CHAPTER VI - "Tales of Transit Duties"

A Chapter by P_F_COGAN
A FUTURISTIC SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY.

      Tales of Transit Duties
 
 
     Bradley donned his cloak, laced up his black boots, 
slipped a dagger in a hidden sleeve on the heel of each 
boot, and then gently pushed his long sword into its 
scabbard secured to his back. He pressed his breast pocket 
to confirm his amulets had not slipped out, and then opened 
his apartment door. 
     The overhead hallway light flickered and then died. 
Sammy, his Calico, meowed from inside. He turned and 
looked down at her sitting on the parquet floor, wagging 
her tail across the floor. "I should be home in a few 
hours," Bradley said. He bent and rubbed Sammy's chin; 
she rubbed back against his hand and it eased some of his 
tension -- just some. He closed his door.
     Bradley hated transit guard duty, especially the F 
line.
     From around the corner, the elevator bell sounded. 
Bradley quickly scampered through 
the fire door, directly across from his front door,  
and closed it enough to be concealed, but able to still peek 
through. Lydia and Chloe, two lipstick lesbians living in 
apartment 2G, giggled as they walked past his apartment, 
groping each other through their Saturday Night Greenwich 
Village attire. Bradley grinned and wanted 
to linger, but, then realizing duty called, he grimaced, 
turned quickly, and ran down the steps and out the front 
door into the warm summer night -- early morning actually.
     He took the Manhattan-Brooklyn bound F train from 
71st/Continental in Forest Hills, New York. The car was 
empty when he got on, but after a few stops people began to 
stumble in.
     The train smelled of stale everything: beer, 
cigarettes, and sex. It reminded him of the scene in 
"Risky Business," when Rebecca De Mornay humps Tom Cruise 
on an empty late night train. He sighed. That was his first 
rated R movie he saw when he was 13. Chase had taken him. 
At the thought of his brother, Bradley reached behind, 
clenching the hilt of his brother's sword in anger . . . in 
release. 
     The train hiccupped into the next stop, Washington 
Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens. Bradley's training took 
over as this was one of _their_ haunts. He sat up straight 
and nonchalantly surveyed the men and women as they bumbled 
into the car, six in all. Their feet dragged, the fat one's bodies quivered 
like jelly, and they each plopped down in a seemingly strategically 
pre-thought place, probably the way they had done it each 
night previous. In fact, Bradley recognized a few of them, 
for this was not the first time he had the F line watch.
      He wondered if any of the other Knights had been 
assigned to the F this evening, but knew he couldn't 
meander, because the email he got from The Council 
appointed _him_ to this particular car. 
     "Help a brother out, young man," a gruff voice above 
his head said. Bradley looked up, cursing silently for being 
encroached upon so easily. The pepper-bearded homeless man 
had managed to intermingle his stench with the potpourri 
stink of the train car. His lips looked as if they could 
suck up a whole chap stick and still not be smooth; boils 
covered his face and arms; moreover, he had the distinct 
dark purple lesions of an AIDS sufferer. 
     "Sorry, bro!" Bradley stated, instinctively reaching 
behind, towards his upper back. "Nothing today."
     The man nodded sadly and limped away, and the guilt 
that Bradley -- and probably every other New Yorker with a 
conscience -- felt forced him to slam his head 
against the plastic coated case holding the NYC subway map 
behind him. A Filipino woman stopped her knitting and gave 
Bradley a scowl. He gently smiled, lifted his head away 
from the train car wall, and resumed his survey sitting-
stance.  
     The door between train cars slid open and a screech 
echoed throughout the car as the subway lurched to a stop. 
Bradley fell forward onto his knees and shoved his hands out to 
prevent his head from slamming into the edge of the 
opposite seat. 
     "Greetings, ladies and gentleman," a tall, skinny man, 
wearing a black face mask said. Bradley hated those masks: a 
lot of the _cool_ kids wore them in the winter -- and since 
it was the middle of summer, it set off a red flag right 
away, for it only covered the bottom half of your face, 
with a sharp beak for a nose and hockey mask-like holes for 
breathing. "Don't be alarmed," he continued, brandishing a 
Crocodile-Dundee knife, "all I want is your money, iPod, 
anything of value. Let's keep it simple, and this'll be 
quick." He grabbed the jacket of the man sitting nearest to 
where he was standing and pulled the startled man to his 
feet.
     "Great!" Bradley said, trying to wipe his hands free of 
the stickiness that he dared not guess the origin.
     "What the f**k you say, you skinny piece of s**t?" the 
man grated, pushing the poor man he was about to rob back on 
the seat. The masked man lurched forward swishing his knife 
back and forth. 
     "Just leave," Bradley said, still on the train car floor.
     The masked man stopped and then pulled back, not in fear, but in 
incredulousness, as if to say, _How could you have the 
audacity to speak to me that way?_ He then lurched forward, 
holding his knife in a stabbing offense. 
     Bradley's body tightened and his training took over. He 
pressed down on his hands and kicked hard sideways with his 
legs, landing two solid-tipped boot punches against the 
man's shins. The man screamed in agony and fell forward, 
right between the crocheting Filipino woman and an old 
man with a bag of groceries. The woman grasped her purse 
with both hands and began slamming it against the masked 
man's back. The grocery bag man took out a can of peas from
his bag and hit the masked man in the head with it -- again, and again. 
     Then, the train came to life once again and lurched 
forward, slowly easing into Merryway Street.
     The doors opened. No one got on, but three residents 
of New York City made sure one person got off, dumping him 
-- less one Crocodile Dundee knife -- on the platform. 
     _Subway Justice._ 
     Bradley kicked the knife out the door; it dropped away 
in the space between the edge of the subway car and edge
of the platform.
     Bradley took his seat again, more alert now that his 
juices were flowing. Out of the corner of his eye, sparks 
flew outside the door, opposite from where the displaced 
robber had entered; not the blue sparks of steel against 
steel, no; though to the common man, they would seem the 
same, but Bradley had been trained to note the difference: 
these sparks left a trail, an ephemeral trail of the 
creature that had just fed. He surveyed the train as a 
precaution: everyone had returned to their own world, 
though each person's body was clenched all the more tighter 
since the incident with the would-be robber.
     Bradley got up, checked the security of his weapons 
and, crouching low, walked to the train car door separating 
one car from another. He slid the door open and leapt 
through. Even a stolid New Yorker would have choked on the 
site of the Transposer: a humanlike creature with what looked like
pulsing, bulbous veins traversing its algae-green body.
It had been patrolling these tunnels since The MTA disturbed 
its hollowed ground over one hundred and fifty years ago (when 
the MTA began tunneling underneath Manhattan to build the subway system). 
     Bradley could not see this one's face, for it had its 
body wrapped around a junkie who was slumped against the 
two long chains on the side of the train car. A needle hung 
in the recess between forearm and upper arm of the junkie, 
blood slowly dripping from the ripped skin. 
     The Transposer glowed a fluorescent blue-green again when 
Bradley touched the hilt of his sword. Its head rotated 
180 degrees, like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." Bradley 
gulped hard at the Transposer's soulless eyes: two purple 
craters above a bat-like nose and ears. No discernable 
mouth. He clutched the amulet in the shape of an eye, the 
one that allowed someone in possession of it to see creatures such 
as this: both a blessing and curse. He did it to ground 
himself, to confirm he was not dreaming, for the amulet had also 
belonged to Chase.
     Bradley pulled his sword out and raised it over his 
head. The creature's skin under its nose suddenly opened, 
now revealing a mouth like an irregular purple hole. Its shriek 
blended in with the car's wail as the car turned a corner. The
Transposer uncoiled its body from the junkie and when it came away there was 
a sucking sound, like a naked fat man pulling himself away 
from a leather sofa on a humid day. 
     The junkie's head hung over the chain and his body threatened to 
go with it onto the train tracks. The Transposer, probably 
having encountered a Knight before, stretched its body past 
Bradley, but Bradley's attention lay straight ahead, for the 
junkie's hand fell over, dangling dangerously close to the 
tunnel wall. 
     Bradley plunged his sword back into its scabbard and 
reached for the junkie. His body was limp, but there was 
still life, the life of a junkie, but life nonetheless. 
Bradley pulled him to the middle of the platform separating 
the two cars. Now crouched, Bradley reached toward his feet and 
dug into the back of his boots. Bradley's second 
talisman warmed against his chest, warning him.
Bradley looked up; the Transposer shrieked again and plunged 
towards him. 
     Bradley jumped to his feet with daggers in each hand and 
slashed his left dagger downward towards the chest of the 
Transposer and his right upward, right between the legs. The 
Transposer's upper body stretched away from the dagger, 
towards the car door but Bradley found flesh between the 
creature's legs. The Transposer shrieked once more and it 
bent forward, probably testing Bradley's resolve. Bradley 
pulled back, revealing to the creature his lack of 
experience. It stretched more, now opening its mouth wider, 
already strengthened from its partial soul-feast of the junkie. 
Bradley pressed his palms down on the car platform connector 
and kicked up with one leg but it was futile, his legs 
going right through the Transposer. 
     Was this how Chase died? The thought of his 
brother, and why he was out here, in the middle of the 
night, saving what most citizens thought of as an 
unproductive member of society, forced his adrenaline and 
resolve to rise, and the creature seemed to sense it; 
it paused for a moment. Bradley regrouped and reached back, 
pulling his sword out with one hand and when the creature 
reached out with its veiny hand toward Bradley's heart he shoved 
the dagger in his left hand into the creature's mouth. 
     It was an awkward move for they were so close, but the result 
was instantaneous, gooey blue-green ephemeral drops of blood
sprayed onto the dagger and the creature slithered away in 
shrieking pain, shrinking between the slit between the 
platform of the two cars. Bradley breathed heavy but ripped 
open his coat, grasping the Warning Amulet. 
     Cold. Gone. It was gone.
     Bradley spun his daggers, crouched, and pushed them 
both back home at the same time.
     He lifted the junkie over his shoulder just as the 
train entered Centre Island; surprisingly the skinny guy 
had some heft, and Bradley scrunched his nose at the smell 
of urine and feces. Normally, he would not do this, but 
since the train had stopped, he risked jumping over the chains 
and onto the empty platform, carefully placing the junkie 
on a wooden bench. Bradley pulled the needle from the 
junkie's arm and ripped a piece off the bottom of his own
cloak. He wiped up the blood as best he could and used 
another piece of cloth as a bandage. He turned to go, then 
stopped, reached into his pocket for a five, and placed it 
in the junkie's right pocket. 
     _It'll probably go for drugs_, Bradley thought, but . .