The Subway

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You learn early on that you don’t fall asleep on the subway. You do that, and someone’s gonna steal your stuff. Or mess with you.

So no matter how tired in your bones you are after a long day you keep yourself awake.

New York doesn’t play.

I’m used to people looking at me. It’s that splotch on my face. It’s a birthmark, but you’d think it was the sign of the devil the way some folks react.

Most won’t stare. But they look. Sometimes you can hear a kid ask “What’s on the lady’s face?”

I’m used to it, but it’s just one more thing I’ve got to deal with on the train.

The night I fell asleep was a tough one. Work had been harder than usual, with stupid customer demands keeping me on the move my whole shift. Then I get done and have to walk the block to the station in a heavy rain that came out of nowhere. By the time I got to the turnstiles I was exhausted and drenched, and didn’t want to be fooled with.

I got a seat easy enough. The train wasn’t packed at that hour.

I sat and tried to mind my business, but sure enough some young guy in a dirty hoodie stared at me. I looked back and he tilted his head kind of acknowledging he’d been caught. Then he did put his hands together making a little finger steeple and lowered his head towards me. New York, man.

Not long after the train pulled out I yawned. Next thing I know, I’m asleep. I don’t even remember falling asleep.

When I woke up, I wasn’t on the train. I was in a room underground. More of a tunnel.

It was lit well enough, and I could see I was surrounded in a circle by a couple of dozen people, including that dude from the train.

“She’s awake!” one of them said.

I was sitting in a chair on a small platform, maybe a couple of feet higher than the people.

“Your majesty, we welcome you,” the man from the train said.

Turns out, they thought I was their queen. The queen of the underground. Their stories, passed down over the years foretold my coming, apparently.

Now, I’ve never been taken for royalty before, plus I was scared and confused. But in the moment, I didn’t think to ask where I was, or if they were going to hurt me. All I could think to do was ask why they thought I was their queen.

The man from the train walked up to me and handed me a sketch. It was the face of a woman, but the features were kind of intentionally vague. Except for one thing. A mark on the face that exactly - and I mean exactly - matched mine. I’d never seen anyone with a mark close to mine before.

They told me that they’d been waiting for me to lead them. Lead them to what, I asked.

“A better way,” one of them said.

“A better way,” they repeated.

I told them I appreciated their hospitality and all, but that I just needed to get home.

“You are home,” train-guy said.

It became clear that I wasn’t going anywhere. But after that shock wore off, it was also clear that I was going to be treated like a true queen. Anything I wanted, they could get. They had decent rooms set up in this abandoned tunnel spur, and it was comfortable.

It didn’t take long to get past the kind of constant dampness in the air. It took longer to get past the lack of sun and sky.

But, I soon got to where I thought that was a fair trade. No more rude people. No more crowds. The noise of the city was gone. And truth is, I had all I needed. If I wanted something, someone could pretty easily find it in the city and bring it back.

Over time, I came to realize that what these people - my people - needed was a goal. So first we made our tunnel cleaner and nicer. Then we built better rooms, and secured the entrance to the tunnel. Later we added lights on a timer to create a sense of night and day.

We live better than most of the people up top. And we have fewer worries. Sure, every now and then, one of our people goes missing in the City, but otherwise it’s not so bad.

My next project is to fill out a library, so we can start classes on how to do, well, everything. We need people with real medical knowledge and all that. We could try the internet, but that feels too risky to me. Maybe once we get some folks up to speed on that, they can tell me there’s nothing to worry about.

We are building something down here. And it feels good.

Still, though, you probably should avoid falling asleep on the train. Not everyone gets to be a queen.