Joining the Discussion...

So the MBTA is having a "Discussion" tonight at Salem Town Hall Annex to discuss the proposed fare hikes and service cuts to the T. And I'm bringing this little missive with me. If it never gets read, or, alternatively, I am never heard from again, I thought I'd share it here.
.......

I’m not sure how many of you actually use the T to get to work of a day, but I thought I’d share with you my experiences, taking a random day last week as an example. I pay $163 a month for my monthly pass, which, on an average month works out to about $8.15 a day.

I start out my commute when I arrive at the Salem Commuter Rail Station Parking Lot. In case you aren’t aware, for a long time, there was a pot hole just at the entrance to the station, beneath the underpass, that was deep enough to show a glimpse of the earth’s core. It has been filled in partially since then with, I can only assume, other cars who were not aware of its presence. I then manage to find a parking spot…or what I can only assume is a parking spot. The lot hasn’t been shoveled since last night’s flurries, and the snow has been tramped down to a kind of glassine sheen that obscures the numbers. It does, however, make it much easier to get to the train platform, as I need only set a foot down and apply a bit of pressure, and I can simply slide toward the train. Incidentally, according to the T’s website, the halfway mark of the Salem Parking Garage is this June. I’m assuming this assumption is much like the one that said the Apocalypse was going to occur last May. It seems at this point that they both have the same likelihood of occurring.

Once on the platform, a discomforting quiet descends. Because the 8:06 is not yet here. And since the ambient temperature has now dropped to about 14 degrees, and I’m starting to sympathize with Leonardo DiCaprio after the boat went down. Or, perhaps Anna Karenina would be more appropriate. Because despite the $374,702,363 you have received from the Federal Government in the past four years alone, I still don’t have my heated waiting area, and though the trains can and do run delayed whenever the temperature falls below about 30 degrees, my boss says I don’t have that same luxury. When the train finally does arrive, it is 8:12, and the good people who plan to travel on the 8:14 are on the platform as well, and only one set of doors will open, for reasons that no one seems to understand, so boarding will take at least 5 minutes. Which is a step up from last year, when the train arrived at 8:12, and only one set of doors would open, and it took five minutes to board, during which the grease on the open door caught fire. I think it says something about the state of affairs when someone calls out “Hey, I think the train is on fire”, and meets with nothing more than a few resigned chuckles.

I now get to stand for half an hour because the train is overcrowded, in the aisle, simmering gently in a puddle of condensed snow and salt grit. We grind to a prolonged crawl and eventually stop to let another train cross over the Saugus bridge, but generally arrived in a somewhat timely method. Once again, only one set of doors will open, but we eventually make it through North Station and down to the subway platform. Judging by the amount of people already gathered there, one can only assume the Green Line is experiencing signal problems. Or traffic problems. Or a mechanical failure. Or a medical emergency. The possibilities are so varied and many that it makes every morning a thrilling adventure. It should take 8 minutes to get from North Station to Arlington Station. I think I can count on one hand the number of times this has actually happened. Fortunately for me, and for many others, most employers in Boston need only hear that you commute on the T, and you have a permanent excuse for your perpetual tardiness. In my office, so many people use the T that no meetings are scheduled until at least 10am. I turn on my computer to find that I have an email from my boss, one from my mother, and 15 from the T, alerting me to the delays and problems on the Commuter Rail and Green Line thus far today. Which means it’s been a pretty good day so far, as far as the T is concerned.

For my commute home, I head back to Arlington Station, once again to face a crowd of people waiting for a train back to North Station.

Now this is my big question. More than why you are raising fares. More than why you based your entire financial plan on the foundation of an exponentially increasing sales tax that had no basis in reality. And more than why you would refuse to allow alcohol advertising on the T, which will mean another $1.5 million in revenue that I am going to have to pay eventually. Why are all the Green Line trains so eager to go to Government Center? Because, believe me, I’ve had time to count, and for every one train that is going to North Station or beyond, there are five trains that insist on stopping at Government Center. And of those precious few that do manage to move on to Haymarket and North Station, it’s probably about once a week that I’m on a train that simply arrives at Government Center and refuses to budge. Is there a mythical Valhalla of trains in that tunnel? Are you hiding the Fountain of Youth in there? The secret treasure of the Knights Templar? I doubt it’s Government Center station itself. I’ve spent far too much time there, and it’s uncomfortably warm and smells like cheese and exhaust fumes.

If and when I am fortunate enough to make it to North Station, my worries are largely at an end. Except that lately, since apparently it was decided to remove a car from the 5:40pm train, forcing me once again to stand all the way home. Luckily, today, the train doesn’t stop, as it did earlier in the week, outside Lynn station. We sat for ten minutes until a conductor decided to go to the driver and find out what was the matter. He emerged a few minutes later looking pale, and told us that we were going to roll into Lynn and figure out what was going to happen from there. We were never told what on our train broke, or what MacGuyver-like contraptions were used to cobble together our train, but from what we were meant to believe, it was a pretty heroic effort.

As you can imagine, I’ve met some extraordinary people on my commutes. The conductors who try their best to make our trip and peaceful, efficient or non-combustible one. The gentleman who helped me with my homework while we were stuck near Wonderland station for two hours (we got to leap off the train and wander to Wonderland, in case you were wondering). The woman who I helped with her knitting one night as we waited to find out if we would have heat on our train home last winter (we got heat, but lost our lights). I clearly have a wealth of memories from my commutes, and plenty of good stories to tell at parties. And I realize that you might very well be sheltered by your $100,000 salaries and the endless cycle of nepotism and financial mismanagement that seems to define the MBTA and MBCR, so I am glad truly grateful for the opportunity to speak to you today. But, to be quite frank, if you think that I am willing to pay a penny more for such service, you have much bigger problems than a budget discrepancy.

Taken for a Ride....

Ok, ok, so it's been a while. I'm sorry.

This is not the letter I sent to the MBTA this week, but it's the one I'd like to have sent. Enjoy.

Dear Mr. Davis,

I realize that you’ve only been the actual General Manager of the MBTA for a few weeks now, and I hope that’s going well for you. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to write and welcome you and introduce myself, but I was stuck on a Green Line train. For three weeks.

The MBTA means a great deal to me. I celebrated a birthday waiting for a train a few years back and another one on the Commuter Rail just a few weeks ago. By the time we reached North Station it had started snowing, so I missed out on my party, but such is the way of things. I figure that next year, I’ll invite my friends and family to join me in my commute so that we can celebrate together. To this, I would ask that you inform me if there are any ‘planned upgrades’ to the T that might actually go into effect in this decade, so that I could make my plans accordingly. I should hate to arrange for a Keown family reunion on the 110 out of Rockport in the morning, only to find that we actually arrive at North Station in a timely manner.

Also, the T brings people closer together. In this world where people are increasingly isolated in their jobs and daily life, it is remarkable that the T is such an effective instrument for uniting people of all classes, social strata and life experience. For example, last week on my way home from work, I, like many others, waited four and a half hours for a Green Line train to North Station. This may be a slight exaggeration, Mr. Davis, but the joy that thrilled through the hearts of all my fellow commuters as we awaited a train that was not terminating at that great sinkhole of youth and hope known as Government Center was a palpable thing. The train perhaps was a little over-filled, but all that means for us Green Line veterans is the chance to make new friends and memories aboard the subway. My colleague made her way aboard the train and I followed, wedging myself between surly college student and a very well-dressed man in a lovely charcoal-gray suit.

Suddenly, behind me, I hear a feminine voice say “Excuse Me”. Now, in my experience, one says “Excuse me” when one has inadvertently and non-aggressively touched another human being. Perhaps they bumped them with their bag, stepped on their foot, or at a pinch, encroached upon the other’s personal space in order to pass by to a more convenient place. It is an apology for a transient physical transgression. But not on the T. Oh no, the T even elevates language itself to new levels. For the woman who excused herself to me did not do any of the things I have mentioned above. No, she stepped aboard the train, clipping the back of my sandaled feet with her pointy-toed shoes, and proceeded to use her not inconsiderable bodily mass to propel me forward into the train. Heedless of the laws of physics and dignity she surged on, so eager was she to become one with the rest of the Green Line passengers. Or, at least, with the back of my head.

When she had shoved herself so close that we were practically conjoined, her over-sized purse repeatedly jamming me in the kidneys, the doors swung, shut encasing me like a mummy in an aluminum sarcophagus, surrounded by the riches—well, not of a kingdom, but I was pressed up against a lot of bags and hips, and I’m assuming there were some wallets in there, so riches, nonetheless. The train lurched forward and I, compacted and yet stranded in the middle of the car with no way to raise my arms and reach for a far-off pole or strap with which to anchor myself, was in great peril of colliding with a fellow passenger. Or the floor.

Fortunately, the Great and Good Gods of the T were smiling upon me, and the lovely-suited man came to my aid by reaching out his hand, and wrapping it around my neck, just where it meets the shoulder. And while my current position—and his hand’s current position on my spine—prevented me from turning and demonstrating my thanks, I couldn’t help but think how fortunate I was that the MBTA permitted vampires to ride the subways. What an interesting cultural exchange and what a display of tolerance and diversity! Now, when interested neighbors ask me if I have ever been groped on the Green Line, as seems to be the experience of every other person I have ever met. No, I can say, I have never been groped. Mauled? Yes. Gripped in the tenacious claws of a charcoal-suited vampire? Indeed. But groped? Such paltry, base behavior is not for the riders of the Green Line!

And while we are on the subject, Mr. Davis, what on earth is so fantastic about Government Center? I've spent a great deal of time there lately. I spent forty-seven minutes there a few weeks back waiting for a train to North Station (I could have walked, I know. I could have walked back and forth between Government Center and North Station three times, I think). It's a little hot, like all T Stations, it smells like feet and cheese and despair. And there is that man who lives there who talks to the escalator all day. Not that much different from most other T Stations that I've visited. Yet every single Green Line train seems hell bent on getting to Government Center, and never leaving. Do the Orange Line cars make fun of them? Is that why they don't want to go on to Haymarket and, more importantly to my story, North Station? Is there a kind of Subway Car Happy Hour going on in that tunnel into which they all scurry? Are you hiding the Fountain of Youth in there? The lost library of Alexandria? Unicorns? If so, could I meet one? Because with the amount of time I've spent at Government Center with other homicidally annoyed commuters, dazed and bewildered tourists with their fanny packs and visors askew, and teenagers on field trips to nowhere that I am thinking of changing my mailing address. I sometimes wonder if the security camera footage of all of us wailing and gnashing our teeth and sweating while waiting for the Mythical Train that is "right behind this one" (which is rather like when I was four and my mother told me if I watched Disney's Sleeping Beauty one more time, the ending would change), entertains you and your fellow employees. If so, I can dance for you. Or stage an engaging display of mime. Whatever you feel would be worth sending a train to North Station that isn't so clogged with people that it looks like an escape from an active war zone.

Perhaps it is because of problems like these that there seems to be some discrepancy in service on the Green Lines. Generally between the hours of 7:30am and 11:00am, though I suppose this isn’t too much of a problem, since for only about 2 of those hours are any large groups of people trying to utilize the subway. Sadly, though, by the time a train arrives, they have regressed a bit and resemble a well-dressed stock of neanderthals, reading to use their briefcases as cudgels in order to access the doors of the train. I am generally in that crowd, arriving at the North Station T Stop around 8:35am. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to arrive at 8:32am, just as a Green Line Train bound for Cleveland Circle groaned its way out of the station, its taillights blinking like luminescent warts. I shrugged, thinking that, as it only takes about 12 minutes to get to Arlington, which is where I work, I had plenty of time to wait.

It’s just that I had no idea how truth that thought would eventually become. In the time it took for another train to arrive and shunt me off into the bilious darkness, I had time to read the entire Metro—you know that little mini-paper full of Interesting and Insightful Articles that is produced for commuters to read in the time it takes to do their commuting? Except I read the entire thing. Cover to cover. Including the Help Wanted and the Personal Ads. And then I read 37 pages of my book. Then I think I must have blacked out for a time, as the next thing I remember, I was making paper airplanes out of the now-completed Metro and was trying to convince a few harried looking lawyer-types to join me in a chorus from The Gondoliers. And in that time, at least three Green Line trains passed through the station, with “No Service” signs decorating their destination signs.

Where are these trains going, Mr. Davis? Are they lost? Did they get bad directions coming out of Lechmere Station? Or is it true, as some have whispered in the darkness of Copley Station, that the Green Line is indeed a conduit to Hades itself, where the souls of the damned are transported to eke out an eternity in anguish?

…If the latter is the case, then I really think these trains should stop. After all, we, the T Riders, could offer these condemned some words of comfort and encouragement. After all, if you’re on the Green Lien of a morning, it’s a pretty safe bet that wherever you’re going can’t be all that much worse, right?

Trick or Treat?

Wish I had something more fascinating, but I wrote this a while ago, and it seems like a fitting time to inflict it on you. Enjoy!

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.

(H.P. Lovecraft)

Halfway between Park Street and Boylston, the train ground to a shuddering halt. Following a death-rattle of exhaust fumes, the conductor’s radio clicked to life.

“Ladies and Gentlemen…grinkle gaaaaaaahhh....standing…..few minnnnnoooooo. Please be…murfle furfle..thank you…battangs anders….BTA.”

There was a chorus of sighs around me as of souls in purgatory. One girl in a hot pink sweater with black-tipped blonde hair sipped her coffee and began tapping with her free thumb at her phone. A business man in a pin-striped suit turned the page of his newspaper and almost elbowed a woman with a toddler on her lap in the head. The mother closed her eyes and tilted her head against the window of the car while the child slept in her arms. No one looked particularly concerned or annoyed. In Boston during the morning rush hour, it was a minor miracle that it had taken this far for the train to come up with some reason to stall.

I readjusted my grip on the bar running the length of the car and shrugged my bag higher up on my shoulder. In the window, I could see my reflection in the dim tunnel light. Short, ruddy-brown hair that curled mercilessly despite my every effort to keep it straight. Green eyes that had sleepy-shadows lurking beneath them, leftovers from a week of increasingly long nights. Pale skin. Freckles. Button-down shirt, a-line skirt and green patent-leather Mary Janes. At least I could look snappy, even if I felt like I could sleep for a month and still need a chemical infusion to keep me upright.

The train sighed again, a slight pulse of electricity ran from the third rail and made the wheels of the car tremble a little. The man in the suit turned his page again, and the girl in the pink sweater took another gulp of coffee while the screen of her phone flashed green and blue in the reflection of her butterfly-shaped glasses.

Because I was standing close to the driver’s compartment, I heard his walkie-talkie blip to life.

“E Train 4370, E Train 4370, be advised there is an electrical problem on the tracks ahead of you. Please stand by until an Employee can be located to remove the…problem. Over.”

I let out the slightest of moans and checked my watch. 8:35am. And no coffee. Today of all days.

Turning carefully so as not to whack into the man in the red shirt beside me, I shuffle-bumped my way to the conductor’s booth.

“Excuse me,” I said, fumbling for my id in the side of my bag. “But did I just hear a request for an Employee?”

He waited a few breaths before turning his head. His skin was shiny and pale, and reminded me of the inside of an uncooked potato. Greasy dark hair. On his head and shooting in ill-advised tufts from his chin. But at least his eyes weren’t glowing. Yet.

He looked me over, starting at my shoes and moving unhurriedly over my clothes to the key dangling from a chain around my neck, then quickly up to my face. I held my badge up beside my eyes and glowered like a professional.

“I—um. Oh. I didn’t think—“

“I noticed.” I snapped. “Can you please open the doors?”

“Umm…right away Mith.” I raised my eyebrows. He was missing a fang. Looked like a newer injury. The hand that shot out to pull the handle controlling the door had an ugly scar running from his index finger to his bony wrist. It looked like a burn in the sticky orange glare of the maintenance lights.

“Did you get that looked at?” I bent down so the girl in the nearest seat wearing a Red Sox hat and eating a banana wouldn’t overhear.

“Yeah. Thaid it’s jutht a matter of time.” He mumbled, trying to hide the one-fanged lisp.

“How’d that happen, anyways?”

He shrugged and his injured hand curled back in his lap. Like a well-trained T employee, his face assumed that blank, nearly catatonic state that made it difficult to tell if he were stupendously bored or a reanimated corpse.

I nodded slowly and stood. “Ok.” The doors open with an agonized huff and squeal. “Thanks.” He gave an uninspired sigh and continued staring at the back of the lead subway like it was his job. But, then again, when you thought about it, it kind of was.

The MBTA started hiring vampires to run the subway about five years ago, right about the time that Thomas Bourke got elected to his first term as governor. As a former Employee himself, he was in a prime position to negotiate with the head of the T and a few union stewards. It was explained that here was a group of willing workers who had no need of health benefits, life insurance, or summer vacations. The depths at which the trains usually ran meant that they would be nearly immune from the need for a morning nap (though there was no discussion about the mind-numbing boredom of the job beating them all into a stupor within a few weeks). And all those problems with conductors using cell phones and derailing their trains? Telepathy is a beautiful thing sometimes.

So the subway became a haven for younger vampires, those in need of cash or those who had opted not to start the regiment of Aurora—magic little pink pills that allowed vampires to stay awake in daylight, thus enabling them to hold jobs and interact with humanity. The pills were still causing a huge amount of controversy, both within the Agency and in the mainstream press, though hardcore-opponents were becoming more and more marginalized.

And in case you were wondering, no, there are no vampires on the MBTA busses, though they are registered with the Authority, as well. Daylight doesn’t pose any particular threat, but they are just as indestructible. And if you’ve ever seen a bus try to get down Boylston Street at rush hour, you’ll understand why this is an important job requirement.

The tunnel smelled of dust and sweat and diesel. And something else. Something salty and slightly stale and something a little…slimier. I hopped off the last step and my Mary-Janes thonked against a metal grate set on the floor beside the tracks. I drew a small flashlight from my bag and flicked it on. The orange work lights made as many shadows as they dispelled, and I really didn’t want to bump into anything that might be on the tracks before I caught sight of them.

Tentatively, I whistled into the darkness. A fair number of the inhabitants of these tunnels haven’t quite mastered complete sentences as yet, but nearly all of them can whistle. In response, I heard the fat, liquid spliff of puffy lips and dripping tentacles, then the shuffling of something wet and enormous shifting in the murky heat ahead of me.

I blinked and stopped with one foot resting on the rails. “Reuben?”

There was a gargling hiss from the mass on the tracks. Inching closer, I could make out the nervous twitching of two huge, leathery wings. The air got more and more fetid as I came closer, and the wings fanned the heat of the tunnel around me until it felt like a belch from Hell itself.

“Reuben,” I said, a little more authoritatively. “Calm down. It’s just me.”

“Strrrrrrrrrrrrssssssssssssttttttttttttttttttt.” Is about as near an approximation of the sound the thing made as I can accurately type.

“Reuben!” I had only had a crash course in basic Cthulu, but I was fairly sure this was not on the list of “nice things to say upon meeting a familiar face in the tunnels under Boston Common”. Reuben hissed again, and it sounded vaguely apologetic. When I took another step closer, he didn’t try and cave in the tunnel with his taloned elbows.

“That’s better,” I said, and the flashlight finally picked up his face. I hadn’t been aiming it nearly high enough.

I keep forgetting you probably don’t know these things, but yes, H.P. Lovecraft was an Authority Employee, too. He was originally hired as a Dream Walker, one of the toughest jobs in the whole system. Having grown up with night terrors, it was assumed he’d be a prime candidate to identify the wandering nightmares of others. He had started a compendium for the Authority on the various entities that could enter the human mind in a dormant state, when three workmen who were excavating parts of the city for the brand-spanking new ‘underground tram cars’ came upon a creature that was described by one as “A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings”, and by another as “a monster … with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers…prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." The third worker was supposed to have yelled something to the effect of “the green, sticky spawn of the stars” before dropping dead of sheer confusion.

Enter Howard Phillips Lovecraft, by now insomniac and suffering from malnutrition. The Authority decided to prolong his lifespan a bit and took him off the Dreamers detail and assigned him the task of investigating the Monster in the North End. He discovers that when the great and wise engineers who filled in the marshlands to make the Back Bay and Haymarket were doing their thing in the 19th century, they had inadvertently destroyed a large area of R’lyeh, which, in Cthulu means, quite simply, “home”. Or “dinner plate”, depending on whom you ask. As far as I can tell, the word, when pronounced correctly, sounds like someone trying to giggle and cough up a wad of phlegm at the same time, so I’ve just tried my hardest to avoid actually having to use it in conversation. And considering that by now, R’lyeh is known as Nixes Mates and disappears twice a day with the rising tide, it’s pretty easy to avoid having to actually say it. Anyways, Lovecraft decides that the best way to hide the origins and continued existence of the Cthulus is to do it in the most blatant way possible, and he makes them the nightmare creatures of some of his best stories.

In reality, the Cthulus—and yes, there are plenty more than one—are pretty sweet. Massive, yes, and rather smelly (but who wouldn’t be when you live in sewers and vacation in the Charles River?), and an absolute pain when they get mad, but, by and large, more friendly than most. They have a sort of hive-mind thing going on, and the main hub, such as it is, is thought to live somewhere in the Marianas Trench. Hence the whole “sleeping at the bottom of the sea” myth. It can make it a real pain when one of them has a bad dream, let me tell you. And they had this really annoying habit of wandering out onto the tracks in the hopes of making friends, or having a snack, wreaking absolute hell on the T’s efficiency—and life expectancy, that is, until Bourke’s little “hire a vampire” campaign.

If you’re ever in Boston and want to know why the T doesn’t run twenty-four hours a day, now you have the answer. In an attempt to regulate the schedule and still provide the displaced Cthulus with something resembling a home, the T officials agreed to a halt in service between 1-5am and leave the tunnels to the use of those who live in them. Usually, it’s a system that works extremely well. Then, every once in a while, there is an ‘electrical problem’—the generic euphemism of the MBTA to explain the presence of a conscious blockage on the tracks.

“Reuben, sweetie,” I tried, squinting the murk to find his hooded eye and stare into it. “It’s almost 9am. Way past time for you to be in bed…or whatever.”

Reuben gurgled.

“Easy there, Big Fella,” he let me take another step closer, curling a tentacle to make room for me on a switch plate. “What seems to be the trouble?”

Reuben hissed, sounding like the shrill of a thousand tea pots all erupting to life together. Or, like the sound of the brakes on an everyday MBTA subway car, which is what I’m sure most commuters assumed that noise to be.

“I know, Sweetie, I know,” I tried really hard not to screech over him. “I’m hungry, too.” He slumped back just a little bit and shut up, tilting his head like a bird in order to see me better through his maggot-white eye. Then he gurgled.

“No, Reuben. The conductor is—“

“Grraarrrrrrgh.”

“No. He isn’t ‘yummy’! He’s…” I could see the bobbing lights of T maintenance workers’ flashlights about 200 yards ahead in the tunnel. Time was short, as most T worker s thought the most awful thing to encounter in a tunnel was a rat. Or another maintenance worker.

I stuck my own flashlight under my arm and put my hands up to my face, dangling fingers from my mouth to look like fangs. Reuben huffed and shook his head, his dangling tentacles making sparks jump off the rails.

“Exactly.” Reaching into my bag, I found the one cereal bar that had been left in my house that was supposed to keep me until lunch. “Here, Big Guy,” I held it out and Reuben hunkered down to my hand. “Take this, and I’ll see what I can do about getting some num-nums to you soon, ok?”

“Mmmmmmmmuuuuuuuuuuurrrrf.” He moved and I repressed a shudder as something cold and porous and oozing brushed over my hand. When I opened my eyes, the cereal bar was gone and my hand was sickeningly damp.

“You’re welcome,” I managed to keep my voice steady. “Now,” I swallowed and yanked one of the sanitary wipes from a compartment in my bag, “do you think you can head back to…home…and all these nice people can get on their way?”

Reuben wiggled his tentacles.

“Good guy,” I smiled. The sound of work-booted feet clumped closer, and I made out a Revere accent coming through a walkie-talkie and whining about he was “always getting called out hee-yah.”

“Ok, you.” I said, backing up a little to keep out of the encroaching lights. “Scoot!”

“Mmmmmmmmmrrrrtthhhhhh.” He gargled irritably.

“Reuben, I am in no mood for—“ he started forward, presumably for more munchies. The size difference—not to mention the difference in our dietary preferences—suddenly became rather alarmingly obvious and I drew in a quick breath of stinking tunnel air and monster breath. Rule number one in my book: never, ever, let anyone see you scared. That included the kind of things that most people only saw in their nightmares or between the covers of various genres of pulp fiction; things with eyes that absorbed light and gave nothing back. Things that lived in and off the shadows and spoke only in the wind or the rain. Things that I was responsible for keeping in the darkness. Away from you.

The key around my neck was getting warmer. I could feel it prickling my skin and tried to take a long breath. Tried to calm down before—it was too late. One of the light bulbs above Reuben’s left wing exploded in a shower of sparks and tinkling glass. He flinched and let out a small, curious noise. I stayed still and kept glaring. Another bulb erupted behind him. In its final flash, I could just see the outline of a man in a fedora and a long gray overcoat. His face was grim and his feet were planted steadily about three inches from the concrete floor.

One of the maintenance men let out a startled expletive and all three jogged backwards, their lights bobbing around frantically, snagging on a few more figures in the shadows that only I could see.

Reuben mewed.

“That’s what I thought.” I said, surprised at how light my voice sounded. “Now, Scoot.”

No amount of training can prepare you for how blinking fast a Cthulu can dissolve into the darkness of a subway tunnel. One minute, they’re staring at you with their moony eyes and slobbering you with some kind of primeval cosmic horror-slime, and the next, you’re standing alone against some piping and wondering if you’d been hallucinating. Totally silent and completely unsettling.

As quickly as I could manage in my shoes, I hopped over the rails and scooted back to the train. I had to knock on the door five times before my one-fanged friend woke up and opened the doors for me.

“Should be all set.” I said, brushing stone dust off my skirt. “But I’d radio ahead to make sure the guys are off the line first.”

He looked at his watch and raised a single eyebrow. “Thixth minuteth.” He said with a measure of appreciation. “You’re good.”

“Damn right I am.” I answered with a wink.