I stood stricken at the top of the stairs and looked out onto the platform. Pure madness, strangely calm.
Both trains had just arrived at the station and people were swarming out of them and toward the stairs. Each individual desperately clinging to their inexistent personal space, looking straight ahead, as if ignoring the crowd meant that they were alone.
The same kind of people that would pretend to look at anything just to avoid acknowledging you when you’re strolling on the sidewalk, that would walk on the other side of the street just so they wouldn’t have to pass within a few metres of someone else, they were now crammed together on the all-too-narrow platform.
They slowly made their way to the stairs, still crammed, about to cram themselves out of the underground. And just think about how long they had been crammed together in the trains! A regular nightmare of the self-oriented, privacy-seeking, modern man.
Within seconds I found myself in the midst of these little antisocial robots and I was amazed. It was almost like standing in the sea and letting the waves break on your body, and it was nothing short of showing off the essence of what society has become. Simply one of those moments when you might have killed for a camera, but there was none. Instead, I just smiled.
He pushed me softly, encouraging me to go down the stairs, and I proceeded carefully against the apparently endless masses. When we got to the bottom I looked up at the train and it was just like one of those stories of the Japanese underground. A young woman stepped back and gathered momentum before flinging herself into the packed subway car. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was ridiculous or sad.
We decided to try our luck with the next train and I looked back to see the tail end of the swarm passing up the stairs; apparently not even subway masses are endless.
Ironically and somehow obviously enough, less than two minutes later we were in a nearly empty train, on our way home. And so, all the nutters on the platorm that crowded themselves into a train to save two minutes, were thoroughly owned.
~* The End *~
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