『OUTSIDE THE BOX』

1- 『PAINT IT BLACK, PART 1』

The train crept silently along the tracks, each carriage home to only one or two people. Orange lights flashed through the windows in random spurts. Tags were hastily scratched into the backs of seats. My watch read midnight, and heavy metal blared in my ears.

Across from me was a girl, dressed in a sterile black school uniform. Her grey eyes were dark, and her face pale under the trains flickering white light. The black paint on her nails flaked away as she bit them. There was writing and other scribbles all over her pasty arms and legs, and her wrists were covered in bruises. She mouthed the words to the song playing through her earphones

I knew the song.

The train zoomed past stations, running express and sliding into platforms like a graffitied silver snake. It left the pastel houses, trimmed yards and chalked sidewalks of the suburbs behind it, making way into the neon nightlife of the city. 

Drunk teens and glittery bimbos struggled onboard, stumbling over each other with the clink of cans and bottles in brown paper bags. The doors gave that familiar sound of metal on worn-down rubber.

Eventually, the muted, hazy stars and eerie, orange streetlights gave way as the train dipped underground, as though the mangy city streets were the surface of some great, jagged sea and the train was sinking into the infernal subways underneath it. As tracks changed and metal rails bowed underneath it, it pulled into the terminal station. The conductor gave the usual announcement. 'The train terminates at this station. Will all passengers please disembark, and be sure not to leave any personal belongings behind...'

The girl didn't get off.

Her eyes didn't waver from the floor, despite the PA's protesting. Her weathered school bag stayed sitting under the seat, gathering dust, heavy with text books and lunch boxes. The train was now empty, and overhead lights began to flicker off down the aisles. I gathered up my bags and slung them awkwardly over my shoulders, pulling my headphones around my neck. "Um... excuse me?" My voice was hoarse and gravelly, a foreign rasp in my throat. The girl looked up at me with those two depressed, overcast eyes. "Are you okay?"

'What's this kid want...?'

Her voice was like a headache, a small, dull throb in the side of my head. The girl gave me a small nod, pushing her long black hair behind her ears. "Yeah..." she muttered, the words falling from her thin lips. She cast a few anxious looks around the train carriage, grabbed her bag from under the seat, and dashed away with the fall of heavy-heeled shoes. The train doors started to edge closed behind her.

Left in the dust a little, I put my headphones back on my ears, wailing guitar and heavy vocals once again blocked out the rest of the world. I dragged my luggage from the train and out into the lonely, whitewashed station beyond. The platforms were empty, made of plastered white stages and stairs; coca cola cans and chip packets blew through the empty ticket gates like tumbleweeds through a ghost town.

The station was made entirely of white bricks and fake tiles, hole-in-the-wall McDonalds and coffee shops, and the occasional janitor sweeping the floors or addict slumped by the bathroom. It was midnight, so commuters were few and far between, all just night owls, night-shifters, or night-outers. The sound of my footsteps rang out through the underground building with every step. 

By one of the minimalist cafes was that girl, her shoulders arched, gripping her bag straps so tightly her knuckles flushed white. Her eyes were droopy and tired as she handed a variety of small change to the cashier. Chai tea in hand, she meandered on sore feet up the damp stairs that lead out of the station and onto the city street above. 

As I followed behind her, the sound of rain and the smell of wet tarmac abused my senses. The city was still alive; windows were lighted, wind howled between the tight streets and alleys, and a thick black smog blotted out the stars. Puddles formed by the roadside, and droplets ran like tears down windowpanes. Office buildings are still aflame of ready and raring workers, and strobe lights and rap music boom from the windows of high-rise apartments.