Blue

The train was twenty minutes late. No one seemed to care. Mark thumbed the cracked face of his father’s watch, its hands stuck at 3:17. It hadn’t worked in years, but he wore it anyway — out of habit. Or guilt. Or superstition.

The weight of it grounded him. Something solid in a day already skidding sideways.

The station was too quiet for rush hour.

No announcements. No footsteps. No impatient sighs. Only the stale hum of fluorescent lights — too bright, too sterile. An operating room, not a station.

He shifted his weight, eyes fixed on the tunnel’s black mouth. The train should’ve come and gone by now. The rush of air. The low steel rumble. Nothing.

He checked his phone. No signal. Not unusual underground, but the dead gray bars made his pulse tick faster.

He thought about asking someone if they had service. Then he looked around. The handful of passengers avoided his gaze. Pale faces. Tight lips. Eyes fixed on nothing.

Hands clutched their bags like life preservers. Statues pretending to breathe.

Mark turned back to the tracks.

At first, he thought the sound was in his head — a soft whisper, like wind through tall grass. Then it grew clearer. Dozens of voices murmuring in unison, low and wet, like water through cracks.

He stepped closer to the edge. Peered into the dark.

The voices stopped.

Then something answered.

One word, hissed from the tunnel like steam- “Stay.”

Mark staggered back. Breath jammed in his throat. The others didn’t move. Heads still bowed. Eyes glazed. Bodies rigid — as if listening to something only they could hear.

In his mind, the tunnel gaped wider, darkness pressing outward until it swallowed the platform.

He turned toward the stairwell — the way up — but it looked impossibly far, like in a dream.

He tried to move. His legs refused, welded to the tile.

Another whisper slid out. Not a word this time. A name.

His name.

Mark’s stomach knotted. He gripped the watch, pressing cracked glass into his palm.

You’re imagining this.

Then it came again. Closer. Drawn out, almost intimate—

“Maaark.”

He spun, desperate for a glance, a flinch, anything. But the others stood in their frozen rows.

One woman turned. Faded green coat.

Pupils blown wide, black swallowing brown. She smiled, but her skin didn’t move with it.

“You should listen,” she said, voice brittle as paper.

He couldn’t breathe. Wanted to ask what she meant. His throat refused.

The whispering surged back, louder now, tumbling over itself in a language that grated against bone.

Something brushed his shoe. He looked down.

A thin ribbon of water slid from the tunnel, glistening black. It curled around his foot like a finger.

The lights flickered.

When they came back on, half the people were gone.

Mark’s pulse slammed in his ears. He backed away from the edge.

The woman in green stayed. Her head tilted too far, joints bending wrong.

Behind her, the shadows had teeth. Not visible — felt. Pressure behind his eyes. The sense of being watched by something that smiled.

Then came the train sound. Distant, but real. The thud of wheels on tracks.

Relief flared, sharp and foolish. He stared into the tunnel, begging for the headlight to cut through the dark.

It did.

But not any train he knew.

The light shimmered pale and blue, bending the air like heat over asphalt.

Shapes writhed inside the glow — human shapes — mouths frozen in perfect circles of silence.

The rail beneath his feet vibrated. The whispering swelled. It wasn’t sound anymore, but something older. Something his bones remembered.

The woman in green reached for him. Her hand cold and slick, like river stones dredged from a lake.

“It’s almost here,” she whispered. “Don’t fight. You’ll only make it worse.”

Mark yanked free, bolting for the stairs.

He clutched the watch like a lifeline, metal biting skin. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.

His feet pounded the steps. The roar followed, curling up his legs, sliding under his skin. The light climbed after him, hungrier with every breath.

He burst through the station doors — into nothing. No cars. No buildings. Only an endless plain of cracked stone beneath a sky the color of ash.

The stairs were gone. Behind him, only air.

Something shifted at the horizon — a line of figures, still as statues, their shapes bending in the shimmer. He thought he heard her voice again, soft as thread- It’s all right now. You’re almost home.

Mark stepped forward. His shadow stretched long. The figures began to move.

They drew closer, resolving into forms that weren’t quite human. Too many joints. Faces smooth and wrong, mouths hanging open like hinges. Greeting. Or hunger.

The ground shuddered underfoot. A crack split the stone, glowing blue from its depths.

The glow spread like veins. A low sound rose — a train whistle, far away, or something wearing its voice.

Wind surged upward, hot and metallic.

The air tasted of rust and salt. The figures dropped to their knees, heads bowing as if in prayer. The light poured between them, thick as water, and the horizon folded inward.

Mark clutched the watch, breath scraping his throat. Where could he run? There was no edge, only the blue widening, eating stone.

The watch slipped. It struck once, chimed like a bell, then vanished into the crack. Mark lunged, fingers grazing nothing. Too late. The blue surged upward like a tide breaching its banks. Veins of light raced through the stone, branching fast, splitting until the ground beneath him glowed like ice on fire. A low sound rose from the depths. Not a train whistle — something older, wearing its voice like a mask.

Heat punched through the fissure, thick with the taste of rust and salt. Wind tore across the plain, hot as breath from an open furnace. On the horizon, the figures dropped to their knees, heads bowed in worship. Blue pooled between them, spilling like water, dragging their shadows long and sharp across the stone. The horizon bent, folding inward like paper in a burning hand.

Mark clutched at the air where the stairs had been. His breath came raw, shallow.

Where could he run? There was no edge now — only light, swelling wider, devouring earth and sky. Faces drifted in the glow, pale and slow, as if suspended in deep water.

Some screaming. Some smiling. One was his own.

The blue touched his feet — cold, slick, a mouth sealing shut. The sound swelled inside him, crowding out thought. A thousand voices. Or one. Pressing against his bones like hands. You were always coming back.

He clawed for the watch, but it was gone.

The first voice that spoke was his father’s.

The second was his own. He opened his mouth to scream — and another voice answered. From everywhere.