Please Wait By The Line
*Trigger Warning: References to suicide
I know all of the coming and going ons of this station. I see it every day. In the early hours, the business men and women hurry down the platform in that half-walk half-run they do, briefcases in hand, and their eyes widen as they watch the train doors shut off their passage. I can’t help but chuckle when someone just misses it. Better luck next time, mate. Isn’t life just cruel like that sometimes? If they’d have just got there a few seconds earlier, they would have leapt over the gap and through those doors just in time. It’s like watching some tragic Shakespeare play. What if Juliet had woken up a few seconds earlier? Would she still have found Romeo dead? What if? What if? What if? The world is full of people wondering just that, but there is no real point in dwelling on it. Life goes on.
The clock ticks by to the lunchtime roar and the crowd thickens with the tourists; they all stare at the upside down maps in their hands, perplexed by the complex zigging and zagging that confronts them. Often, they ask me how to get to the place where they want to go and I try my best to direct them, but, in all honesty, I don’t see much of the city outside of this station. This is all I know. The familiar hustle and bustle of the coming and going ons is all I need to know. And, of course, there are the large school groups with small children weaving in and out of the hustle and bustle, and the teacher’s eyes widen as they watch one child stray too near to the edge.
Mind The Gap. I shout on repeat like a broken record. Please Wait By The Line.
I point to the smudged yellow line that is in dire need of renewing. This whole place is in need of that as it wilts and rots due to the stomping and stamping of all the daily hustle and bustle. I probably need it too. But this is all I know.
Life goes on. Life goes on. Life goes on. The day passes and the hustle and bustle dies down to a mere whisper. Only a few stray travellers hover on the platform in the cool, dark hours of the night. Here, they wait, in a station of the lonesome, wrapped up in their thick wool coats to keep out the cold that would brush the wounds on their skin with it’s cruel hands if they let it. Their hats pulled down so low they blind them, hands shoved under armpits, scarves slowly choking the life out of them, and feet stepping from side to side to avoid being frozen for eternity. Waiting. Forever waiting. “For what?” I hear you ask. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everyone on this platform is waiting for the same thing. But if that same thing is no thing, then it would be a reasonable question to ask why they are waiting at all? They are all waiting, perhaps unconsciously, for something incredible to happen. Like the blackest black of the universe before the beginning of time, hovering, existing, reducing, sitting still and zooming all at once, waiting for that spark. The spark that became something so beautiful, and yet, so revolting at the same time. That’s what they are waiting for. They all seem to be waiting for their lives to begin even when they have already begun.
As I scan the faded yellow line that they all stand behind, I hover my gaze over a woman who looks so strangely ordinary. I say strangely because it is her ordinariness that makes her stand out. She hunches over with her hands clasped together in front of her and pulls at the old skin hanging off her thumb, seeming completely mesmerised by it. A flexibility of the skin separate from the bone that comes with age. Suddenly, her head jerks up and she looks directly at me. Now, I can see the grey skin underneath her eye drooping like an old plastic bag, giving away the things that she shouldn’t have done which now cause the body to visibly wilt and rot. The dull glint in her eye shows a lost hope for the spark, and yet, she still waits. She must have felt me staring at her. Isn’t it strange how they all seem to have a sense of being watched even when there is nobody around? There are eyes watching in the white walls, ears listening for an echo in the halls, a mouth sitting at the edge of the window pane that calls. No one is ever truly alone.
Further along, there is a chap who looks fresh out of the factory, all spick and span. He stands tall and mighty with hair perfectly gelled back, cheekbones that look as though they have been sculpted by a sculptor, and glowing teeth that are so blindingly white that you can barely see the pain that lies behind them. You’re probably wondering how I know there is pain. To that, I chuckle, because there is always pain of one sort or another. Everyone has their secrets. I see it day in and day out. All the travellers pass me by with that same photocopied smile plastered on their faces. It’s the same smile that you can find everywhere from the cover of magazines to the perfectly coded images that scroll across your screen for hours every day. But images don’t cry after the face is made. So, this is it. This is what we’ve made.
Please Wait By The Line!
“God, when is this bloody train gonna get here?!” The sudden shriek comes from a funny looking girl with bright red hair and neon leg warmers. She stomps and stamps around the platform like an elephant at a tea party with the neon jumping up and down and up and down. As I watch her pink trainers stray over the line, I open my mouth to shout. But the other girl who was stood with her drags her back before any sound escapes my lips. I inwardly breathe a sigh of relief. For now, I am satisfied.
I continue to stare at the two girls for a while longer with my focus particularly on the other girl instead of the one who was making a fuss. Apart from appearing to be getting increasingly annoyed with her friend, the girl had a reserved look about her. Her dark eyebrows were furrowed, hiding her steel-coated eyes that might have been rather pretty if the rest of the world were allowed to see them. Why doesn’t she smile? Girls always look their prettiest when they are smiling. A smile is the best make-up a girl could wear! She’s in the prime of her life! This is the only time that she will be most attractive to the opposite sex!
“Give us a smile, love” I say in the hope of installing some kind of joy in her. But I am met with silence and a withering look that would have made me wilt and rot even further if it could. It seems she has been plagued by that common affliction nowadays which they call ‘resting bitch face’. It’s a shame, really. All these young girls scowling at all of the comers and goers. Laughter is a foreign language to them. Their lips are sealed in a permanent flatline. Were they always like this? No, they can’t have been. They were born screaming and alive, but look at them now. They’ve learned to warn them off. It’s protection.
Please Wait By The Line!
The line, the line, the line, the line, the line. Some poor sod will have painted the yellow years ago because somebody tall and mighty like that spick and span chap told him to. And now, everyone must stand by it. Those are the rules. No ifs. No buts. And if someone were to ever dare stray out of line, the result would be catastrophic. For what is the world without the line? Without the line, it would just be a blank platform for all of the hustle and bustle to stomp and stamp wherever they please with no consideration for both their own and other’s safety. It would be chaos, I tell you! No, the line must be there. I am thankful for the line. It brings me comfort. Knowing where I stand. Knowing where they all must stand. Side by side by side by side by side.
Tonight is the night. I am certain of it. I can tell it is going to happen because the station sings a special song. The sound of fluid dripping onto the floor, drip drip drip, chimes with those feet rhythmically stepping from side to side, step step step, as the rusted metal track creaks that familiar creak, creak creak creak. One of them is going to do it. End it all. But which one? Will it be the old woman with the drooping grey skin and the dull eyes filled with lost hope? Or will it be the spick and span chap with the screwed on smile? Or, perhaps, the girl with the bitch face as she grows impatient with her friend who doesn’t seem to be much of a friend at all? Or maybe she’ll shove her in. Now, that’d be a laugh. But wait, what about that train conductor with the reflective vest? He spends his days watching the coming and going ons of this wilting and rotting station as he himself wilts and rots with it, never having anything better to do than to shout at the hustle and bustle.
Please Wait By The Line. Please Wait By The Line. Please Wait By The Line.