The reason I want to move back to a city

is that ideas simply collide with you.  Nothing particularly Metropolitan Diary-ish has to happen to you to make you think of things you never would otherwise.  For example, I was riding along on the Green Line when I had an idea that must have occurred to anyone who has ever ridden a ground-to-surface subway train in the last fifty years and ever, for any fleeting moment, wanted to Write.

Think of it: you're standing alone, one night somewhere between October and November, huddling in your greatcoat and wondering if you've missed the 11:35 after all.  It's the last on the schedule, and how else will you ever get home?  Then at 11:45, just when you're about to give up hope, a train wheezes up the line, and halts.  You mount, and pay, and take your seat, and the moment the last coin clinked in the till, you forget the conductor's face, just as you do every day.  And the train screeches up and onward, and you are so tired, you lean against the window, and think of nothing but the steam heat thawing your flesh and the needles of heat in your face.  The train passes underground, and around some black mine corner, it stops, as it always will.  And you think nothing of it, until the conductor says, Doors are opening to the right; and in from the cement walls come the dead.

They come from all stations and all times.  Some are ladies, shaking the dust and dogshit out of their great trains of jeweled crinoline.  Others are shopgirls and teachers, soft in plain black or houndstooth gowns, who smile a little by accident and show their snaggled teeth.  Some are townsmen with muttonchop whiskers and muttonfed bellies; some are boys in go-to-hell hats and short overalls.  All of them take a seat comfortably, for their fare was paid long ago.  A matronly woman seats herself besides you, and as the train pulls along, you feel her heavy skirts crowding your bare stocking-legs. 

So far, this has not horrified you.  The first footfall of the risen dead only cut you loose, made you lightheaded, as if you were under the ether at some subway dentist's.  The dead are not ghostly-pale, and now you can feel they have some heft and weight.  You look to this lady's face, which is coldly correctly forward just as yours had been, and this affords you an excellent view of the weeping red chancre at her neck.

Your gasping, gagging noises make no impression on the dead.  To each stop the train proceeds as usual; some alight and others wait.  No one boards at these stations; they are empty, shut for the night, because, you know, you did miss the 11:35.  But at last there is your stop, and you stagger to your feet, and make your way to the door.  Then you feel the conductor's arm across your chest.  You paid the full fare, miss, says he, and I ha'n't change for such a fare as that.  You got to ride to the End of the Line . . .

Oh come on really.  Somebody wrote a story like that, surely, and probably eighteen somebodies.  It sounds exactly like something I might have read in an anthology when I was growing up.  Can anyone tell me what it was?

Comments

[Legalpetrel]

I can't tell you where I've read it, but it does sound somewhat familiar...

Still, I'm sure you'd write it better.

[Ewin]

It's got maybe a few elements that are similar to Clive Barker's Meat Train story in one of the Books of Blood. But that's hardly enough to merit its not being written.

[hotmidnightcoffee]

Thanks, Ewin! Though I think I've written as much of it as sounds right. It would make a good Lynda Barry strip.

I saw one of the Books of Blood in a bookstore today, but it wasn't the right one. I think I'll try that one if I find it --

[Ewin]

All three of them are very good, and come with the Ewin seal of recommendation. :)