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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Subway Hunter
A Guest Quarters story
By
Justin Bernstein

A steady rumble and an unsteady floor. The oblivious passengers hunker deeply into the contour of plastic seats; the knuckles of cowards turn as pale as the poles to which they cling. Some of them know of the predation, but they will do nothing. I am their only defense, the Seeker of Signs. My head is always moving, always searching for Signs of the Beasts. Across from me, a bony hand clutches a purse to a frail heart, as if the animal-skin talisman can save her.

Eyes always on me. Eyes draped in world-weary lids, eyes bobbing above a sea of newspapers. The crinkling of papers at rush hour is the insistent tide that brings them forth each morning. They learn of the world from straight black lines, but they do not see the colorful Signs around them. Or if they see them, they try to ignore them. But denial offers no protection; the Beasts' claws will pierce you just the same with your eyes closed. Though, they prefer that you watch them work.

I do not know how long I have been hunting; as with the rings of a tree, it might be possible to tell the duration of my quest by the layers of grime accreted to my skin. But I have no time for personal archaeology now. Instead, I whisper entreaties to the spirits. They can't always be counted on to help, but the spirit words are hard to form with the human tongue, and the challenge helps me stay awake. After twenty or thirty repetitions, a thin sheet of paper begins to slide across the ground. It heads down the aisle, gathering speed until it has enough to leap into the air. I creak to my feet and follow it. It spirals idly for a moment, and then flies straight at the wall, battering out its brief life. The violent motion pulls my attention to the next Sign.

Before I can examine the Sign, the door nearest it hisses open and the busy-blind crowd rushes in. I stamp my feet and clear a space with my elbows; I need a clear view to decipher its meaning. Two squares, overlapping. They are drawn in hazy clouds of blood, the edges outlined in ash. Beasts eat only rare meat, but sometimes they feed their victims to fire. Their hunger can be temporarily assuaged, but never their hatred. How could people mistake these marks of eternal rage for the youthful rebellion in a spray can?

An insistent voice in my ear, raspy as my grandfather's slippered feet in the kitchen: "The Sign is clear. Beneath Union Square you will find a den of the Beasts." The old spirit is wise. Without him, I would have lost my way long ago. Another voice, garbled but insistent, reverberates down the length of the subway car. It is not one of my guardian spirits, but still I listen. It is a voice of prophecy, and thus a tortured voice. Maybe one day, when I am free myself, I will free the oracle. But, for now, I must take its gift: "Next stop will be 14th street, Union Square."

The oracle speaks of the future, but its words pull my mind to the past, to the weekend mornings when Elizabeth and I strolled through the farmer's market in Union Square. When I was on my medication, my appetite was suppressed along with my ability to see the Signs, but I could still smell. The scents of daffodils, caramel apples, and rhubarb pies. And feel. Her small hand in mine. The sunlight played among the tents and across our faces. In the good times, I saw nothing beneath smiles but happiness. And then the newspapers started to report on the brutal murders, and the blundering police investigation, and I knew that I was the only one who could find the real killers. I could not remain selfishly blind any longer.

I will not be going to the surface this day. The nervous crowd around me begins to mutter, but their curses cannot harm me. I am the Seeker of Signs, and I have my bottles with me. They clink reassuringly in my bag every time that the floor shifts. The void inside the empty bottles will drink any curse before it can blister my skin. I don't need to gather those now though because every one of the Beasts is already terribly cursed. What I am going to need are protective blessings. Kind words are rarer, but the desperate-keen ear can find them. In this city, bottles and words are thrown away as thoughtlessly as lives.

The doors twitch apart and I am the first one out. My march is accompanied by war music. A skinny African sits cross-legged on the platform with his back to a concrete column. His hands tumble down to the skin of a drum, and his voice is somehow always rising, always climbing towards a promised climax. He sings of me! Whether I triumph or die today, I will live forever in a song.

I move toward the blinking Exit sign, where the air is less prickly-evil. Beard itches, always the same patch of skin on my chin. Elizabeth used to caress my newly shaven cheeks each morning, no matter how late she was running to work. I rest my spine against a wall near the stairs, and take the battered hat from my head to place on the ground.

The gift gathering ritual begins. For it to work, I cannot offer anything in exchange for the coins, no stories or songs, just the sight of a man in need. The coins must be given freely to set an open trap of obligation. Beasts care nothing for money, but they can be ensnared by gifts because they lack the escape of altruism.

Two laughing women with sad eyes drop their guilt into my hat. A tall man in a suit sees me out of the corner of his hard eyes, slows to dig half-kind fingers in his pocket, and then shrugs apologetically before walking away. He has nothing to offer anyone. The staccato of a woman in high-heels stops in front of me. She fishes delicately in her purse and floats a dollar bill down to me. Useful for potions but not the right shape and weight for combat. Impractical. The woman is dangerously impractical. The Beasts love the click-click and the proud hobbling and the comically slow chase.

The Beasts are not ignorant of the gathering ritual, or the danger that it poses them. So, I watch for the human puppets they use as spies. Many depraved faces float by on the stream of humanity through the turnstiles, but all of it is human sin. Then a shiver takes me. Sunglasses over what I know are dead eyes. Face covered in sweat heated almost to a boil by the fever beneath the ghoulish white skin. A black worm writhes in his ear, its sinuous body brushing down his cheek very close to whispering lips before burrowing beneath the collar of his overcoat. This is no mundane cellular slave.

I open my bag and run my hands over the bottles. The puppet will not act until it receives orders, and that gives me the few seconds that I need. I find the forty-ounce bottle and hold it up to my ear. The curse inside rattles vigorously; my three-day-old catch is still fresh. With a flick of my wrist, I send the bottle to smash against the wall by the puppet's head. The puppet does not even flinch as shards of glass spill on its leather shoes, but it does react when the trapped words hit it: "Get lost!" The angry words of a nightshift utility worker, fermented with the exasperated sighs of a retiree, are strong enough to bewilder everyone on the platform. The puppet is especially affected because of its weak mind, and it stumbles away aimlessly.

I scoop up my hat and pour the charged coins into my pockets. The confusion from the curse allows me to climb down to the tracks without anyone noticing. Even before I reach the tunnel floor, I can feel the humming power of the third rail. When my foot first touches the track, I am blinded. I float in the white stomach of a storm cloud. My eyes fail, but the hairs on my arms straighten and sway like canes to help me navigate the tunnel. With the power coursing through me, I can sense walls and doors as I near them. I can also sense the emotional stains of anger and torment, so I am sure that I am getting close. I do not expect any sentries because the Beasts cannot imagine someone willingly coming to them. Even so, I pause to ready my defenses.

I smash my blessing bottles one by one on the ground. "Take care", "Stay well", "Don't worry", and lastly "I love you." Love, though not strictly a blessing, spools out of the wine bottle in a luxurious thread to bind all of the layers together into one cloak. The cloak clings protectively to my weary limbs, and as I walk it flutters minutely, tenderly, to divert the sickening fumes of the tunnel from my face. The cloak would have been stronger if the words were from my own family, but I can't risk being near them when I see the Signs.

My hairs are tugged towards a strange mass protruding from the wall at the height of my heart. I run my fingers over it. The top is a dome, smooth and cold as porcelain. The sides are more rough and angular. Below the dome, my thumbs sink into two voids, and my right palm touches the only soft part of this object, two plump lines like earthworms mating. Somehow, my skin still remembers the feel of a kiss. I am touching a human skull with flesh left only on the lips.

I drop my hands and take a deep breath. Then I unsheathe my knife and take a second long breath. In my years of hunting, I have been scalded by acid drool and felt my skin tear in the grip of ravenous suction cups, all without crying out, but there is something more terrible about calmly inflicting a wound on myself. I clench my fist and then cut a thin line across my forearm. I raise my elbow and let my blood drip down to the lips of the obscene skull. Beasts are not allowed back into the den without fresh food to share. I am dizzy by the time that the door is sated enough to swing open.

Long limbs uncoil frantically in the darkness. They sense my blessings, or the irresistible freshness of my wound. I must act swiftly. I can feel the hunger coming off of them in waves. I try to scatter coins to every corner of the cave, but a tentacle slaps down on my foot, instantly shattering all of the small bones there. It begins to suck the shards of bone through the pulp of shoe and skin, but my next coin strikes true and it falls into a stupor. Beasts are normally swifter than snakes, but here in their den they are unprepared and too heavy from gorging to avoid the coin traps. They cannot harm me once they receive the gifts, but I can harm them.

My knife moves again and again, tracing a helix through their scales. The waves of demonic hunger turn to fear, and then to silence. The only sounds in the room are my ragged breath and a faint steam from the blade of my knife. My scalded fingers let it drop to the floor; a knife can only do so much. Perhaps my hunting is done. Perhaps I can finally close my eyes to the Signs and return to my family and the world of surfaces.

Echoes of step, pain, step, pain limp down the tunnel until I place my maimed foot upon the third rail. Sparks prod the bone fragments back together, their frantic light throwing shadows against the wall. Dark tentacles creep away from me across the concrete to merge into a denser pool of shadow at the height of my foot. The Sign is clear; my hunt is not over. Beasts are fleeing to another den nearby. I am able to run now, and I do. In my mind, I say good-bye to the memories of my wife and daughter. I cannot stop now. Maybe, someday, but not now.

END

Justin Bernstein likes rethinking commonsense from first-principles. Sometimes this leads him to unique wisdom, sometimes it leaves him stumbling like a runaway child. He wrote the story ?Subway Hunter? with the aid of an unlimited subway pass and the denizens of New York City.  Justin has written in a range of mediums, including news articles, comedy sketches, magazines, novels, and collectible card games. He daydreams through elaborate story ideas wherever he walks, which is now usually in Austin, Texas, where he lives with his miraculous wife in what should be recognized as bliss.

Story by Justin Bernstein, Copyright 2010
Image by Rory Clark, Stopped Motion Photography, Copyright 2010