t notice the few people around me—their smells, their sounds, that are usually suffocating me. This discomfort is not something I’m unfamiliar with; the sheer density of this metropolis has burrowed its way into my brain like a thick fog, and my mind feels too crowded to function. I want out.
But, for this brief moment, my sharp distaste for this city is silenced…
…And then the feeling’s gone, and it’s dark again.
Shifting my gaze back to the inside of the train car, I let my eyes wander over the few people in my section. There’s a mom and her boy, who’s playing with her bracelet, and a middle-aged man in a suit, but with no briefcase.
What businessman has no briefcase -- or at least a backpack? I wonder where he’s going.
I realize I’m staring at a girl sitting across from me, and she looks back at me with big brown eyes. My heart thumps in my chest as I hold her gaze, and I can’t breathe until she looks away. Slumping back into my seat, I wish for the train to move faster. I want to get out of here. I want out of this Loop and out of this city. The gentle rumbling of the car on the tracks lulls me to sleep.
I’m awoken by nudges to my thigh, and I open my eyes to see a little sneaker pressed against my jeans. The little boy I noticed earlier is perched on his knees on the seat next to me, looking out the window with his nose pressed against the glass. We are above ground again.
“Tom, that’s dirty. Get down from there!” his mom scolds him, smiling at me with a grimace. I look away, fidgeting with my hands in my lap.
“But I saw something!” He’s beginning to dirty my jeans, but I don’t really mind.
My brain stuffy with sleep, I don’t make any effort to follow his gaze, and The Loop is once again engulfed in darkness, only the fluorescent lights of the train car illuminating the vicinity.
“I did see something!” Tom insists, shuffling down from the window.
He sighs and crosses his arms sulkily.
“What did you see?” I entertain him.
He considers me for a few seconds and then mutters: “There was a lot of smoke. I think something’s wrong.”
His mother combs her fingers through his hair in an unsuccessful attempt to calm him down.
“It was probably just a factory, honey.”
The situation de-escalated, I choose not to linger on his words.
The girl with the eyes from before is now nodding off across from me, her long brown hair falling over her face. It’s easier to observe her when her gaze isn’t piercing me. She’s wearing similar clothes to me and has features similar to mine. Yet I can’t help but feel that under our skin our blood flows opposite ways, and that her lungs breathe more easily than mine.
The sight of the odd businessman without a briefcase unsettles me. He is entirely still as he stares at the floor with furrowed brows. Suddenly meeting my gaze with wild eyes, he pales, and I notice how quiet it is.
“It hasn’t stopped.”
Huh?
“The train hasn’t stopped,” he elaborates in a grave voice, and I feel my stomach begin to turn. “We’ve gone past 6 stations, but the train hasn’t stopped at any of them.”
Shaking my head, my mind races, and I feel my pulse in my throat.
“That’s impossible.”
“No. I--I’m sure of it.” He stands up and leans against the doors, catching the attention of the boy, his mother, and the girl who is now alert, her owl-like eyes wide and waiting.
We probably haven’t noticed until now because of how few people commute during this time of day, but now that I think about it, he’s right. Walking over to a doorway, I examine the map of The Loop above my head.
“Where are we on here?”
“Right here,” a soft voice says. The girl points to a spot between two of the stations.
The businessman is chewing on his bottom lip and jiggling his leg. Anxiety flows off him in waves so thick I could choke.
“I’m sure there’s nothing wrong,” Tom’s mother says soothingly. “The train’s probably just been taken out of service.”
“With us still in it?” I voice my doubt.
Something’s not right, I’m sure of it.
As if sensing our nerves, The Loop lurches and the lights flicker before going out. Tom screams, and the girl is gripping my sleeve tightly. The emergency lights turn on within a few seconds, and the light reflects off the girl’s face, her eyes wide and glimmering in the darkness. Her face shows no signs of uneasiness, and I wonder how she’s not panicking. I can hear the blood pumping through my ears. Are we moving faster?
“Oh, shit,” the businessman groans, fingers gripping his hair so tightly I’m worried he’ll rip it out.
Something clicks in my head, and I climb onto a seat and reach for the red handle above me.
“Everybody hold on. I’m gonna pull the emergency brake.”
Exchanging nervous looks, they all hold onto the bars as if their lives depend on it, and they’re probably right.
“Three…”
I wrap my arm around a bar.
“Two…”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“One.”
I pull the handle.
My heart stutters in my chest, and my lungs are working overtime.
It didn’t work.
I pull again and again, and the train speeds down the tracks faster than it ever has. Tom’s crying is muffled as he burrows further into his mother’s embrace.
I feel tears welling up in my eyes, and I hear myself mumbling, “no, no, no, no, no,” until arms grip my waist to pull me down, and I’m crying into the girl’s shoulder, choking on my breath.
“It’s okay,” she strokes my hair. “Just breathe.”
I mirror her own breathing and eventually, my tears stop flowing, and my mind is less cluttered.
That is, until we’re speeding past an underground station platform, and beige tiles zoom across our view.
The businessman leaps to his feet, banging on the windows with both hands and screaming for help, which only helps to scare Tom even more. My head’s starting to throb from all the noise.
Walking carefully to the window, I look out and realize there’s nobody on the platform, and it looks as if it hasn’t been cleaned in years. The stations are usually pretty gross, but this is… awful. There’s grime on the walls and floor, and a haunting absence of any footprints through the thick layer of dirt on the ground. Some of the wall tiles are cracked and there’s debris littering the ground.
A shiver runs deeply through my core, and I feel an overwhelming sense of abandonment. This train’s not stopping any time soon. I think about how we could just keep going around and around The Loop and quickly suppress the thought to avoid spooking myself more.
As the platform disappears into darkness, the shouting ceases and I slump down onto the ground by the door, mind cluttered yet completely blank at the same time.
“What the hell is happening?” I mumble into my hands.
The businessman sinks down beside me, back against the door with his legs splayed out in front of him as the train jiggles us. I close my eyes and consider how this is what it would feel like to be in the mouth of a beast as it ambles along, carrying you to your doom. Suddenly aware of my exhaustion, I loll my head on the businessman’s shoulder, surprised at how comfortable I am with him, even though I don’t know him at all—I don’t even know his name. Chaos really can bring people together, I suppose.
“So what do we do now?” Tom’s mother asks us from her seat.
“We just have to...” the girl shakes her head, leaning back against the opposite door with her arms crossed.
“We just wait,” she finishes, sighing.
The dim fluorescent lights highlight her cheekbones and shoulders, and for a brief moment, I forget all about the situation we’re in until she walks towards me to sit down. Feeling her settle beside me, I unconsciously tense up.
“How are you so calm?” I make myself look at her to ask this. She has faint freckles smattering her nose.
“I don’t know, I...” she tilts her head back to rest on the door. Then, looking at me, she says, “I just have a feeling, you know? That we’ll be alright.”
A floral scent fills my nose, and she stares at me so earnestly I almost believe her. Thump, thump, thump.
“I hope your feeling is right.”
“So do I.”
“What’s your name?”
She smiles, “Athene.”
Suddenly the car is flooded with orange light. Tom’s shrill scream sends my heart into my head. We stumble to stand up, and what I see makes me feel like throwing up.
Everything’s just… gone.
The trees that once stood strongly are now mere stumps, barely visible under a thick layer of orange dirt that seems to coat the landscape endlessly. There is wind outside, but the only way to notice is by the orange dirt being lifted up and sent through the atmosphere—it reminds me of waves washing sand upward from the sea floor. Thinking about the sea, I feel myself heaving with labored breaths.
Is there a sea anymore?
What’s happening?
Is anybody alive?
Is it just the five of us left?
Tom is hysterical and I notice that I’m sobbing through the lump in my throat. Athene looks worried for the first time this whole ride, and Tom’s mother is quietly weeping. The businessman looks like he’s seen a ghost—he’s just staring, unblinking.
I turn to cling to someone, something— anything to ground me to the moment or to make me forget what’s happening. I want to wake up from this nightmare, but I know I’m not dreaming because my head is pounding and my eyes are swollen, endless hot tears slipping out. My vision is blurred, and reality swims in front of me. I feel so faint I barely notice my feet lifting off the ground, but I sure as hell notice my head slamming into something, and then I can’t see at all.
. . .
I wake up to see I’m still inside the train, and light floods into the car, tinting everything orange. I sit up with a groan, immediately regretting it as pain engulfs my head. Everyone around me is starting to come to as well, and I realize that we’re still.
The train stopped.
Relief washes through me, but there’s still the issue of what’s happened outside of The Loop.
Athene limps to the doors and tries to pry them open with her fingertips.
“Wait!” The businessman tugs on her pant leg, “the orange stuff -- what if it’s toxic?”
“Well, we’re gonna have to get out at some point.” She forces the doors open, dust billowing into the car, coating Athene in orange and making my throat itch. Coughing, we all cover our mouths and noses with our sleeves and one by one, we step onto the narrow platform outside the train car. Standing on different parts of the platform are other commuters who, I assume, are just as clueless as we are.
“Look!” Tom points to a black rectangle amidst all the dusty orange, and when I squint, I see moving dots.
People.
They’re roughly a kilometer away, and they’re running toward us. I have good reason to be wary about them, but I feel an intuitive sense of peace, and I can finally breathe again. I feel my heart rate steady, and I’m somehow sure that they won’t hurt us.
A warm hand grips mine, and warmth blooms in my chest.
“I told you we’d be fine,” Athene says into her clothing, and when I look over I can’t help but laugh.
“What?” she asks, confused but amused.
“Nothing…just,” my laughter dies down and I say, “your entire face is orange.”
Her eyes crinkle up in a smile hidden by her sleeve and she shakes her head vigorously, orange dust falling off as she does so, making me laugh harder.
Staring out into the vast warmth of orange dust, I don’t recognize my city underneath it. I can only roughly define the buildings beneath their powdery cloaks, and no people are milling about the normally busy streets. I already prefer this city to the one I was in before boarding the train.
The people have reached us and are ushering people off the platform, handing them masks.
Athene squeezes my hand, and finally, I feel free.