The incident in the tunnel, after which I immediately quit

As a student, I worked part-time as a night traveler on the subway, but I didn’t stay there for long. Strange stories have happened to me this year (or a little less, I don’t remember exactly how much I hung out there), but now I’ll tell you the one after which I immediately quit.

In general, the work is not so dusty. After the closure of the subway for passengers, almost the same life continues to boil in it. There are many different services: cleaners, technicians, electricians, crawlers… in short, a lot of people. That’s not the point. And the task of the crawler is to move from stage to stage and check for caterpillar malfunctions and other breakdowns…

I went on shift. Everything is on schedule. I checked the flashlight, the walkie-talkie. I laughed a little with the men, smoked a cigarette, and began to disperse… I passed the first stage — I didn’t notice; I was thinking about something of my own; I don’t even remember. Once — and flew. The second one was also stomping fast. I remember whistling something. These were short tunnels; I passed them somewhere in a little more than an hour. There was another, longer one ahead. This station *** was. I passed the station; I entered the tunnel and literally did not walk a hundred meters. The light from the station is still falling; I hear footsteps from behind…

My heart sank, I quickly turned around; I looked — a figure from the station was coming in my direction! I am on treason; I started shining a flashlight into it; I shout: “Who are you?!” And I thought, maybe the cleaning lady wants something, a cigarette to shoot, for example… After a couple of steps, almost as soon as I shone the flashlight, I recognized the figure. Michael was an ordinary guy from another shift. Cheerful, he absorbed all the jokes.

Once, a couple of times after a shift, they even talked to him in the locker room, but, in principle, I didn’t talk to him that much.

“Michael, what are you? “I shout to him, and he comes up to me and says “Hi,” Michael looks like Michael, only he was pale. I immediately noticed it, I remember, and said, “You look a little pale, Michael.”

To which he muttered something about having taken too much alcohol the day before.

Well, I’ll ask him what he’s doing here. He said it looked like he had only one tunnel; today, he had already bypassed it. but there was a breakdown, men were working there, so they say he decided to go help there, and then he saw from the platform that I was coming, so he definitely decided, whatever goes, we’ll get there together. In general, something like that. That’s all I remember from a specific conversation, then we mostly walked in silence. Well, maybe a person really has a headache after yesterday, for example — there is no mood to communicate or something else, I thought then. Nothing strange. The only thing I remember well is that Michael complained a couple of times that he was cold. In principle, it’s always not hot on the subway, but for some reason I remember these words well…

We got to ***, Michael said that for some reason he would go there in the chapter. We said goodbye and parted. The time was already at the end of the shift. In half an hour the voltage would be applied to the contact rail. I did my job. Reported to the dispatcher that there were no accidents, and everything was fine. Washed my face, and went to the hostel with a calm soul. Everything seems to be in order…

The next night I returned for a shift (a friend asked me to replace him), and this was exactly the shift where Michael worked. And in the locker room, Alex casually asks me if I remember Michael. I replied that, of course, I remember. And he says to me, “He died the day before yesterday. The funeral is tomorrow.”

I somehow went limp; I still feel sorry for this person; I asked what happened; Alex said it was like a heart attack. A neighbor found out about it at home in the morning ….. And then it hit me like an electric shock.

“When did you say he died?” The day before yesterday? “I’m asking.

“Yes,” Alex said.

I asked him again and told him that I had walked through the tunnel with him only last night. Alex said something like that, it couldn’t be, and was I drunk. A few more people came in and asked if we had heard of Michael.

“When did he die?! “I almost screamed.

“Tuesday, the day before yesterday.”

I sat down. Then I vaguely remember everything. The men asked something and looked apprehensively; it is clear that I looked absolutely. Someone seems to have asked if everything is fine, and what happened? In general, I rushed like a bullet to the shift supervisor, shouted there that they would give me a questionnaire and that I would not step into the tunnels anymore. He was yelling at me to go home to sleep. Then suddenly we both fell silent, and the boss asked me so carefully, they said, what happened… I looked at him seriously and said only, “I saw him yesterday. I went with him to the station!”

A little later, without saying a word, he took my statement, written with a trembling hand, and made a gesture with his hand. Well, I realized that he was letting me go.

In general, I was scared half to death then, and drank for a week after that. I didn’t go to Michael’s funeral. It was scary as hell. Who was I walking with?!

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