Mark felt the little wind, slightly oil-tinged, which signalled the impending arrival of the train in the station.
This could be important. It was a big decision to take: to be or not to be. Literally.
Exactly as the famous speech goes in fact. At this point it was a mere leap of faith, no, not even a leap, merely a small drop of a meter or so. After that everything happens quite quickly.
If he was lucky there would be but a tenth of a second or so before a massive electrical shock would course through his whole body. Of course it would feel a lot longer than a tenth of a second, and for that perceived time he would feel as though fire were coursing through his veins. This was actually the best case scenario. As he would feel his flesh cooking the train would run on and finish the job.
If he didn’t manage to hit the famous third rail, the possibilities became scarily endless. The train, a long one — not like the stubby little trains they used on that short line in the north of the city — would probably be travelling between 2 and 3 meters per second as it entered the station. There would be no hope whatsoever of the conductor stopping the train before irreversible damage was done, that much was certain. Anyway that sort of speed should be enough to cause a massive concussion right away at the point of impact, even if said impact were indirect. That’s how concussions work — the body goes one way and the brain another, until it squishes against the skull.
Then again if the concussion didn’t happen for whatever reason, things would get very, very bad very, very quickly. He’d probably feel what it was like to have all his bones break within a second or so — not so good, you will agree. Sure it wouldn’t last very long (the odds against a jumper on any subway are, to put it succintly, just not existent) but it would be incredibly rough. If he decided to do it though, there was no going back. He saw it as a way to force himself to take control of the rest of his life, and, well, it was.
Mark looked at the possibilities with the heavy, unfocused stare of someone who realized that he’d had it all — all that he had chosen to have — and let it go for no reason at all. His whole life struck him as an awful waste. He’d been right in the sweet spot. Even then though he couldn’t see it. His life struck him just now as a series of such situations — he would get to where he wanted, but somehow failed to realize it, and then it was gone. Love? He’d had it, and just as sure he’d pushed it away. Money? more than he had hoped, although he’d nevertheless had no issue spending himself into a hole without even trying very hard. Status? it had been his too, and just as wasted on him as the rest.
The morbid thoughts weren’t about self-pity, about the future, or about the past. There was no one to blame for any of it, no one except himself. It was all about self-loathing, about the self-hatred of one who had been right in the sweet spot and had proven too dumb to realize it until it was gone — like someone who ends his marriage by cheating on his wife when he’s dead drunk… minus the pleasure part. Minus the possibility of reconciliation. Minus the feeling that he had, at least for that brief moment in time, actually contributed to building something tangible. And Mark was no longer at an age where one starts a lot of things. He would have liked to call himself something else than a failure, but that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. He’d failed in the one thing he’d steered his life towards, in what he’d given up everything else to get. The dark gulf before him became more attractive by the thought. What was his alternative?
As with every other morning for the past year the feeling washed like a wave over him, and he was as powerless as an incautious surfer before it. All that could be done was hold on and wait for it to pass. Or do something stupid and not have to worry about the future.
The large blue car burst into the station as it did dozens of times daily, leaving a wooshing sound in Mark’s ears, leaving a vacuum in its wake and decelerating quickly. The doors opened and Mark stepped in as he did every morning. That decision would have to wait a little longer.