Sliding down a sandy set of what used to be stairs, you see at the end of the room a book. After all this time of searching the ruins of this lost city, you find a journal, unmarked as to who wrote it, and very worn down due to the years. Taking it...
He's watching me. I can feel it. That six sense people get when something is wrong. Ever since I got on this subway train, I know those eyes never left me. It doesn't make sense. He's supposed to be dead.
Yet he's sitting only a few seats in front of me, in the very last car of this train. How that is possible only terrifies me more. I glance up again to verify if I'm going insane. Sure enough the man is still there, shifted around in his chair, staring right at me. His brown eyes fixating on mine. The smirk he features shoots chills down my spine. The scar on his left cheek merely a constant reminder. His hair is a messy slop of dark brown on his head, falling in strands over his eyes. He looks so tranquil and collected, given the history.
I grab hold of the seat bar in front of me as the train makes a sudden violent shake, as if it rode over something on the rails. The power goes out and I'm immersed into pure darkness. Not even the tunnel lights show the way to where we are headed, nor where we'd been. As I try to discern what could have gone wrong, the train's lights turn back on, followed by the tunnel's.
Confused, I squint while looking around my surroundings for any explanation, not certain what to look for, or what I'd find. That's when I notice the man is gone. Panic rises rapidly in my body, fear taking over all my senses. Was I just imaging him there before?
I'm thrown back into darkness for a moment, like a blink, before everything comes back up and the man is there again, this time standing in the walkway. My heart skips a beat as he draws closer to me, those brown eyes replaced with white bloodshot ones. No pupils. Just white. I want to scream; I want to cry for help, but I can't find my voice. All I could do is watch.
The lights flicker again, and the man vanishes. I search around, struggling to find something real in this nightmare I'm trapped in. He isn't real. He couldn't be real. After all, he keeps vanishing. All of this could just be a hallucination, right? A sickness? There has to be a sensible answer because I'm not one to believe in ghosts. Yet, there he is. Looking at me from the other end of the train car. He turns as I observe him and opens the door that leads to the neighboring car. Then the lights shut off again.
Not knowing why, if it was me or some external force controlling me, I rise up and shuffle into the walkway. I freeze there, finding myself now able to regain control of my body. The man is in the other train car, just glaring at me, no longer showing his signature smirk. Even though he is farther away, I could see that his outfit had altered. It's now the same outfit I remember him in. That one from that night not that long ago.
The lights flicker back on slowly and everyone who was sitting around were gone. I almost forgotten they were there. Prickling sensations make their way up and down my arms and legs, and a headache forms slowly. Maybe it's feasible to hallucinate one man, somehow, but the entire train car?
As I was lost in thought, standing in place, maintaining eye contact on the man staring back at me, I start to see something in my peripheral vision. I couldn't help but turn away to investigate, seeing something red showing up. The windows were... bleeding. Crimson liquid slowly flowed into the train, finding its way down the walls and pooling onto the floor. I no longer could feel my body again. The mere fear I felt made me paralyzed.
Coldness engulfs me. I peer back at the man, who was no longer anything but a silhouette with pristine white eyes. He's looking at me, observing me, enjoying my reaction. The lights flicker, some remaining on, others alternating, almost unsure of themselves.
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