That being said, this train was taking an awfully long time to get here. Walter had been in and out of the city all his life, and he was pretty good at comporting himself in these  types of quasi-dangerous urban scenarios, but as the platform gradually filled up (well, full, about 20 people, which was quite full at 4 in the morning in Harlem), he began to realize he was out of his depth. Not that the people surrounding him could be called threatening, really, that wasn’t why he was so unnerved. No, the community that formed on the train platform couldn’t have collectively wounded an African gnat, rather the gnat probably would have found them an intriguing meal. A tall man was quietly, spectacularly bleeding from a giant wound in his chest, his hand clasped over the blood but with no sign of pain on his face. There were an awful lot of stoically wounded people in this crowd, bleeding from every conceivable body part and Walter was tempted to offer help but in true New Yorker fashion, they acted as though he wasn’t there. A teenage girl slat slumped, gray-faced, in the corner, softly weeping with no tears on her face. Her shoes were missing. A lot of silent old people, some crying like the girl, some staring blankly into space, a few attempting to talk, and some with a look of quiet contentment on their faces as they awaited the arrival of the train. A skinny boy with wet hair stood very near the tracks, his face full of blood from his nose and his eyes shining. Walter gasped when he realized the cause of the tremendous hush that had befallen the station. None of these people seemed to be breathing. Only his shallow gulps of air echoed on the concrete walls, and his heartbeat seemed like a snare drum in his chest, in the absence of others.

     He began to look for the exit. Maybe he should stay with his friends after all, the trains in the morning would be much quicker, and with a few hours of sleep and a little less vodka in him he wouldn’t be plagued by these delusions that he was waiting in a subway station of zombies. “No, not zombies, they weren’t eating brains, what was…that other one, what horror movie am I imprinting on now, fuck this is really why I need to hang out with fewer experimental filmmakers, I’ve lost it and I think my life is a Bruce Campbell movie, or an old episode of the Twilight Zone, pretty soon that guy isx going to come out and start monologuing all over the place, ‘Walter Hoffman was an everyday college graduate, until he entered…’”

     But before he could finish his reverie a blinding white light roared into the train station. The force of the subway’s entrance knocked Walter against the concrete wall, flattening him in terror as the other passengers calmly picked up their bags. This was clearly not the 3 train he was waiting for. The entire train seemed to be composed of light, and gave off a palpable heat as it shimmered before him. The whine of its entry had continued after it stopped, in lush harmonic drones, harmonies Walter had never heard before. Its conductor was a beautifully rasta’d  Jamaican man in a gleaming white linen suit and a Panama hat. He winked at the girl in the corner and she stopped crying. The passengers gave one last look around at the dingy station, and then stepped through the open doors.

     And then they were gone. Walter was left gasping in sobs that seemed as ancient as the ground above his head, tears that were as confusingly joyful as they were racking. He was alone.

     He picked himself off the filthy concrete floor, caught the 3 five minutes later, transferred at 14th Street to the PATH train and got home as the sun rose. He never told his anxious parents why he looked so tired, never told that New School Girl about his adventures the night they met, even as they met for coffee and then dinner, even as he had suddenly moved in to her Lower East Side apartment, even as she became his wife and the mother of his children, whom they raised in Cobble Hill because the Lower East Side schools didn’t have a good art program. He never told anyone about his experience at the 148th Street station, and by all accounts it seemed he had forgotten it himself.

     And years and years later, with the New School Girl long dead and his children moved away, Walter felt his heart begin to quiet. He got on a 3 train and headed uptown. And no one has heard from him since.