I walked down the stairs into the subway station. It was 4 AM.
The station seemed dead. I walked slowly down the platform to the very end, where I wait. Past the long abandoned and closed public restroom, with its ornate paint-and-tile encrusted entry. "WOMEN." Past the thoroughly embellished poster advertisements.
Nearing the halfway point, I was aware of activity across the tracks, on the northbound side. Track workers, I guessed. They were on the platform and down on the tracks themselves. I settled in for a long wait.
However, track workers do not wear bad suits, or gym slacks. Nor do they wear surgical gloves. Finally, I saw a badge. Across, on the platform ledge, a polaroid picture of something indistinguishable lay on the ground. I looked ahead; there was another one, and another, irregularly, every few feet or more. Other things; an empty wallet, some paper cards, pens and pencils, were scattered on the platform here and there. The police wandered back and forth, looking at them in turn. Another man in a cheap suit with an ID tag, obviously the station manager, went from policeman to policeman, talking quickly in low tones, pandering. I barely made out what he was saying. It was about "the schedule."
Down in the dark, infectious space between the tracks, it was brilliant, kool aid red. The color was impossible, way too bright, and it went on as far as I could see in either direction, stretching off into the southbound tunnel and clear to the middle of the platform, brimming halfway up the sides. The police carelessly avoided stepping in it as they shone maglites around under the lip of the platform, searching for things that they then picked up and dropped on the yellow painted edge above them. They joked with each other, and laughed, but in low tones.
Amazingly, the train came. I got on and went home and turned on the local news. Nothing about a death in the station. How many people had died today? Perhaps, the news desk would only consider it worth knowing about if it were a celebrity or a particularly gruesome murder. Or both. Perhaps, perhaps no one had actually died at all. Although I remembered the pictures, and the police - there had been 8, maybe 10 cops fishing through the muck. It was not the level of effort they went to for an assault or a mugging.
The next morning, as I sat, eating toast, I watched again. Still nothing.
It was just a death - nothing special about it. It would not make the news.