Underground

As the tube doors swoosh open, she steps onto the empty platform and checks the time. One o’clock. It’s later than she thought. An hour ago, it was another day. And she was another person. An hour ago, she’d still been planning for a future which, now, is as shattered as the glass he’d smashed against the wall.

His words echo in her mind as she walks towards the exit, her hands stuffed in her pockets, her head down. She bites the insides of her painted lips, swallows back tears. She won’t cry. No, she won’t cry. She won’t let strangers ask what’s wrong. She can't bear their misplaced kindness.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she emerges on the street. The lively, hustling, bustling street. The air smells of hot dogs and fried onions, a stench that makes her gag. She starts walking to Neon. She needs a drink. More than one. Two drinks, three drinks, four drinks. More. She needs to wake tomorrow and have a moment, just one moment before she opens her eyes in which none of this ever happened. A moment in which it’s nothing more than a dissipating dream.

Only it’s not a dream, is it? It’s real. It’s as real as the towering concrete buildings around her, the broken bottles on the floor, the bitter stench of urine in the doorway, the animal shouts of a fight about to start. It’s as real as the beat, beat, beat of the nightclub she passes, as real as the beggar asleep in the phonebox, the money a drunken girl spills on the pavement.

It is as real as her infidelity.

Rain begins to fall and she feels a tear roll down her cheek, doesn’t even wipe it away. It’s too dark for people to see, to care. No one sees sadness in darkness.

She thinks of him now. His face, his shock. She thinks of him and their love. That was real, too. Once. That was born between them, cherished, nurtured. Alive.

And now? She stands at a crossing, waiting for the speeding traffic to stop, watching the blurs of headlights in the slow drizzle of rain. And now it is dead. Buried. Underground.