I deflated in a seat next to a lumpy schizo' bag lady that I recognized from monday evening. She was still asleep and gnawing on the filter from a Newport cigarette I watched her pick up from the floor. Or maybe it was her own tongue; I couldn't tell the difference. The glowing board looming above us all sputtered and flicked to let us know that the 9:07 train to Trenton was departing on Track 4. Like cows being electrocuted to the slaughter, an undulating wave of humans gushed forward. I watched them bottleneck through the scuffed gold door, refusing to try and open the other half which would increase their spillage. At 9:08, only those left behind remained. Slowly, people trickled back on to the waiting room floor, staring at the board, fidgeting and directionless. Anticipating the illuminated god above to tell them where to go.
The bag ladies head slipped off the armrest and lolled onto my forearm. Yellow drool leaked out of her pigish orifice onto me. Disgusted, I wiped my arm up into her hair. There the globule sat and stared at me, while I could feel other eyes making themselves at home on my character, in their abhorance of it.
Two seats to my left sat a red haired man, with an awful goatee hunched over a mall sized pretzel. I only noticed that his grey t-shirt was tucked into blue pocketless sweatpants when he stood up to throw a monster sized bag full of pretzel wrappers in the trash. When he rose, his entire being groaned. A gut hung over the elastic with the authority of a toddler attempting to escape the confines of their play-pen. Fidgeting for a moment with the draw-string of his sweats, his stubby digits managed to get the knot untied. Thumbs locked in place, he flung his arms forwards and exposed an entire panoramic view of his genitalia. Paying careful attention that his shirt did not get tucked back in, he pulled it up to expose breasts a size shy of my own. He threw his bag in the can and cracked a joke about LeBron James, and his eyes met mine. His grin quickly turned shit-eating. Putting his left hand back in his pants, he grabbed around for a while then showed me what he had been trying to find. An un-circumcised dick laughed harder at me then his friends had. They got tired of the joke when I observed that if that was the only thing going for him, he better finish getting his GED. Red-faced, he relocated at the other end of the ever narrowing room. I heard the clunk and clatter of the plastic numbers and letters again. Another heard rushed to their track to be crucified. As before, the remnants who missed the train found seats amongst the already tardy in the room.
Two confused old ladies in slippers and hair the color of robins eggs shuffled past me with a mountain of luggage chattering in hopes of catching their train. Someone near the gate notified them that it had already left. One took the empty seat beside me, while the other went to find somewhere to relieve her bowels. I watched a young man offer candy bars to tourists. I laughed when they fell for his trick. For those unaware; Once you take the candy from the seemingly generous youth, they ask you to pay for it. When you try to give it back, they won't accept it. A few maneuvers and smooth talking later, they force you to overpay for candy you could have purchased from the vending machine near the ticket booths. This went on for some time, until the station police chased him back upstairs. He'd get more money up there anyway.
The other old woman re-appeared in front of me, so I stood up to offer her my seat. Without letting me finish my sentence ( and without stopping hers...) she pushed me aside to slump into the depths of my seat. She didn't so much as look at me, or offer a ' thank you'. Seatless and annoyed, I roamed in and out of clumps of humans. One shoved me, another made a sound of contempt at my passing. A third threw their McNugget container towards the the trash can but bounced it off of my head instead. No apologies, just a shrug and an about-face. I picked my nose and wiped the bounty on his PRADA bag as I strolled by.
Again, the board fluttered for the last time. The New Jersey Coast line to Long Branch left from Track 1. Pushed and trampled over, I quickly became one with the mob. We were forced into a long, white, sterile hallway with cold rectangular fluorescent lights. Tripping down the stairs, I felt a hand grab my ass. Another teared at my ribs. Someone else grasped at the back of my neck. I was just dead meat to them.
Sitting next to the window in the sixth seat, of the fourth car, it dawned on me that I have to spend the next seventy-five minutes confined in this sardine can with this lost, tired, disgusting, valueless mob that I had slowly become a member of.
We pulled out.
I fell asleep.
And dreamed of overly-salty sea air that smelled of rust and garbage.
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