The Essence

An alarm sounded. Snoozed. An extra five minutes of sleep, stretched into twenty.

A cat paw tramped across his nose, a claw digging into the bridge. He shot up in bed, wide-eyed and mussed. After kissing Vlad for his punctuality, Phillip bolted into hyperspeed, dancing around the cramped, cluttered place in an attempt to piece himself into a functioning person. His hurry saved a bit of time. Two minutes spared.

Tie or no tie? Phillip hesitated in the mirror. No tie. Saved thirty seconds. He was already running late.

Vlad tripped him at the threshold, mewling as if the poor, helpless feline had been starved since last Tuesday. In the cat’s defense, Phillip forgot to feed him during the rush of the morning. Melancholy overtook him as he dove into the crumbless bag of Kitty Kibble. Refusing to let Vlad starve no matter how broke he became, he fished the last slice of deli ham from its tupperware in the fridge and draped it across the food bowl, where the cat feasted like royalty. This debacle ate up another ninety seconds.

Hopping on one foot as he laced his shoes, Phillip slammed the door behind him. 9:31am.

The usual coffee stop was nixed. He saved himself thirteen minutes as well as $7.12.

Phillip flew down the steps of the 72nd Street Subway Station, scanned his metrocard, and snuck up to the yellow strip next to the track.

His cell phone swiveled around in his hand, displaying the time every ten seconds as he clicked at the buttons. 9:42am. Seventeen minutes later than he intended. Only eighteen more minutes before he would be late. His nerves thumbed at the multitudes of wrinkles on his button down and swept the cowlick off his forehead. Rocks bashed against the lining of his stomach rather than butterflies.

His eyes slid closed as the echoes of the platform roared with unintelligible jabbers, scuttling footsteps, and the occasional deafening of a shooting train. The city buzzed with vitality, seeming to possess a breath all its own. He siphoned some of the zeal from this excess display of life, needing the rest of the world’s energy to supplement his own.

At 9:43am, Phillip stood in the station with his eyes shut.

Another man, a stranger, spent his morning rather differently.

Up at 8am, Taylor already suffered the soreness of a strenuous workout. Deadlift, overhead press, squats, inverted rows, kettlebell swings. During squats his knee gave out and he opted out of two reps. Two minutes of exercise unused. He struggled with the kettlebell, his muscles burned out by this last exercise of the routine. Thirty seconds added back. Total time of one hour and twenty-one minutes, close to his average.

At the exit, he sniffed at his clothes, wiping the slimy sheen from his temple. He couldn’t leave the gym without a shower. Ten more minutes.

He lingered outside the water for forty-two seconds, waiting for it to warm.

Halfway through the shower he realized he left the shampoo bottle in his bag and had to slink into the locker room, dripping and exposed. Seventy extra seconds.

Taylor toweled off, dressed in lazy, post-workout gear, and failed to find clean socks in his backpack, though he was sure he packed them. After sixty seconds of searching, he slipped into his steaming sneakers without.

He whistled down the street and skipped down the steps, scanned his card, and mosied through the crowd. He arrived on the platform of 72nd Street Station at 9:43am.

Two shoulders brushed by each other, a meaningless point of contact in New York City. Then Taylor sallied on, heedless of the bulky, swinging pack hanging behind him, and struck Phillip across the back.

With eyes shut, a sense of vertigo racked Phillip. His balance was stolen from him. His weight pitched forward in a moment of breathless in-between. He experienced one of those undefinable, ceaseless seconds just before a fall. His stomach turned, throat closed, and his mind captured every detail of his surroundings with stark clarity.

And then he cracked against the railway.

A twinge spiked down his spine and all oxygen evacuated his lungs. White patches spotted his vision, on the cusp of unconsciousness. Every muscle trembled and yet he rolled onto hands and knees, out of sheer force of will.

Other passengers loomed six feet above on the platform, shrieking down at him like vultures awaiting the death of their prey. Yet to his surprise, the backpack man dangled over the edge, ashen with remorse, and stretched a hand toward Phillip.

Two beams of light spilled over the tunnel wall behind. The low hum of the approaching train swelled by the second, mingling with the growing agitation of the crowd. On Phillip’s part, not a sound escaped. Even his pulse silenced.

The backpack man hollered through the racket, “Come on!”

Taking to his feet proved its own challenge. The more upright Phillip became, the more dizziness seeped into his balance, staggering him away from his one salvation.

The two men finally locked fingers, firm enough for the man to heave. He only bore the weight inch by inch, grating Phillip’s ribs against the bricks.

Screeches raked across everyone’s eardrums as the brakes locked. Nevertheless, the menacing face of the barreling train hurtled nearer, eager to snap Phillip inside its jowls. Soon the face vanished, the two luminescent, yellow eyes overpowering the entire rail line. Phillip flushed cold under its glower. His chest scratched across the platform. The rest of him still confronted the train.

The backpack man wrenched, his neck crimson and his exertion dripping down onto Phillip’s forehead. Fingernails dug into Phillip’s wrist until blood collected on his skin.

The careless stranger hung halfway into the crash zone with Phillip. The rush of air from the train whipped against them both now. The metal beast growled at their intrusion. This man had killed Phillip with his clumsiness, but now he chose to die too. Phillip had the power of choice left as well, if nothing else.

Phillip’s heart caved with grief as he released the man’s hand and sank back onto the rails. The screams of the platform redoubled.

The backpack man pushed himself away from the edge without another word, struck with horror by the tragedy he created.

Phillip squeezed his eyes shut as he had before, with an absence of peace this time. Tears drenched his cheeks. Every limb quivered. The vibration of the inbound rumbled the ground beneath him until he couldn't differentiate his own shaking. Then the collision came. 9:44am.

The strike shot through every nerve. The pain was too much to understand, too much to scream. Agony took on a life of its own.

Then, within a blink, not a single pain plagued him. He could breathe, move, and think. This had to be an afterlife, yet the subway station around him remained unchanged. Grimy pavement, shrieking pedestrians, the daunting face of the train crashing into him. He shouldn’t have still been here.

A strange adrenaline buzzed through him, not of fear, but ecstasy. It was the sort of high Phillip imagined would keep a junkie coming back for more. Electricity bolted through his veins, the air in his lungs cooled like a sweet breeze on a spring day, and every muscle released as if he relaxed into a deep sleep. He tapped into a sort of euphoria like none before.

As he breathed in this peculiar moment of perfection, the train charged forward. Phillip stayed rooted and unfeeling. Where the car smashed against his shoulder, a crumpled indentation folded around him like a steel cocoon, the smooth exterior crimping and creasing into a perfect mold of him. Phillip endured without a scratch and the tonnage of metal and momentum bent under the pressure. Soon the train slammed to a stop against him, groaning in resentment as it surrendered.

All was still.

Taylor chucked his pack aside, blinking at the destruction before him. The metal debris encased the stranger entirely, shrouding him from sight. He trembled head to toe, having just witnessed the death of an innocent man, a death of his doing.

With the train at a standstill and Taylor too full of remorse to be idle, he jumped down and inched toward the wreckage. Several other men followed after him in the hopes of unearthing the stranger. The four of them pried at the warped metal until a slender gap opened, revealing the frail silhouette of a man, the supposed victim of an unfortunate accident. Yet every inch of his skin remained intact and unscathed. His chest heaved up and down with steady, easy breaths. The man was alive.

Taylor had condemned him, an accident that should have tormented him the rest of his life, but the miracle he witnessed was clear as day. Of all the New Yorkers he could have knocked down, he was spared the grief through this one marvel of a man. Taylor was relieved, no doubt. Yet terror and uncertainty choked him too.

Through the rift in the rubble, shadow overtook the stranger’s form, except one anomalous feature. The natural, base color of his irises was clearly a deep chocolate yet, within their thin striations, an electric blue flickered like lightning rumbling through a heavy, oppressive thunderhead. After a few seconds of speechlessness, the effect dissipated into nothing. Yet Taylor knew what he saw. This was no illusion.

The invulnerable mystery man squeezed his puny chest through the crack, the jagged edges biting at his shirt. No one dared to help him, still awestruck. Only when the man’s knees buckled did Taylor finally come to his senses, catching his shoulders and propping him upright. Taylor flinched at his touch, as if this superhuman might infect him somehow, but he worried for nothing. The man could hardly stand, let alone attack.

This stranger took in the train car, mangled as if it had the structural integrity of a soda can, and a sickly pallor overwhelmed him. As uneasy as Taylor was, the man seemed even more disturbed by what he had done.

Taylor’s heart iced over as he finally asked, “What are you?”

A quiver of a response whispered out of Phillip. “I have no idea.”

© 2021 by Kelsey Garber