Subway tales – 01

«Down there»

(Microfiction)

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Maya walks down an empty street. It’s daytime, but everything looks green, like she has a filter over her eyes. Her thin body trembles with cold. She’s barefoot, wearing only a white nightgown, and completely alone. The stench of garbage is unbearable, and steam rises from the sewers, wrapping around her like fog. In the distance, she sees a pedestrian bridge, and someone standing at the top. Maya walks toward it and soon recognizes the person—it’s her twin brother, Ryan. She tries to reach him, she walks faster. She gets to the bridge and sees Ryan from below. He climbs onto the railing. He doesn’t notice Maya standing there. He stares into nothing for a few seconds… and then jumps. He falls at his sister’s feet. His eyes vacant, his neck broken, blood spreading.

Maya woke up breathless and drenched in sweat.

She looked at the clock—4:53 a.m.

“Not this fucking nightmare again,” she muttered.

Maya had been having the same dream for nearly a year. It started not long after her brother took his own life by throwing himself onto the subway tracks. Ryan was only 21 when, on an otherwise ordinary day on his way to college, he decided he couldn’t go on. She and her parents had watched the security footage of his final moments over and over again. Maya had memorized it:

09/27/23 11:03:08 – Ryan gets off his blue bike and leans it against a post. He leaves his backpack hanging from the handlebars and walks down the stairs into the subway station.

09/27/23 11:05:02 – Inside, Ryan heads toward the platform.

09/27/23 11:08:12 – Ryan at the far end of the platform. He looks calm, leaning against the wall.

09/27/23 11:10:26 – The train is approaching. Ryan steps closer to the edge.

09/27/23 11:10:55 – Ryan jumps onto the tracks. The train tries to stop, but it’s too late.

People around turn into headless chickens, no one knows what to do.

09/27/23 11:11:02 – Goodbye, Ryan.

Maya’s parents left the city a few weeks after the funeral. She stayed behind, living alone in the downtown apartment her parents had bought and lived in since the ‘70s. They called her almost every day  to check in and make sure she was still going to college. Maya lied to keep them calm. But in reality, she hadn’t set foot on campus in months. The thought of returning to the same place where her brother had once studied felt like betrayal. What right did she have to move on when he couldn’t?

A few days after the funeral, Maya went into Ryan’s room. She searched through everything until she found an old notebook filled with entries he had written over the years. He talked constantly about feeling tired of everything, about not wanting to live anymore. Still, he never explicitly said he wanted to die. Maya blamed herself for never seeing the depression that had sunk in the person she once shared a womb with. How could the same person who made her laugh every morning at breakfast have done something like that, without saying a word? without leaving a note? She felt abandoned.

After she dropped out of school, the downward spiral began. Alcohol, weed, antidepressants, they all became part of her routine. She pushed everyone away. No one knew how to reach her.

On the nights she was too tired to party, Maya stayed up talking to strangers online. One day she came across a forum where people shared stories about trying to contact the dead. She slowly became obsessed. She tried to reach her brother through all kinds of DIY rituals and YouTube tutorials. She even bought a Ouija board. Nothing worked.

Around the anniversary of Ryan’s death, she asked her friend Faye to go with her to meet Johan, a guy she had met through one of those forums. He said he could help her contact her brother. Faye was scared but didn’t want Maya to go alone, especially after having been out of touch since the tragedy.

They met at 8:00 p.m., outside a bank across from the Sonora market, a place well known for selling witchcraft items and exotic animals for rituals, or at least that was the hearsay. Johan arrived fifteen minutes late. He was in his thirties, tall, brown-skinned, wearing a sleeveless shirt that showed off a rosary tattoo on his left arm. His short brown hair still had traces of bleach at the ends.

Without introducing himself, Johan motioned for them to follow him. For ten minutes, they walked behind him through the streets of what seemed to be a dangerous neighborhood until they arrived. There, on a corner, stood a crumbling, decrepit building. They walked down a long, unlit hallway until they stopped in front of a black metal door. Johan pulled out a massive keychain—at least thirty keys—and unlocked the door. He entered first, Maya followed, and Faye came last.

The room was dim. The only light came from candles on an altar dedicated to La Santa Muerte, which covered an entire wall. The rest of the room was almost empty—just a rusty metal table with two wooden chairs and a cot in the corner. Johan grabbed a couple of candles and placed them on the table. He asked Maya to sit in front of him, and told Faye she could sit on the cot. Then he asked them to silence their phones.

Maya took a photo of Ryan from her bag and handed it to Johan. He placed it in a small metal bowl.

“I need to talk to him,” Maya said.

Johan stood up and left the room. Maya and Faye exchanged glances in the dark.

“Maya, I really don’t think this—”

Johan returned, cutting Faye off, with a black hen in his hands.

“What’s the chicken for?” Maya asked.

“We can’t ask for anything from down there,” he replied, “unless we offer something from up here in return”.

Johan grabbed the hen by the head, pulled a knife from his sock, and with one swift motion, slit its throat. He immediately poured the blood into the bowl with Ryan’s photo and lit it on fire with one of the candles. He began to chant softly. The words were unintelligible. Soon, smoke from the burning photo filled the room like fog. Maya started coughing, waving her hands to clear the air and trying to see Johan’s face.

When her vision cleared, she saw Ryan sitting across from her. Johan was gone. Ryan was there, her brother—pale, decayed, his eye sockets hollow. Maya froze in terror. Before she could say a word, she fainted.

She woke up with an alcohol-soaked rag under her nose. She was still in Johan’s room. Faye crouched in front of her, panicked, begging her to leave. Maya pleaded with Johan to do it again. She told them she had seen Ryan—he had been right there—and she had to see him again, to talk to him. Johan said it wasn’t a good idea. He couldn’t risk something bad happening. Faye, furious, said enough was enough and practically dragged Maya out of the place.

They walked back toward the nearest subway station. It was around 11:00 p.m. The train platform was silent. Maya stared into nothing while Faye tried to distract herself with a book. Finally, the silence broke.

“Would you do one last thing for me?” Maya asked.

“That depends. If it’s about going to another creepy building to contact the other side, count me out”.

“Would you go with me to where Ryan died?” Maya said.

“Why would you wanna go where your brother died and why right now?

“Please. Just come with me”.

“Only because it’s late, Maya. I don’t want to leave you by yourself, but this is the last time”.

They jumped into the first train and after eight or nine stations, they arrived.

They walked to the end of the platform. Maya sat down on the floor, leaning her back against the same wall where Ryan had spent his final seconds.

“Now what? We’re here. What are you looking for?”

“Nothing. Just sit in front of me.”

Tired and annoyed, Faye sat down. Maya took out the half-burned photo of her brother, still stained with chicken blood.

Faye jumped to her feet.

“No, Maya. I’m not doing this again. Please stop, you are scaring me”.

Maya broke down in tears.

“Please help me. This is the last time, I promise. I just need to know why he did it”.

Faye felt sorry for her, she sat back down. Maya pulled a lighter and a small knife from her bag.

“What are you doing? You’re not a chicken, and you don’t even know the words Johan said, what are you now? a witch?”.

“Johan said we can’t ask for anything from down there if we don’t give something from up here”.

Maya dropped the photo into an empty coffee thermos and lit it on fire. Then she sliced the palm of her hand. As the first drops of blood hit the photo, she fainted again, just like she did in Johan’s.

She woke up in the same empty street, covered in fog. Everything was green. There was nothing but trash and smoke. She stood up and began walking. She saw the bridge and approached it—but this time, there was no sign of her brother. She ran up the stairs, searching. She walked to the spot where he had always stood. She looked down to the street below, and there he was—his blue bike beside him, alive and smiling just like the last morning they’d said goodbye.

Ryan smiled.

Maya didn’t see his lips move, but she heard his voice:

“If you want to understand me, you have to come with me.”

Faye spent the next two weeks in complete silence. She hadn’t even been able to give a statement. She couldn’t explain how or why Maya had jumped onto the tracks.

The surveillance footage shows both girls sitting. You can barely see the flicker of a lighter, followed by blood, and Maya fainting. As soon as she collapses, Faye gets up and runs for help. Maya slowly stands and walks to the edge of the platform. She stares into the void.

Faye returns with a security guard just as a train approaches. She screams and runs toward Maya, but it’s too late. The train enters the station, and Maya jumps.

09/23/24 23:47:02 – Goodbye, Maya.

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