Story #3: Dramatic Monologue

Kelly Hanken

"The Meaning is Lost"

The day I died, there was a large accident in the subway tunnels. A subway train derailed and crashed through the barrier, into an oncoming train, killing half of the passengers and causing the entire system to jam up. Being that the oncoming train was part of my daily commute, it was logical and almost acceptable that I had died (almost because no loss of life is really acceptable). Being that I had been late coming from work, I had just missed the train.

I had been contemplating dying for a while; well, not so much dying as disappearing off the face of the Earth. My life was dull and boring, with only a few friends and no real relationships, other than one with my girlfriend’s cat and my girlfriend herself, who tended to go off her meds more often than not and wasn’t always the nicest girl to get along with. It would be amazing to simply up and leave – disappear into the mists, go somewhere new and begin a new life.

I had been standing behind the red line, thinking about dying and getting on the next subway, when there was the screech of metal and the crunch of two trains connecting in a brutal fashion. A rising wave of dirt and dust crashed over the entire station from the tunnel, bringing screams from the accident with it. In that dust, I saw my getaway. I saw the world fill with light. This was my chance!

I fought through the crowds of people trying to help, up the stairs and into the street. Word had only just reached the surface and so it wasn’t entirely impossible to slip into the crowd.

So there I was, walking the streets, hearing about the accident that I was certain people would assume I’d died in. I felt free for the first time in twenty-five years. Finally, I could walk away from everything and be my own man. The word was my smoggy, opportunity-filled oyster!

I stepped into a train station, paid for the first train out of town and stood, waiting for this chance to finally fulfill itself. There was a red line here, just like in the subway station, and I took care to stand behind it because I didn’t want my chance to go to waste.

As I said, this was the day I died. What you might think is that I meant it metaphorically; that by “dying,” I meant “disappearing.” Maybe, if you’re supernaturally inclined (or just like movies with twist endings), you imagine that I did die in that accident and that I’m now a ghost unaware of the fact. Maybe you expect the train will crash and I’ll die there, in a little ironic, fatalistic twist.

I’m sorry to say, but none of these are the correct answer. Truth be told, I would have preferred any of these over the way everything did go down, because at least they would make for a decent, meaningful sort of story about life and futility and all that. At least they would have made sense.

But the fact of the matter is that, as the train was approaching the station at that still-deadly speed, my soon-to-be-ex girlfriend, off her meds for three weeks now, furious that I was leaving her and her cat, had followed me from work, through the subway, up the stairs, across town, into the train station, where she promptly shoved me into the oncoming train’s path.

Take what meaning you’d like from all of this, but remember that the only thing I worried about as I fell in front of that hulk of iron, steel and speed was: “I really hope she takes good care of the cat.”