Nancy Street To Goldberg

• Jade Armstrong, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2019

In this subway, from Goldberg to Nancy Street Station, the air is old and stale. People are eating drippy food that slathers their laps and listening to rap music on one hundred through their earphones, so rhythmic, noisy and temperamental, I can tap along with my slick black loafers on the concrete ground under the seat, painted black as well. It doesn’t bother me. One woman on the other side of me isn’t doing anything, she’s strange, like me, but she’s tapping a mobile and frantically crying while I browse through one of my wife’s endless mound of shop-weekly magazines. Sweat drips from my brow as the door chimes open and the forty-one-degree day hits me like a slashing lightning bolt.
A dozen people jump through the doors. Sun-drenched people, the frail, two pensioners, office staff, ganged up teenagers. The slider door screeches shut, but a small hand stops it. An older man, brushes past me and something hits my lap, most likely to be a chimichanga wrapper or a receipt for some hardware place. I stare at the crumpled paper on my jeggings. With steady hands, I roll it out and instantly, my heart skips a beat.
Get out of here while you still can.
I see him continue down the subway as he slams the green button to get onto the next carriage. I can’t breathe as another man comes back a second later, hands in his jumper pockets.
“This is a holdup!” Someone yells from the other end of the sub. I scream for my life and all the passengers stare at me and quickly back down the aisle and through the glass where the sticky, uneven voice came from. A foreign man, maybe eighty, stands suddenly and stares at me, before he does something. “Get to the driver cabin or I’ll blast your head with a Shaska four one…” He hisses and he runs out of sight. The train screeches suddenly, though we are nowhere near China Town, has stopped.
“If all passengers on the subway could please be co-operative during our delay, we will have this sorted out soon.” I rise and step toward the cabin. It’s silent up this end. The door swings open and a woman, dressed to the nines in an on the green’s day outfit tears at my hand. I recognise her eyes, but from where, I don’t know. Makeup smothers her face and dribbling sweat pours from underneath. Louisa. The woman I married thirty years ago.
“Just give Man what he wants. Please.” Slithers of white tears pierce her eyes as the man suddenly grips her hair before throwing her to the ground. He does nothing more than watch me cradle her body.
“Execute me then. I can’t pay the money up to you. I have three kids though.” He nods, before pointing the barrel to my head and