In the Room

His right index finger had turned yellow from the cigarettes, and halitosis had settled in with irreversible permanence, but those were the least of his problems. And as he rode the subway through the night that had swallowed him whole, he wondered how the man sitting to his immediate left could be so horrendously ugly, and still have the most beautiful eyes that he had ever seen.

His stop had long since passed by, but home had never been a place that had provided him with any comfort. Besides, his ceiling dripped water from the leaky toilet in the apartment above him, and his carpet smelled like cat piss. The super hadn't bothered to get the rugs cleaned before he moved in.

So, he just rested in the hard, orange, plastic seat and listened to the rythmic rattle and hum of the subway car. He wondered why they called it white noise. Maybe because it was the only clean thing in his life. Maybe it was because for as long as he could remember he had never been rocked to sleep. He figured he'd been on the subway for about an hour and a half, but he wasn't sure if he had fallen asleep and missed out on an hour or so. He slid with resignation down into his plastic cradle, and laid his head on the army-green duffle bag that was almost as worn as he was. The only things that he ever needed out of it were his cigarettes and his stash of subway tokens, but he took it almost everywhere.

No matter where he went, he always had subway tokens, although sometimes he jumped the blocks just for the hell of it. He half-hoped that one of these days he'd get caught, and they'd haul his ass off to the city jail for the night. And as the subway rocked him to sleep, he wondered if he'd ever make it off that train.