Chapter 3: Subway Encounter

Bronx, NY

Mr. Lin had been true to his word, besides the letter there had been a small card listing where to meet and where.

Upper Westside, Manhattan at 11PM on Friday.  Two days after we met.

I didn’t even know Lawyers worked that late.  I guess money doesn’t just fall from the sky just because you have a J.D.

After school, I headed straight home and stocked up on things that I might need.  Since my foster parents were hoarders, there was plenty of scrounging to be had.  I got lucky and found a packet of those fruitjellies which I devoured.  It was nowhere near enough, not to mention probably expired, but hey, small wins.

I packed my pink backpack with what I needed.  A flashlight, my waterbottle, and –don’t go calling the cops now– a gravity knife.  It’s probably the most expensive thing I own, not to mention being straight up illegal.  But like I said, I don’t live in a good part of the Bronx.  Never did.  I also packed my flip phone, one of those old ones that can be used as a brick or probably survive a nuclear holocaust.

As a general rule, I don’t have a lot of expensive electronics.  It has something to do with being poor and attracting the wrong kind of attention.  I have to make every dollar count, so no fragile smartphones whose screen cracks at the slightest touch or might get me mugged.

I actually don’t mind.  Being raised in the foster system meant a lot of downsizing, making sure the entirety of my life can be summed up into a black garbage bag.  There’s a difference between things I need and things I want as well as things I should have.  Everything else just becomes more trouble than they’re worth when it comes time to inevitably move.

I got dressed in my gray hoodie, faded black jeans and left the house at 9:30PM.

My foster parents didn't budge from the couch, the TV volume set to max.

I walked quickly, leaving deep footprints in the snow.  Most people out at this time of night wore parkas lined with fur.  I folded my arms over my chest, shoving my hands into my hoodie sleeves.  It took me only a few minutes to reach the subway and no one gave me any trouble.  

Like most New York City subways, the place reeked of sewage, rat droppings and piss.

The City in a nutshell.

My school issued metrocard stops working after 8PM.  So I had to jump the turnstile to make the train or risk missing it.

I hurried in.

There were three other people in the car.  I sat across from the elderly couple, setting my backpack on my knees.  The grandma smiled and I smiled back, looking at the other end to see the last passenger.

It was a homeless guy, wrapped up in so much cloth that he more tent than a human.  It was strange, cause the cops are pretty strict about that now.  New York started this silent initiative a few years back to ‘clean up the streets’ in a quite literal way.  

The government put ridges on hot vents and public benches so that homeless people can’t lay down on them.  Cops patrol Penn Station and Grand Central to try and keep it from becoming another homeless den.  I used to be homeless and those places were the only source of warmth in a New York winter

I don’t know.  Winter’s not any colder than before; I think it might be people’s hearts that might have frozen over though.

Regardless, the individual had banished themselves to the far end of the car and lay in a heap of cloth on the floor.

The grandma caught me looking at the homeless guy and gave me a sympathetic smile.  I grinned back then went back to staring out the window.  On the second stop, the elderly couple got off.

Just one stop left.

I huddled inwards, shaking my leg and shivering all over to try and preserve body heat.

“Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

This whole thing still felt like a dream.  A lawyer dropping by school to tell me that my parents left me an inheritance?  Fat chance.  Plus, this inheritance was apparently important enough for people to fight over.  And that the people who were fighting over said inheritance were actually family.

I don’t think I ever thought about family.  Ever since my parents died, it’s been just me being bounced from one foster home to another; being the 'new kid' or 'transfer kid' again and again.  My days were filled with trying to survive each day… not thoughts about people who could help me.  My entire life, I did everything myself and for myself.

That’s why it made me so mad.  That these guys who didn’t give two shits about me before were coming in to take what my parents had left for me.  That the name ‘family’ was just a convenient excuse for them to come and take everything.

The whole situation was made doubly worse by the letter.  I’d gotten a taste of something that filled up this emptiness.  An ache that was partially soothed by my father’s writing, even if I didn’t understand all of it.  Reading it had felt like getting ahold of an old blankie, or a teddie bear.  I needed more and the fact that people who knew my parents were gatekeeping it pissed me off.

“This sucks.”  I said to no one else in particular.

It could be a prank, which made me wonder which was worse.  The fact that the only family I had left in the world was out to screw me over or the fact that this whole thing was an elaborate hoax.  Another Metube prank, where I end up famous as the poster boy for ‘sucker’.  The video would be titled ‘WATCH THIS ORPHAN GET PRANKED!’.

The train’s announcement resounded once more, “This is the Brooklyn bound…”

This was my stop.

When I stood up, the homeless guy stood up too.

…What?

Then he started stripping.

“What the…”  I started, then shut up.

Because my instincts screamed at me to get out, only I couldn’t, because the door was still shut.

There was no reason or rhyme to this onset of panic and fear.  I’ve encountered plenty of homeless people and a lot of them strip.  They strip down mostly to take a shit, in the middle of the street, the subway janitor’s mop cart thingie and even in fast food restaurants.  The first time I saw this, I just panicked because I’d never encountered anything like it before.

This feeling though, it was something else entirely.  It made me freeze, the way prey does when they know they’re being hunted.  That split microsecond the brain spends between fight or flight, the smallest window of opportunity for the predator when the nerves are still relaying lightning-fast messages.  My senses went into overdrive like never before; I could feel my pupils widen and my toes curl, ready to step on the proverbial accelerator.

Still, time didn’t stop like it does for superheroes in the movies.  I watched in horror as the homeless man stripped off the large puffy jacket off one shoulder and revealed not skin, but feathers.  Spiky navy blue-black feathers that stood upright with the quills digging long disgusting grooves underneath his skin yet making the man seem more naked than before.

Bright eyes gleamed from underneath the hood.

And what looked like a beak with serrated fang-like protrusions covering the whole dull yellow thing, opened up.  His tongue flicked out, long and barbed.

Then the thing shrieked.

Not loud, but not quiet either.

I felt the scream in my soul.

“...fuck.”  I finished lamely.  “Uh, the bathroom is that way?”

God, please don’t let those be my last words.

The subway doors opened.

My instincts honed from living on the streets of New York took over.

I bolted.