The dimming yellow lights flickered in the subway as it sped through the tunnels deep under the bustling streets of the Big Apple. The passengers lucky enough to have a cold metal seat curled in their shoulders and crossed their arms in order to avoid touching their neighbors. The rest gripped onto the poles and firmly planted their feet on the floor for balance. Everyone’s shoulders bobbed back and forth with each clank and turn that the subway cart made. Most of the city dwellers had their eyes shut, focused on their smartphone screens or were staring off into space. But Dallas, a man sitting in the far back seat of the train was leaning forward in his seat and wrinkling his eyebrows over the next clue for his crossword puzzle.
Number 1 Across was seven letters and was asking for a “What ended a tragedy?” Dallas stared at the seven empty white boxes and considered what ended a tragedy. He thought of different types of tragedies, earthquakes, bombings, or any disaster really. Natural ones ended on their own, or maybe it was God. Other types of tragedies were ended by a hero or by someone deciding to do something about it. But he wasn’t sure what would word was seven letters and would fit into the boxes.
He was concentrating so hard on his clue solving, that Dallas was startled out of his skin at the sound of a woman’s voice inches away from his ears. “Twenty one across is ‘escrow’?” He glared at her, irritated at her unprompted assistance and then frowned disapprovingly at her large purple and green plaid scarf wrapped around her neck. Her curious brown eyes stared at him. The man returned to his puzzle. “I’m not there yet.” He said. The girl leaned in closer and peered over his shoulder. “Are you sure that you could have gotten that one on your own? It’s kind of a tough one.” She asked. Dallas scooted an inch over so that she couldn’t see the rest of his puzzle. “I think I would have been just fine.” He replied. The girl frowned and backed away. “Alright, be that way.” She said crossing her arms and leaning away from him. Dallas read the clue for 21 across to himself, ‘A contract, deed, bond or other written agreement deposited with a third person.’ He had no earthly idea what that was. He tried to remember what she said but all his brain kept spitting out was escargot. Which was definitely a cooked snail and had nothing to do with a bank agreement. Dallas shrugged to himself, he wasn’t there anyways. He’d figure the answer out when he got there. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the girl with the barney colored scarf was still sitting beside him. But she was gone. Confused, Dallas sat up and searched the rest of the car. She wasn’t there. Dallas thought to himself, trying to remember if they’d stopped since she’d scooted away from him. But he couldn’t remember. He’d been too absorbed in the answers. She must’ve gotten off, he finally decided. She probably snuck out to avoid talking to me again. I’m surprised she tried talking to me in the first place. He pictured the brightly colored scarf wrapped around her neck under her brown eyes and wondered what was underneath the scarf. If he’d pulled out his gun, he could have forced her to show him but he’d been too absorbed in his puzzle to think about it. Now she was gone and he would never know. Obviously, the girl wasn’t very smart because she’d talked to a man that was now fantasizing about killing her just to see what was under her scarf. He imagined a large scar encasing her throat or maybe a hideous tattoo she’d gotten one drunken night wrapping around her waist and framing her perfect perky breasts. It was then that Dallas realized the answer to one across, a clue he’d skipped. It wasn’t speaking about the type of tragedy that one endures, but the type of tragedy that one goes to watch being performed, like a type of play. Plays were usually closed with a curtain, but that unfortunately didn’t have an ‘f’ in it. So he thought about what else ended a tragedy and realized that the answer was simply ‘act five.’ Dallas silently smiled to himself and thanked the puzzle maker for being so clever as he filled in the letters.
Dallas continued to sit in his seat on the subway, analyzing the crossword puzzle and the strange woman’s behavior until he arrived at his stop, Penn Station. One of the larger stations in New York City, it was full of travelers, workers, and the beggars hoping for some change to fall out of their pockets. Dallas walked towards the center of the station and peeked around an awkwardly positioned wall blocking his view. And there, just like every other Monday was his only friend Gus, wrapped in a large black blanket resting in his nearly shredded wheelchair. The old man wasn’t handicapped but the chair was so convenient and comfortable that he’d seen Gus fight two teenage boys to the ground to keep it. Now that’s committing yourself. Gus was dressed every bit a man living on the streets with his long green patched up jacket stuffed to the brim with newspapers, his mismatched gloves and mud stained beanie. He looked so needy that strangers would toss him coins without even being asked.
“Gus, wake up! I made it.” Dallas said. The slumped old man’s head perked out of his nest, searching for the source. “How are you this morning, sir?” Gus asked when he spotted the man staring at him. Dallas sighed and pointed at the vacant tiles next to Gus. “Is that seat taken?” He asked. The homeless man sat up straight in his chair as if he were welcoming a guest. “No, No. It’s all yours.” Gus was unfailingly kind but also extremely forgetful. They saw each other every morning and each morning Gus would start to introduce himself like they were strangers. But they were far from strangers; Dallas had slept beside him in many cold damp alleys and begged for money on the same corners as his old friend. Before he’d gotten the watch, they were desperate together. And they’d conned many people out of enough money for a bottle full of bliss.For almost nine years now, Gus had been his friend. They’d traded stories whether true or false and ranted about the injustices of the society that they lived in. Dallas almost beat a man to death for calling Gus a scab of New York City once. The old homeless man was the only person he’d ever been completely honest too and sadly the poor man was slowly losing all recollection of Dallas and his own life as his dementia took over. “I’m doing alright today.” Dallas responded. Gus’ most distinguishing feature, his huge underbite, caused his jaw to shake abnormally in response. “Well that’s good, what brings you to this spot at Penn Station on this cold day?” The man with the watch shrugged. “Just doing the normal routes. Have to make sure everyone is doing alright.” The man’s entire body shook. His eyes rounded to take in the young man next to him. “You ain’t a cop are you?” Dallas shook his head in the negative and then changed the subject. “Of course not, Gus can I ask you something?” The old man nodded, his chin haphazardly following his nod. “Of course, of course anything you need. I fought against the Japs in ’67, and boy, I could tell you some frightening stories. Them Asians are the spawn of Satan.” Dallas sighed but decided not to correct him so that he could ask him his question. “Do you believe in time travel?” Gus leaned back in his seat, overwhelmed. “Yeah I don’t see why not. Sure would be fun if I could travel through time. I’d probably go back and kick the shit out of that brat that tried to steal my chair again. You remember that?” Dallas stared at his friend amused that pieces of his memory came back and others didn’t make any sense. He nodded politely and then decided to change the subject and let Gus rant about the conspiracy during the terrorist attack on 9/11.
“The way I see it, Bush wanted all of the business people and the firefighters dead so that he could take over. Then while all of this was going on, he was brainwashing little kids to follow him after all of New York City had burned to the ground.” Dallas shook his head at his friend. The poor guy barely remembered anything correctly and he was out on the streets to defend for himself. But Gus wasn’t his responsibility, he couldn’t take care of him anymore, he was busy trying to keep himself on a leash. The homeless man exited the subway at the same stop like he did every day, his finger raised in the air scolding the entire Bush administration. With his old companion off of the subway, Dallas returned his attention back to his puzzle.
But before he could properly focus on the next clue, Dallas felt eyes weighing down on him. He looked up for the source and saw a well-dressed man scoffing in the corner. Dallas studied the man with the upturned nose. His pant suit was neatly pressed and his red tie was tucked in place. His cleanly cut hair was smoothed back and was complimented by his recently shaved face. He pulled his black briefcase to his other side and crossed his legs to face away from the homeless man glaring at him on the other side of the subway car. Dallas stood. “What are you staring at?” The man with the briefcase scoffed and dramatically rotated his perfect blonde head and unwisely said. “I was admiring you and your friend’s ability to impersonate a pile of shit.”
Dallas pulled his gun swiftly from his pocket for the second time that day and held it directly at the man’s cringing nose. “Wrong answer. Try again.” The man instantly panicked. He fell to his knees with his briefcase displayed in front of him. He searched the subway car for someone to help him but then realized that they were alone. “Look, I’m sorry. Take this briefcase, it has $600 in it. Just don’t shoot me.” He pleaded. Dallas rolled his eyes. It never ceased to amaze him at how quickly people changed their attitude when they realized that the person they were dealing with was certifiably insane. “Wrong answer again.” And then pulled the trigger two times. The first bullet slammed into the man’s arm. The man threw the briefcase and screamed in pain, tears flowing down his cheeks as he gripped his bleeding forearm with his head leaning against the gray subway chair. The second shot went through his stomach, causing the man who had been scowling in the corner only moments before to stain his khaki pants yellow. Dallas knelt down to look the man in his eyes as they clung onto his last few moments of life and said. “Now who’s the piece of shit?” And then pulled the trigger the third time, blowing his brains all over the subway.
Dallas stared at the dead body as the relief spread through his limbs. He wondered if all killers felt the same release he did at taking the life out of somebody’s eyes. It was a shame he’d never get to go to jail and talk about his experiences with other murderers. Maybe he would someday and he could create a support group for his fellow strugglers. “How many people here stare into their victim’s eyes right before they kill them?” He would ask. Maybe one or two would raise their hands but the rest would stay silent and maybe even look away, slightly ashamed. “Those of you who don’t aren’t real killers!” Dallas would shout. “Would you like to know why?” They’d nod sheepishly. “Well good, I’ll tell you why! When you hold a person’s life in your palm, they stare back at you with the entirety of their soul in their eyes. They are so scared, that they are laying everything that they know about themselves, every memory and every feeling that they’ve ever felt right there on the table for you to examine. It’s right there in their eyes, pulled from the depths of their hearts and given to you out of desperation. In this wordless moment, you will forget that you have your own feelings, becoming completely absorbed with theirs. So much so that you might want to change your mind. You might think, ‘wait, this person doesn’t deserve to die.’ And then surprisingly decide to let them go. Then you are weak. They have no more meaning than any other person on this planet and they are attempting to deceive you. It takes courage to look them in the eyes and kill them anyways. Proving in a second that whatever meaning they held for themselves was ultimately a waste of time.” The room would become stunned with silence. Not even other killers would be able to identify with Dallas when he described killing in such a romantic way.
Zapped back into reality, Dallas felt the subway car’s brakes screech to a halt. The doors opened, revealing a blue-eyed homeless man covered in blood standing in front of a headless dead man with his organs painting the inside of the car to a dozen or so citizens of New York City. Dallas grinned and pointed the gun at the shocked bystanders. “Everybody just remain calm.” Two people instantly took off running, assumedly calculating their odds that Dallas wouldn’t be able to kill every single one of them with one pistol. But unfortunately for them, Dallas had two other guns in his coat and four throwing knifes. He shot the woman on the far right that had bolted in the back as he stepped off of the subway. He turned ninety degrees and nailed the man who had sprinted right in the head. Damn, I am a good shot. He killed the two elderly women right in front of him with the remaining bullets of that gun and then pulled out his second gun. The remaining people were falling to the ground in an attempt to surrender. But Dallas didn’t care about surrender; he just wanted to kill them. Each and every one. He wanted them all to fear him. He shot the lady covering her two little boys on the ground and then he shot the kids too. Dallas took the last step to the entrance and hopped over the gate. He stared down at the remaining individuals cowering on the tile in the subway. Just three more left. An old man resting in a wheelchair stared at him expectantly; Dallas didn’t hesitate and sent a bullet through his heart. He rounded the man in his wheelchair and came face to face with a screeching young woman. He shot her while she cowered behind her dead grandfather. Hurried footsteps sprinted to his left. He turned and found a young boy darting for the stairs that led to the fresh air above all the dead bodies. Dallas shot him too and watched him fall to the floor with a thud.
The subway dinged and slowly pulled away from the massacre. Dallas shoved his gun back into his coat and turned to study the devastation. Blood pooled beside all of the bodies that he’d shot. Satisfied, Dallas walked away from the quiet death and went around the corner to the men’s bathroom. He slipped into the only stall and then twisted the knob on his watch to the moment before he’d yelled at the rich man sneering in the corner on the subway. All of the people revived and the noise of bustling commuters returned. Dallas buried his head into his knees as his mind took in all of the people he’d just killed. Visions clouded his brain and pulled him to another place far away. He knew that he was still in the bathroom but at the same time felt pulled from the real world. As if he had been thrown in the static of his television for the rest of his life. He screamed and cried to be set free but the eternal static remained.
“Sir! Could you hurry up, I really need to take a dump.” A muffled voice bellowed through his subconscious, causing Dallas to feel as if he was being pulled to the surface. The dingy stall returned as Dallas gasped for air. A man standing outside his stall pounded on his door. “Hello! Is anybody in there??” He hollered. Dallas unlocked the door and stumbled out of his cell. “It’s all yours.” Dallas met the irritated eyes of the man with the briefcase from the subway and remembered how desperate they’d looked right before he’d killed him. But now, the man shoved Dallas like he was a peasant and slammed the stall door in his face.
Dallas emerged from the bathroom and saw the people he’d massacred packing themselves into the subway. The woman smiled at her disabled grandfather. Dallas saw them walking through the art museum together and enjoying the paintings later that day. The kid that had darted to the surface in a last ditch effort was now bobbing his head to his music. The mother situated her sons beside her in their own seats. The old ladies chuckled about something and the man and woman that had tried to run glanced flirtatiously at each other. He stood there and watched them as their lives continued without a single memory of the man who had killed them. The subway dinged and sped down the tunnel towards the next stop taking the group of survivors with it.
Leaving the scene behind, he walked up the stairs and emerged onto a bustling New York City sidewalk. Before he continued down the sidewalk, Dallas darted to the nearest alley where he sank into the damp concrete and rested his back against the cold brick. He pulled out his crossword puzzle and thought about the next solution.
Three down was ‘thinking makes it so.’ And since it intersected with ‘Tokyo’ he knew that the second letter of the nine letter word had to be an ‘o.’ Dallas thought to himself wondering what thinking made. Again, it depended on the person. For some people, thinking led to ideas and success and then more and more money. For others, thinking made them depressed and lonely. It could make them bitter and cause them to wallow in self-pity. Dallas didn’t know
so he skipped that solution and looked at a different hint further down the puzzle. Nine down needed ‘a brand of peanut butter named after a literary character.’ That was rather simple, Jif was too short and the only other name to pop into his mind was Peter Pan. Of course that fit, Dallas wrote it down and thought about the story of the little boy. Why he was a fantasy was beyond Dallas. He was doomed. Doomed to be afraid of the boogie man under his bed forever. Doomed to never understand why his parents argued and doomed to remain young while the rest of his friends grew old and died. It simply wasn’t a good age to be trapped in.
Closed System 