The rumbling of the metro train echoed across the underground as it passed by Quill. Another missed chance he thought. Another one should come by in a few minutes he noted as he glanced at the electrical sign that showed the train times.
He sat on the bench in the empty train station, the hour was late, he’d have checked his phone if it hadn’t been taken from him on his walk here by some mugger. He’d probably be more upset if he didn’t feel so damn tired. It felt like both his jobs were slowly draining him of his very life force. Like some corporate soul sucking vampire machine… Thing… So basically just your typical corporation.
Every day it was get up, eat what food he could scrap together or afford. Head to job number one, head to job number two, head home and fall asleep. Rinse and repeat.
On a day when he was both lucky and cursed to work only one of his jobs that day he’d basically use the free time to dissociate. Watching videos where his brain just turned off. He didn’t have much energy for anything else.
He would say he felt dead but he was pretty sure death wouldn’t be so miserable…. A soft chuckle escaped his lips at such an edgy thought. His 13 year old self would be oh so proud.
He leaned back on the uncomfortable bench. Damn thing had some hostile architecture to keep homeless people from sleeping on it so he couldn’t even lie down thanks to the jagged bumps on the seating area.
Quill tilted his head up towards the ceiling. His mind drifted this way and that never really settled on any thought. The lack of sound slowly disappeared as the faint sound of another train could be heard off in the distance.
Another chance. He leaned forward. The musky stale air of the station seemed more prevalent then before as he took a deep breath to steal his nerves.
He craned his head to look down the track and could see the lights of the metro getting brighter the closer it got. The screeching of the rails signifying that it was slowing down as it neared the station.
The muscles in his leg tensed, his lips felt dry, he just needed to push forward. He wouldn’t have to work at his soul crushing job, he wouldn’t have to worry about heading home to a dilapidated empty apartment, he wouldn’t have to worry about the ever oppressive society crushing and tearing at him, he wouldn’t have to worry about the ever present loneliness and… Nothing. He couldn’t do it yet again.
The screeching of the metro slowly came to a stop as he stared at it. The doors opened and only a couple people filtered outside to make their way to the escalator.
He watched the train leave and stared at the tunnel at its departure…. Wait… “That was the train I needed to get home..” He murmured…
Damn depression! If it was going to make him suicidal it could not be so inconvenient about it! The very least it could do was make him follow through! If not then have the decency for him to register basic ass things he needed to do if he wasn’t going to kill himself!
Quill rubbed his eyes and let out a sigh “Damn I am so tired.” He’d have probably just fallen asleep here if it weren’t for the blasted bench!
Deciding he needed to get up and move a bit he stood and fished his old headphones out of his somewhat worn bag. He had this bag for so long he couldn’t even remember where or when he had gotten it. But despite the worn features it still held sturdy and he loved the old thing.
“Almost inspirational if you ask me” Quill said and the silence of the station greeted him. Thankfully there was no one there to give him weird looks as he placed the headphones over his ears and clicked shuffle to his mp3 player.
He began to pace, letting his head slightly bop up and down to the beat of the song. He didn’t need to bother thinking in these moments. Just him and the music. Nothing else mattered.
Perhaps that was why he didn’t quite notice the smoke in the station until it was blanketing the entire ceiling by what he could only guess was a few inches.
“What the hell?” Quill murmured as he finally noticed the gray smoke. He sniffed the air but it still smelled of the musty old train station. There were no panicked screams that he figured might accompany a fire that could produce this much smoke. Even if this platform was empty where he was there were still other platforms in the station.
Plus there was just no heat. So perhaps the fire was far away? But why was there so much smoke? Maybe a train collision in the tunnels? He peeked over the rails and looked down the tunnels in both directions but saw nothing.
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“Well regardless, I should probably get out of here. I might be suicidal but dying by fire or smoke inhalation seems like a bad way to go.” He spoke to himself and turned to make his way towards the escalators.
Jogging at a decent pace since he still didn’t know where the fire was and didn’t want to run head first into it, he cleared the escalators quickly and ducked his head to keep it from getting into the smoke that had gotten further down from the ceiling.
That was when he saw wisps of the smoke start to slowly descend to the ground in a manner similar to an ice finger of death and most certainly not how smoke is supposed to behave.
The moment these whisps touched the ground it quickly started spreading out and Quill decided letting something like that touch him probably wasn’t a good thing and picked up the pace as the wisps began to descend more and more.
Sadly the smoke clearly didn’t seem to want him to escape (A sentence he never thought he would think) because a veritable wall of smoke suddenly fell in front of him cutting off his exit and he slid to a stop, promptly turned the other direction and ran hoping to find an emergency exit by the train tracks. Suddenly he watched another wall of smoke descend in front of him boxing him with the two smoke walls and two concrete walls preventing him from going anywhere.
Another wisp of smoke descended just above his head and he quickly dove to the side, awkwardly flopping on the ground cursing at the pain shooting through his body. Another wisp began to descend this one above him as well and rolled to the side not wanting any of this supposed smoke to touch him.
It was at this point that the wisps of smoke were now directly targeting him. Each one was descending where he was or had been though moving slow enough that he could get out of the way.
Then the wisps started falling in front of him and it didn’t take a genius to realize that they were herding him towards one of the stone walls of the metro station.
It took perhaps a couple more minutes before he was finally boxed in and watched as one of the wisps started to make its way towards him. Whatever was about to happen, he just had to accept his unknown fate. Who knows. Maybe nothing would.
He faced the wisp as it descended only for it to stop a foot away from his face and Quills eyebrows knitted together as he stared at the wisp and a frown started to stretch across his face.
“Really? You box me in and chase me around like this only to stop just before finishing whatever it is you're doing?! Are you just screwing me with me here” The smoke gave no reply cause of course it fucking didn’t. It was smoke!
“Great. I am going insane. Or maybe I did jump in front of that train and am now in some near death delusion state” The smoke yet again didn’t reply and he glowered at it.
“Going to ignore me then? Well if I am delusional then I am going to have to tell you, you smoke monster thing, that you need to freaking commit If you're going to chase someone down. So commit!” And promptly jumped up letting his head not just hit the wisp of smoke but submerged his head into the blanket of smoke that was above.
Quill swore he heard a high giggle chiming in his ears that seemed to contain both malice, joy, relief and love all in one before the smoke completely converged on him.
It suddenly felt like every pore, every orifice suddenly opened to allow the smoke to enter him as a searing, burning, pleasant, wonderful, agonizing, icy heat struck through his body making his mind scream in the feelings and emotions that were and weren’t his, overwhelming him.
Time almost seemed to stop and he didn’t know how long the feeling lasted before suddenly it was gone. There was no smoke, there was nothing. He just sat there on the floor of the metro station with his back once more against the wall.
Quill very shakily stood up, his legs wobbling back a bit as he looked around with confusion. “Great. I actually am going insane” he muttered but to perhaps just make sure, he wobbled a little bit over to the kiosk with a guard inside that was by the train gates and knocked on the window where a guy sat watching something on his phone.
He looked up blinking, clearly not expecting someone to be knocking on the window and sat up looking at him confusingly.
“Hi, um.” Quill's voice faltered slightly as he wasn’t sure how to express without sounding crazy and not thinking of a way too he decided to just… Well commit.
“You didn’t happen to see a very large blanket of smoke that kinda engulfed the whole station that seemed to move and have a mind of its own did you?”
The guard gave him an odd look and spoke “Hey man, I am all for smoking but you aren’t supposed to do that in the metro”
That wasn’t really what he said at all. How does someone even think he is smoking from the sentence he just uttered??? But he guessed he got his answer anyways. Delusions and hallucinations it is! Yay…
Quill turned around and headed back down the escalator to wait for the next train that would come. He would have to schedule an appointment with a psychologist and psychiatrist.. Is what he would say if he could have afforded one. Maybe this was a one time thing. Surely that would.
His body lurched as he made it back to the uncomfortable bench he sat on, fell to his hands and knees and vomited up what little he had in his stomach. “What the fucking hel-” He vomited again.
Okay yeah. Something was definitely wrong with him. Now should he tempt fate and ask if it could get any worse?
Initializing system
“I was fucking kidding! Why is this even happening???” Quill screamed out as another hallucination popped up in front of him in the form of a translucent screen with some text.
Error with user! Please stand by to reintegrate.
“The death of the soul begins at stagnation my love”
Reintegration success
Initializing system