Before (fiction)

Today, her words feel weighed down by a certain heaviness, which wasn't there the day before, and hopefully, won't be here tomorrow. Several times, during class, or at table, she opens her mouth, only to close her lips, and look on solemnly. At those whose words are easy and light, who do not know this heaviness. There are times when she worries about forgetting the words. Times when her nostrils flare, and her heart skips, and hops, and does a peculiar little dance that no one else would love but her. These are the times, and these the reasons, that she shuns the outside world whenever this happens.

If she is on the metro, she will push her way to one of the four corners of the rail car. The ones that, as prized prime territory in the realm of underground magic, are hawked, and scouted, coveted, and held on to almost obsessively. When she feels her heart beginning to dance, she beelines for the last remaining space in the corner of the rail car, and covers her face, and the tremors that pass over her slim, perfect features. It's taken the girl a very long time to even entertain the notion that she might be pretty. And now, she wishes she never had, 'cause now she can't sit still on the transport, for the thought that others might be looking at her.
Between that, and her budding terror of speaking, the girl's enjoying public transport, and life, in general, less and less.

A tap on her shoulder. Is it the guard? Has something happened? She must've dropped her wallet, that would be it, the girl thinks, in the seconds between the tap itself and turning her head. A banal enough occurrence that even she knows how to handle. She only needs to speak two words. "Thank", and "you". Maybe, if she's feeling particularly bold, she'll throw the stranger a bemused smile, as if to say would you look at that.
It's nothing. She's said thank you millions of times, though recently, as the words have started cramming, and trampling one another inside her mind, a little less.

The girl turns, still wondering what she's done to make words difficult and boulder-like inside her mouth. And it is not the train guard tapping her shoulder. Nor, for that matter, is the person before her holding a wallet, a keychain, or anything that seems to belong to her, at all. Before her, stands a man, about five years younger than herself, which is to say practically a baby. He is neat, and clean shaven (though it still remains a mystery that one so young would require such services, to begin with). Beneath his cream shirt, his muscles ripple, like an ocean, telling a story to a sailor who's lost his way. There is something appealing about him, yet infinitely strange and off-putting.
"I've seen you before," the youth begins, then waits, as if this alone ought to be enough to elicit a response. Part of the girl longs to tell him it's going to be much harder. That the sickness inside her mouth preventing her from speaking is ancient and foul, not something to be assuaged by a mere twist of the tongue. Not even a pretty one, such as his.

Photo by Tom Smith on Unsplash

"I was gonna ask you if you're alright, but I figure that's a bit of a stupid question, isn't it?"
"Is it?"
Her voice, a mere whisper, unintelligible over the clamor of feet, and the loud, robotic voice, instructing passengers to exit the train in an orderly manner. Something is happening. No, it is just another stop, like a million others. It is not her stop yet. Not yet her time.
But the youth appears to hear her, anyway, for he speaks the next line clearly, almost too kind for the voiceless girl to trust him.
"It's alright. I've got a kid brother, doesn't like the train, either."
And the girl would like to tell him it is not the train itself, but rather the voices on the train that rob her of her voice, and make things nauseating. But then she thinks, maybe that's also the case for the boy's brother, and the youth just don't know it.

"Here," he says, and holds out a hand. Broad and manicured, not so that it's girly, but just so that the nailbeds are clean. Waits for her, and the girl realizes she likes this youth, and his easy, straightforward manner. Gives him her hand, because what harm can come by merely offering your hand to a stranger, on a packed subway?
Warm and safe inside his grip, maybe she can rediscover speaking. Except, in the next moment, the youth's grip shifts, and moves her hand towards her own sternum.
"When it gets to be... too much, you just rub your hand like this, over your heart."
His hand over hers, they move in a perfectly synced halo over the girl's chest. One, two, until she loses count of the circles, and then stops. Pressing her hand to her own bare skin, the youth begins to caress this stranger who is voiceless and beautiful, on a subway that, unbeknownst to them, is headed in the wrong direction in the early hours of the morning.
"It calms the nerves."
"Why?"
The youth shrugs. "My Gran said it fixes up your energy. But you don't gotta believe all that for it to work."
And she nods, 'cause you don't always need words to say what you mean. Sometimes thank you's nothing but a couple o' words.
"Anyway, this is me," the youth says, and the girl knows then that she doesn't like him for the muscles under his shirt, or the taut skin on his brow. She likes him because he's the only one in this entire fucking car that sees her.
As the doors of the car slide open, he begins to move away from her, following the flow of cattle out into the poorly ventilated, shiver-down-your-neck metro platform. But then, as if pushed back by an oppressive gust of wind, the youth leans in to her, again, this time grabbing her shoulder, for support or sympathy, the girl can't know.
"You can wake up, but it's tricky. It's hard to make it quiet. You need to avoid loud places. My brother's just the same."

The girl looks after him as long as she can, but she doesn't like metros. Especially this one, narrow and winding, like a subterranean death-trap, inescapable once you're past the metal access bars. She watches the crowd sway and hurry across the stiff, graffitied linoleum. She watches keenly, yet she doesn't quite see how it happens. One minute, she's aware of the youth growing further and further from her, and the next, she watches his perfect, child-god slender body plummet on the other side of the platform. Splatter, straight unto the train tracks.
And she would scream, if only she could remember how, so instead, she wakes up.

to be continued. Maybe.