Delayed

Beep beep beep!

Jérôme sat straight up out of bed and turned off his clamorous alarm clock with a violent smack. He rubbed his crusty eyes and yawned loudly. Though it was still quite dark out, pale yellow light flickered through the curtains from the street and the occasional car speeding past his window cast dancing shadows on the walls. He sat for a moment drinking in the silence, mentally preparing for his long day. Then, as if he was catching up on lost time, he vaulted out of the sheets and dressed himself from a pile of neatly folded clothes on his nightstand.

For a good ten minutes, he stood in front of his mirror and fidgeted here and there with his belt, his hair, his buttons and so on and so forth. Finally, when he was satisfied with what he saw, he ran downstairs to inhale some food. After slurping down his plain yogurt, he burned the roof of his mouth on his steaming black coffee, but he didn’t even seem to notice; his mind was elsewhere entirely. In fact, he hardly spent a moment at the table before he had his shoes on and was out the door with his luggage in tow.

The last stars flickered in the twilight and he checked his wristwatch: 5:46. His flight was scheduled to take off at 7:30, and though normally he would have liked to have left with more time to spare, on account of it being so early and on a Thursday he felt confident in arriving on time. Nevertheless, he began to sweat a little as he raced down the winding cobblestone streets towards the nearest metro station. 

As usual, a steady wind blew up the stairwell of the station, throwing up dust, plastic bags, loose sheets of paper and various other debris into the air. Jérôme batted away an airborne candy wrapper and squinted his eyes. As he reached the turnstiles he noted a gaggle of people in front of the only ticket kiosk. They were talking loudly among themselves and several showed terribly exasperated expressions. Jérôme stood behind them and waited for his turn to purchase a ticket, but the group didn’t budge and Jérôme cursed himself for not refilling his metro card earlier that month. The people simply argued louder and louder until, finally, one particularly plump lady in a pink dress approached him.

“Excuse me, señor!” the lady shouted at Jérôme in English. “We’re not from here and the machine is stuck only in Spanish, we were wondering…”

“It’s Portuguese, Portuguese you dummy!” shouted an old man in a fedora. 

“Oh shush, you! Whatever, Portuguese then. Anyway, could you help us buy some tickets for the train ride?”

Jérôme was beside himself with impatience, but readily agreed to aid the irritating group of tourists. After they all received their tickets they hurriedly thanked him and began arguing among themselves immediately afterwards. Jérôme bought his own ticket and flew through the turnstile. He checked his watch: 6:17. Just enough time, he reassured himself, but he knew he surely wouldn’t get there early.

Turning a corner onto the platform, Jérôme was greeted with his train shutting its doors and zooming off into the tunnel without him. The group who he had assisted just moments before were comfortably on board, still arguing of course. Jérôme checked the schedule and saw that another train would arrive in five minutes or so, though now he really began to regret not leaving sooner.

The platform was in a cavernous room that reached far up to the surface where skylights just barely began to reflect the rising sun. The mutter of distant trains echoed rhythmically through the tunnels and Jérôme checked his watch again: 6:24. The damned train was late! Even if it would show up soon, he would surely have to run straight to the gate to not miss his flight. Yet soon after he started pacing antsily up and down the track, his train rumbled ferociously into the station. 

“Oh thank God!” he shouted out loud, to enormous relief.

The doors slammed shut and he was off. Stations came and went and Jérôme finally felt as though things were under control. The carriage was only about half full and he felt no need to pay anyone else attention—he was content with staring at his wristwatch: 6:36, 6:38, 6:41… this only made his anxiety worse, and so he stared absently into the darkness outside the window beside him. 

The darkness stared back. 

Distant memories wafted back to him, and he remembered those happy days of youth when his mom made him hold her hand while on the metro. It always felt embarrassing to him as a little kid to be forced to hold his mom’s hand. But those moments, those brief but tender moments of childhood never endure for long and soon the world becomes harsh and painful and… Jérôme would do anything to just hold his dear mother’s hand one last time.

Just then as Jérôme waxed sentimental at the dirty window he suddenly flew forward and landed square on his face in the seat opposite. The train squealed pathetically and came to a jarring halt. 

Jérôme was confused for a moment, but that confusion turned into panic in a split second. “The train stopped?!” he thought. “But, but how could it stop? It has to keep moving! It has to!” His heart sank as the announcement came over the crackling loudspeaker explaining that due to a mechanical issue, there would be a slight delay…

Not bothering to even stand back up, Jérôme checked his watch: 6:49. “What luck!” he thought. “If only that nasty group of tourists hadn’t delayed me I would be at the airport already. But no! They had to be there and they absolutely couldn’t buy tickets on their own and I had to be the one to help them… on this day, of all the days of the year! Why is it always–” 

The fluorescent lights grew dark, flickered a few times and then died. Jérôme looked around in anxious expectation. “First the train stopped, but now the lights go out? I am literally in the dark here!” his mind raced. People turned on their phones and partially illuminated the train car. 

“Oh not again!” started one gruff voice. 

“Hey, at least it isn’t a full car!” someone replied from the inky black void.

“Glass half full, can you just shut up?” the first voice snapped back. “For those of us that work, we need to be there on time. Besides, this is the fourth time this week that I’ve had the train shut down!”

People then murmured very quietly, as though to not disturb one another. The phone lights flashed around for a minute or two but were all eventually turned off because, well, what was there really to see?

Jérôme felt his way back onto his seat and clutched his luggage tightly, rocking back and forth. “The train’ll start up again in just a few minutes, or even seconds. Yes, how can they let this go on for too long?” he tried to reason his anxiety away. The darkness was thick and gooey around him; the air was getting hot, full of human breath. He looked out of the window, touched it and even felt around for a handle to open it, but he found nothing.

Each second that clicked by was the longest Jérôme ever felt. He desperately wanted to see his watch, to check by how much time he would miss his flight. But then, as if his personal prayers were being answered, the lights flickered once or twice and turned back on. 

An announcement buzzed through the speakers yet again, promising the train would soon be underway momentarily but was still being repaired. Jérôme sat in his little seat, impatiently tapping his feet and hands, sweating clean through his jacket. His eyes were fixed onto his wristwatch, watching the seconds pass by and every tick a little dagger into his rattled heart. “Delayed, what a wretched word!” he whispered to himself. 

“You know, there’s nothing you can do about it right now.” 

Jérôme looked up from his watch and saw an old man sitting right across from him. He was wrinkled and grey but rather burly, with kind eyes and a wide mouth. 

“I, uh, what now?” Jérôme stammered.

“I said that you’re not in control anymore, that there’s nothing you can do about the situation,” the old man said in a low, even tone. “I can tell that you’re panicking—look, you’ve sweated right through your fine clothes! Ah, well who doesn’t panic a little when something like this happens, huh?”

Jérôme wiped the moisture from his brow but said nothing back.

“I was trapped for a long time once,” the old man continued, unphased by Jérôme’s silence. “I was but a young man, strong and arrogant. How young men like to think that they’re invincible, as if the world belongs to them and they have endless time to spend! Bah, but that’s the point of youth, I suppose. The day began as normal, yes I remember entering the mineshaft and thinking only of chasing girls after work, heh! We were at the very bottom of the shaft, all dozen of us youngsters. There wasn’t any warning—no, just a sudden crack and the world turned into darkness. The ceiling buried us all, except for me. I was lucky to somehow be in a pocket that stayed firm. Do you know what silence is?” He paused for a moment, apparently expecting a response. When none came, he continued. “Perhaps you do, but I didn’t know what true silence was until that moment: I cried into the rocks for hours but nothing answered, nothing but the void.”

The man looked away into the dark train window.

“I knew that nobody would answer us, that I was too far deep and the rocks were impenetrable, but still I yelled until my voice was gone. Then it dawned upon me: there was nothing for me to do! I was helpless, utterly and completely helpless. And though it seems incredible, once I understood that unsettling fact, I felt much better. I joked to myself about getting familiar with my tomb before I died, that I would someday become the coal that we were mining just hours before! Haha! In any case, luckily, I was wrong.”

Jérôme stared at the man, perplexed.

“I don’t quite know why I’m telling you this, but somehow I feel like it is what you needed to hear right now. You can check that fine watch of yours as many times as you like, it will not change anything.”

The two men sat in silence for what felt like a long time. Peeking at his watch, Jérôme saw that it was now 7:09. He finally looked up at the old man and met his steady gaze.

“How did you do it though?” Jérôme asked quietly.

“Do what?”

“Accept it? That you would die in that hole, alone in the darkness?”

The man nodded his big head for a moment. “Is it so different from how we all must die? Life and death—bah! Nobody ever chose to be born, and we are all doomed to die at some point. Yet, for some odd reason we spend our whole lives trying to control events around us! Control is an illusion my sweaty friend, and all it does is drive the best of us utterly mad.”

“My mother,” Jérôme started, “she lives in Canada now, well you see, she doesn’t…”

But suddenly the train lurched forward, the wheels making a deafening noise inside the carriage as it picked up speed along the tracks. Jérôme softened his grip on his luggage and relaxed his shoulders slightly. He scrunched up his nose as a miasmic concoction of perfume, body odours and cleaning products permeated the carriage. Someone was listening to music at the far end of the carriage and a baby wailed emotionally for attention elsewhere. Jérôme rubbed his eyes and looked around at his fellow passengers, not to judge as he so often would do, but simply to observe them: a lady in an elegant red sundress beamed down happily at her inconsolable newborn; three young men, covered in filth and clad in workwear, poked gentle fun at one another; business people stared down at their phones, tapping their patent leather shoes impatiently.

The train swayed back and forth, shuttering occasionally. Jérôme closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. He knew very well that he had missed his flight and his trip abroad would be delayed; delayed at a time where every minute mattered. Anxious thoughts fluttered through his head, but for some reason they failed to take root as they normally did. His body relaxed and he even felt a little sleepy.

The loudspeakers finally announced that they had arrived at the airport. Jérôme opened his eyes and yawned, and noticed that the old man was gone now, probably walking off at the last station. There was something that he wanted to say to him, something vague and… well, he couldn’t remember what it was. In any event, he waited patiently to exit the carriage and slowly made his way up through the metro station toward the surface.

An ocean of people sloshed around the airport’s great main hall. Brilliant sunshine beat through the massive plate glass windows, making Jérôme squint his bloodshot eyes. Looking down, his wristwatch read 7:25. Yet he didn’t begin to sweat—he calmly figured he would go and find out the next flight he could take. 

He marched briskly down the hall, dodging the swarms of people and bumping into bumbling tourists. Then he heard a familiar voice nearby and he pivoted around rapidly to see the fat lady in pink and her loud, argumentative family all standing around her. 

“What the heck, you guys! We rushed all the way and now we have to wait around like idiots,” the lady squealed. 

“Are we gonna miss our connecting flight in Toronto?” whined one of her children back at her.

“How would I know that, Janice? Do I look like a fortune teller or something, huh?!”

Jérôme looked up at the huge screen above him and his heart skipped a beat, because next to his flight, written in yellow letters it spelled out “FLIGHT DELAYED”. 

“Delayed,” he smiled, “what a wonderfully beautiful word that is.”