Darian and Sally
“I caused you to be out here.”
“How do you think you can control me?” Darian circled three-sixty in the center of the nearly deserted subway station seeing only one man heading for the stairs to street level. The man looked at Darian and picked up his pace, shortly leaving Darian alone.
“It’s because of me. The Doctor told you I was a figment. He told you to come at any time you needed if I returned. Did you wonder, why it is you know things you couldn’t know, except I have told them to you? How does your Doctor explain that?”
Darian sighed. “He said it was disassociated cognizance. Things my subconscious heard or seen that I was unaware of. Why now, after all these months. I thought you were gone.” Why did he feel so helpless when Sally spoke to him? Grimacing, he rubbed both temples as he spoke to the air. “Sally? You still there?”
“Yes, I wanted you to come here, now at this time. I knew you would if I spoke to you at home.”
“Why, this will be the train to the north city; to my Doctor?” Releasing the pressure on his temples, he looked right and left finding no one present.
“You made a mistake. You shouldn’t have told anyone about me. We can get along. We have for years. I’ve been good to you, for you.” Sally sounded hushed as though sad.
“Please, let me go. Stop coming. I can’t do anything for you, Sally.” He looked down at the subway tile beneath his feet. Head bowed, he spoke to Sally, “Alright, why now. I thought we had broken up.”
“Interesting way to put it. We were never dating. Your Doctor will put you away if you tell him about what happens next.” Now, Sally sounded apologetic.
“WHAT! What do you want? Please, Sally, go away.” The air fairly crackled, and he could feel the rumble of the cars on the track approaching the bend growing in intensity through the tile.
“Now, Darian.”
There were grinding and screeching of iron on iron with a thud and sounds of breaking glass as a great billowing cloud of dust and debris filled the tunnel entrance.
Darian gaped down the manmade hole, then threw his arm over his face as the exhaled breath of disaster washed over him. Was that screaming he heard in the distance, only fleeting before the silence? Smoke followed the cloud, heat and hot plastic assaulted his nostrils. He looked up, and the ceiling vents were sucking up the vapors.
Sally piped up, “Wait for it, Darian.”
He ran a few feet toward the wreck he knew was there invisible in the smoke and stopped. “Get out of my head,” he pleaded with Sally.
“Now, Darian. They will need you.”
They came. The passengers, floating along the tracks, climbing over the edge of the platform and swarming around Darian. In their translucence, they passed by him, around him and through him.
He dropped to his knees and covered his face. “Oh my God. Sally, what is this? Are these people dead?”
“Go to the stairs. You and I will be a beckon. When I will call them they will see you. You will point the way. Darian move now, help them. Many will be lost to the earth if you don’t guide them to the light.”
Darian dropped his hands, looked at the hapless spirits milling about and screamed, “All right, I’m going!”
In his mind, he heard, “This way, come this way,” as Sally called them.
As each spirit passed by at his direction they looked at him and mouthed a silent Thank You as they moved up the steppes fading in the daylight at the top.
