Jackie chews on the butt of a cigarette as he sits outside the King Corp building. As he does so, several well dressed people walk past him waving their hands in front of their faces as if the smoke from the cigarette was directly in their face. Cigarettes went out of style a while ago, most people around here find other more interesting and addictive vices. Cigarettes were decidedly a more low tech and less costly option than what the people of the King Corp building were used to. Jackie, his family and his friends were a little less…complicated.
He taps his foot impatiently and checks his watch, 30 minutes late. What on earth is she doing? He fools around with his watch a little and opens the hologram feature that covers the back of his hand. Jackie looks through old text messages, and boredly scrolls through his social media. That’s when he hears a familiar voice. He looks up and sees at the entrance of the building his sister, Felicia, in the doorway talking with another well dressed man. There was something slightly off about him though; his artificial eyes glow an unnatural shade of yellow, his face sculpted to perfection as if he was crafted meticulously by Michelangelo. This man looked perfect in every sense of the word, an adonis of the modern age and Jackie absolutely loathed him for it. Every ounce of the man reeked of insincerity. God knows if he even was as young as he looked, he could be 20 or he could be 100. In the man’s presence, Felicia looked insecure; she was rubbing her elbow and looking away from his gaze. Jackie thought about intervening for a second, but nothing apparent was going on and he knew Felicia would hate him if he cut in while her and the man were having a sensitive conversation. So Jackie bites his tongue and sits on the bench he’s been imprisoned on for the last 30 minutes watching his sister and this man closely. The man places his hand on her shoulder and cups her chin with his other hand. He looks deep into her eyes and she responds with a pouty look back at him. Jackie’s hand balls into a fist and he squeezes tight. Felicia was young, naive and still didn’t quite know how the world worked. Jackie knew all too well, while he was only a few years older, he wasn’t as well behaved as she was and because of that: he’s had his fair share of experience dealing with the unsavory aspects of life. Felicia got this job to help get a recommendation from King Corp for college. Getting a recommendation from a King Corp higher up was essentially guaranteed access into a college of your choosing. Doors would be open to you no matter what your background was. Their family thought Felicia got lucky when her job application to be a secretary for David Quinn, a chair at King, got accepted. Watching the man interact with Felicia here put things into perspective for Jackie. That man was David Quinn and Felicia was not lucky.
Felicia wipes a tear away from her eye and walks towards Jackie.
“You ok Felicia?”
“I’m fine Jackie”
“It doesn’t look–”
“I said I’m fine Jackie!”
Jackie nods weakly. “Ok lets get home then”
They walk to the subway without saying a word. Jackie finds himself in the precarious position of waiting for his sister once again.
They find their seats on the train and sit next to each other. Felicia looks shaken, she has her backpack turned on backwards so she can hold onto it from the front. She looks completely shaken. Jackie finds himself more worried than ever, this behavior is not normal of Felicia.
“Felicia please talk to me, what’s going on?”
“I’m–I’m fine Jack, I’m just feeling a little off”
“That was David Quinn back there right?”
“....”
Jackie gulps. “He didn’t—he didn’t touch or hurt you did he?”
Felicia scowls at Jackie. “No”
“I’m sorry for asking it’s just you’re acting really weird, and I just wanted to make sure–”
Felicia, irritated, stands up. “He didn’t what Jack?!”
“Fe I’m sorry I didn’t mean to–” Jackie stutters and cuts himself off.
“We–we were dating.”
“Dating?! Isn’t he like…old? Really old?”
“Stop.”
“Sorry”
“We were in love, we’d talk for hours. He said I grounded him. That through me he could see what the world needed most. That I was close to the people, and that—I was the most honest person he’s ever met.”
She stops for a second.
“But now that’s all over. We’re done. I don’t care if I get the letter of rec or not, at this point it doesn’t matter. I just want out and to be done with this damn company”
“Why?”
“He..he broke up with me.”
“Oh”
“His wife found out about it and that was that.”
“At least it’s over.”
“I don’t know…”
“Felicia, what do you mean you don’t know?”
“I just don’t know Jack. I just..I mean this isn’t the first time we’ve broken up, maybe he’ll take me back again.”
“Again?!”
“Yeah..we’ve been off and on for..well as long as we’ve been together. Sometimes he just wants his space, maybe it’s like that…”
“I don’t even know what to say”
“Look Jack, I’m sorry that you had to see this today but it’s really not that big of a deal. We do this all the time.”
“Felicia, are you kidding me right now? He’s literally toying with you like you’re a….fuck I don’t know a toy?”
“Toying with me like a toy? Wow that’s real clever”
“I’m not trying to be clever, I’m trying to tell you that this guy’s a piece of shit.”
Anger floods Felicia's face and tears well up in her eyes, she’s about to speak when she just stops. She swallows and looks out the window away from Jackie. They’re both silent for a while. Felicia stares off outside the train window, her hand placed on her stomach. She looks physically sick, perhaps a sign of her broken heart. Jackie picks at his fingernails and looks across towards the front of the train car. He sees another well to do, well dressed man with yellow eyes. It wasn’t David, but Jackie grew angry at the sight of him nonetheless. What was a man of his status even doing on the subway to begin with? One would think he would have a dozen luxury cars he could drive around in or be driven around in at any given moment. This feeling of animosity from Jackie was only amplified by how far away the man was from everyone else on the train. Every other passenger was seated at least six to eight feet away from him, usually sitting up straight and not making eye contact with the man. Almost as if putting on a performance for him, or trying to mirror his behavior. The man was also sat up straight with a proper pose. His posture and aura matched his dress well. He wore a fancy black suit, and a golden rolex. Jackie rolled his eyes and shook his head. A golden rolex. Watches were relics now, due to the various technological advancements and implants everyone had, well..let’s just say telling the time was only one of the many things you could now pull up whenever you wanted with just a thought. The rolex was just for show, he could afford it and you can’t. Stuck up prick.
Felicia grunts and clenches her jaw. Jackie flashes her a concerned look, to which Felicia rolls her eyes.
“How are things going for you Jack? Everything good at the garage?” Felicia inquires.
“They’re good. Cisco told me he would give me an advance for the Landliner job. Should take care of this month’s rent and then some.”
“That the car that the kid in El Royale crashed?”
“Yeah the thing was a mess. The front end was completely caved in, wouldn’t have been salvageable if it wasn’t for the kid’s father. He managed to cobble together enough cash to afford extra parts.”
“How much of it did you replace?”
“To be honest, almost all of it. The frame is the same still but we had to replace pretty much everything else. Besides the front end, everything else was fried.”
“Huh. At least they were able to afford repairs for it.”
“Sure, but at the price point they ended up paying for it, I would have just bought a new car.”
“Some people get sentimental.”
Jackie shrugs. “Yeah sure, at least the customer was happy and I got a nice paycheck out of it.”
Felicia chortles and then her eyes widen. She starts coughing violently, it starts off dry but as it goes on longer it starts to sound more and more wet. Felicia covers her mouth as she continues to cough and onlookers start to stare.
“Fe! Are you ok?!”
Felicia’s coughs get more frequent and her whole body starts to shake. She struggles to catch her breath as she falls to the floor.
“Oh my God, just try to breathe. I’m right here ok?”
Felicia’s breaths become erratic and her eyes are fixated to the roof of the train car. Her eyes begin to water.
“Oh God. Oh God.” Jackie hands shake as he hovers over his sister. He looks up panicking searching around the train as if he will find an answer to this impossible situation if he looks hard enough.
“Someone please help! Can anyone help?! I don’t know what’s wrong with her!”
Felicia’s coughs stop as a gurgle starts to form. An odorous foam starts to secrete from her mouth and the gurgling becomes aggressive. At this point her eyes are overflowing with tears, her whole body given over to this attack except for her eyes. While they once were fixed to the ceiling, she now stares at her brother terrified. Jackie looks into her eyes, tears streaming down his face.
The gurgling stops, the shaking stops, the attack stops.
Her eyes remain looking at her brother.
Jackie is frozen.
He can’t move.
The people around Jackie start whispering to themselves. They had never seen something like this. What was this? Is it a disease? Is it contagious? Everyone keeps to themselves stunned at the situation that just unfolded in front of them. No one rushes to console the brother that just lost his sister.
A hand finds itself placed on Jackie’s shoulder. Jackie looks up to see who it is to see a friendly looking woman and a little boy standing beside her. She smiles faintly at Jackie and helps him up off the ground.
“Are you ok?” She asks him.
“I…”
Jackie trembles, his head is pounding. He slumps down to the ground. Jackie curls up and buries his head into his arms. The woman’s hand is still on his shoulder, she is desperately trying to comfort the distraught boy. It’s little comfort. He’s lost in his own little world when he starts to hear screaming.
Jackie looks up to see what’s wrong when he sees her. Felicia. She’s standing up, she’s not coughing or making any sounds either. She’s better!
“Felicia?!”
Jackie jolts up and embraces his sister.
“Oh my God, I thought you were dead. God I’m so happy you’re–”
Jackie feels a sharp pain in his neck. It starts out sharp but the pain starts to go away once Jackie realizes what’s happened and shock begins to set in. He backs away from his sister but her jaw is firmly placed around his throat still, as he violently pulls away she rips out his throat. Blood starts to spurt out of the wound and Jackie clutches his throat, putting pressure to the wound. He collapses to the ground and crawls away from his sister to the other side of the car, still applying pressure to his throat. He can’t scream or speak, his vocal chords were just ripped out. Jackie is petrified. As he crawls away he can see what once was his sister, head tilted chewing on the torn out piece of flesh in her mouth.
Everyone else in the car is panicking, and horrified at what they just witnessed. The woman is covering the boy’s eyes and has the other hand over her mouth. There’s a teenage girl filming Felicia on her phone and a man calling someone. An elderly man is looking away from Felicia, not wanting to acknowledge the horror in front of him. The last passenger, the well dressed man with yellow eyes maintains his composure. He sits at the front of the car, watching.
It only takes 5 minutes.
5 minutes.
They’re all gone.
5 minutes of screaming.
Terror.
Fear.
5 minutes of torn ligaments and spurting blood.
5 minutes of chewed flesh and bloody fingernails.
They are all dead.
Gone.
Except for the man with yellow eyes.
Felicia is hunched over her brother’s corpse, chewing and ripping. The man with yellow eyes gets up, and walks towards her. She stops chewing and sniffs the air. Felicia then spits out the meat in her mouth and turns to face the man. They stare at one another. Felicia is not attacking, not moving. The man is looking directly at her, she avoids his gaze. The train car stops. The man raises his head, nods and then exits the car as the doors open. Felicia is frozen. She stands still. The doors close and the car moves again. Felicia slowly starts to resume her consumption of Jackie. She gets faster and faster with her tears, chews and swallows until she resumes pace to the speed it was before her interruption.
Felicia devours her brother. She wipes her mouth, and sits down next to what little remains of him. She slumps down, satisfied and her belly full. She burps and rests her head on what is left of Jackie’s shoulder.
The train moves on.