[ OT ] Sunday Free Write : Leave A Story , Leave A Comment - Sea to Shining Sea Edition !

`` They ca n't get out! They're all going to die in here! Oh God, they're killing each other!'' 
 
 It was the same bright red sharpy on the walls of the men's room at the civic center station. This was n't the first time I had seen these dark messages. They had been popping up over the past couple of weeks. I had seen a pic on the internet of something similar at a housing authority complex in Oakland a couple days ago. 
 
 It was on the wall out front. It said, `` He did n't do anything! Leave him alone!'' 
 People thought it must be some kind of political statement about the police or about gang violence. They had cameras, and the poster said they had seen a white guy, kind of disheveled, with a backpack. He was likely homeless. 
 
 I saw homeless people all over the subway system. Some of them had mental problems, and some were just flat out creepy. This guy seemed to be both, but I had n't seen him. 
 
 I was finishing my shift on a Friday night. A friend of mine who also worked for BART wanted me to come to Berkeley with him. There were some college kids who we hung out with on the weekends. We just listened to music and smoked weed mostly, but a new girl had joined our group. I was hoping to see what might happen between her and I, so at midnight, I was headed for Ashby station. 
 
 At Ashby, I wandered around looking for Kevin. The traditional hippy with a guitar stood on the southbound platform singing a kind of mysterious old song which I recognized. `` And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tennament halls,'' he sang, as I approached my friend, and we left the station together. 
 
 I thought about the words written in the bathroom and the others I saw on the wall near the southbound platform at the beginning of my shift. 
 `` She's little! Her mom's freaking out! They're stepping on her! They're running right in to it!'' 
 
 I pulled a handful of quarters from my pocket and tossed them in to a fastfood cup the guy had by his foot. He smiled and waved at me as I started up the stairs. 
 
 I'm at Civic center again. It's Monday, and as soon as I clocked in, there was another message on the wall, this time at the northbound platform. 
 `` Oh God, she's throwing up blood! No, stop it! I smell more of it! Go the other way!'' 
 
 I spritzed some cleaning solution on a rag, and whiped it from the wall as usual. The rag looked red as if it had been stained with blood. 
 
 It reminded me of the dream I had the night before. Friday night had been fun. I had talked to the girl. Her name was Lilly, and I got her number. I had forgotten about the creepy writing on the wall until Sunday night. 
 
 I was walking around the station, I did n't know which one, and no one was there. The stations were always open, and there were always people there. 
 
 The air rieked of something like feces or vomit, and there were random blood stains on the walls, the floor, the steps. I could hear a guitar somewhere, but I could n't see the musician. I recognized his voice when he started to sing. First, it was the song from before. 
 
 His voice semed to come from diferent places. First, it was the north platform, then the tracks somewhere down the tunnel, but as I looked, it was the opposite direction. 
 
 On the wall of the tunnel, I saw in large letters, written in the same bright red sharpy, `` redrum,''. 
 
 I scoughed, `` Really, what is this, the Shining?'' 
 
 The hippy's voice, already sounding creepy as it echoed off the walls of the empty station, now took a darker note; as did the key of his playing. 
 He sounded as though he were taunting me as he sang, `` People are dieing. Children are crying. watch the blood run down. watch the blood run down.'' 
 
 It had gone from creepy to cheesy. I had done this in a couple of other nightmares I had experienced. It made me feel better, but as I turned around, a girl lay right in front of me. 
 
 She was about five or six. She lay on the platform seizing, bloody foam dribbling from her mouth. I awoke in a cold sweat. 
 
 I shook off the memory and kept working. There were a couple trash cans I needed to empty. I got to it. 
 
 `` They're choking! Everybody's choking! They ca n't get out!'' 
 This was on a diferent wall. I cleaned it near the end of my shift. This time, I almost caught the guy. He had a few days of facial hair growth, but he had this wild, kind of panicked look in his eyes. His hair was sticking out in all directions, and his clothes were dirty. He was definitely homeless. I yelled for the transit cop standing near the train which was taking passengers at the time. I pointed, he's been putting grapheeti up.'' 
 The cop shrugged and pointed to ward the crowd attempting to board, but he spoke in to the mic of his radio. The guy saw this and darted. 
 
 They got him the next day. I was off, but I heard the transit cops talking about it on my scanner. One of them is a friend of mine, so I called him later. 
 `` Hey, what's goin on?'' 
 `` Not much, how have you been Jake? I have n't heard from you in a good while.'' 
 `` I've been around. Hey, did you hear about that guy writing weird creepy stuff on the walls?'' 
 `` Which one?'' 
 `` The one who always used a bright red sharpy and wrote a bunch of paranoid shit on the wall.'' 
 `` Oh him. Yeah, we caught him today. Apparently, he's been living in the tunnels somewhere around the embarcadero. He was actually reported missing from Berkeley.'' 
 `` wow really?'' 
 `` Yeah, he was a student at UC down there, and he just poofed. His roommate got worried and called the police. They took him to the hospital. He seems out of his head.'' 
 `` Did they say what was wrong?'' 
 `` It seems like some kind of schizophrenia. That stuff always shows up right about the time a person reaches college. He probably did n't know he had it.'' 
 `` Yeah, either that, or something at school stressed him out, and he snapped.'' 
 `` That could be too.'' 
 
 It was n't a week later when everything happened. I sat at home that day, because I was n't supposed to go in until later, but the panicked voices in the background were my first indication that something was wrong. 
 `` I need assistance up here now! `` said a female transit officer. 
 `` Where are you?'' asked the dispatcher. 
 `` She replied, but the background noise drowned her out.'' 
 `` Adam fourteen repeat.'' 
 `` This is adam thirty five at the stairs of Civic Center. We've got a big crowd crush here. People are running toward the exit.'' 
 `` Okay, adam fourteen, are you at civic Center?'' 
 No response. 
 `` Adam fourteen, you copy?'' 
 `` two sixty, I've got people on the tracks south of Civic center. I'm making an emergency stop, but I do n't think I can do it in time.'' 
 `` two fifty five. I just left 19th, and something just happened at the terminal. There was a big panic, and you could smell something real bad. I closed the door, but I think there's an emergency onboard.'' 
 Near the end, another signal fought with his. When the train operator stopped talking another voice continued, `` I'm in car four. There's some kind of gas in the car. We've got three people affected. We need ems now!'' 
 
 Absolute chaos ensued on the radio for the next few hours. My boss called me, `` Have you been watching the news?'' he asked. 
 `` no, but I've been listening to the scanner.'' 
 `` Well, do n't come to work tonight. We're keeping all nonessential staff home.'' 
 `` No problem.'' 
 The next day, Kevin called. He had been part of a crew to help go through and look for people who were missing. He was an emt, so he had worked the night of the gas attack. 
 There had been gas grenades set off on the platforms at 19th street in Oakland, Ashby, and Civic Center. Then, more had been set off near the stairwells as people fled toward them. 
 
 It was mustard gas, a horrible way to go. It made a person cough until pieces of lung came up. Their lungs would simply fail eventually. The deathtoll was rising by the hour at one point. 
 
 `` Hey, you hearing all this shit?'' he asked. 
 `` Yeah, it sounds really bad.'' 
 `` Oh God, at Civic Center, I went to this bathroom. A bunch of people went in there to get away from it, but the gas followed them. They could n't get out, so they started clawing and fighting with each other to get out. I will never get the way those bodies looked out of my head.'' 
 He sounded truly traumatized, his voice quiet. 
 `` Good God!'' I said, there was nothing else to say. 
 
 The trouble continued after the attack. Noone directly took responsibility, but everybody from jihadists to anarchists braged about it online. The government started going after all kinds of groups. The constitution was never talked about. Asking for a warrant was a great way to get beaten down. 
 
 One night, a guy in Oakland went outside his apartment building and started yelling. It was a bunch of stuff about the cops and the police state that was cropping up now that this gas attack had happened 
 
 People ignored him, but a cop heard him and called for back-up. Four or five officers came to help, and they all threw him down and jumped on top. They tazed and beat him until he was dead. It was n't the first casualty, and I knew it would n't be the last. As I watched the news, I noticed the complex I had seen in the picture of the writing someone had posted online. 
 `` He did n't do anything! Leave him alone!'' 
 The bright red words still appear when I close my eyes. 
 
 Sorry Frisco, but too many stories are set in New York, so I need another subway system. 
 

