tri·col·or

In 1893, Chicago's barbarous streets faced an incredible amount of deaths from train collisions with frozen passersby. Without barriers or protective signaling, people died without proper warning or a chance to run. During that horrid year, approximately 400 people were killed. In this day and age, only one person is killed per calendar year under very particular circumstances.

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The dingy red line, rattling furiously on top of slightly crooked metal tracks, was going faster than usual. The whole city was dark, with dim streetlights illuminating bulbs of snow and sleet that cut through into the light of the lamps. A winter storm continued to mow down the vast gridlocked alleyways between the buildings amidst thickening icy winds. For whatever reason, this train was not stopped by the weather advisories.

I wouldn't have known what line this was or that it was even on a schedule until a fellow passenger gave me a clue.

Opening my eyes, my initial blurry view of the damp train floor changed into a clear view of the seat next to me. The air was heated but congested as folks in the train car donned hats, down jackets, and gloves to keep warm. I felt the blue matted velvet of train car seats that haven't been cleaned in years and looked at the scattered population of Chicagoans that sat or stood in the hallways of the L. All around, I saw the yellow plastic of the seat bottoms and the red stickers of CTA warnings. It was a tri-colored mess within the body of Chicago's infamous public transportation.

What happened to me here was unexplainable.

I had no memory of ever purchasing more funds on my card, or even passing through the rusted stairs of the Jackson station. I didn't recall standing on the platform or feeling the usual polluted air gust change flowing over me when the train pulled swiftly into the stop. Every time that air hit my skin, it deteriorated my skin cell barrier's abilities to prevent buds of acne from appearing on my jawline.

The whole thing was... pretty weird. Not the acne, but the train thing.

Maybe I blacked out last night?

I was probably drunk coming home from Boystown or something. Highly unlikely, but it's still a suspect in this sea of confusing possibilities. Matter of fact... what day is it, even?

I tried to recall my decisions from the night before.

Maybe a passerby in some local bar gave me a drug, and that's why I can't remember anything?

If that was the case, that drug had properties that took me into another world and made me forget why I was here.

Still, it feels too cloudy to reflect on how I got to the spot I'm in now. In conclusion, I have no idea what's going on.

At this moment, pieces of my memory were insubstantial to the context of being magically placed onto the red line this early. The entire predicament was just flat-out strange. I was confused to even be sitting here, yet the train crowd's environment was still practicing its own sense of homeostasis.

Everyone around me was preoccupied as you would expect, listening to music or scrambling to reply to their significant others with quick fingers to text back ILY. The L train appeared busy, and we were avoiding a few stops that had line construction.

It was vital information given to me a few moments prior by a girl from one of the charter schools. Wearing a standard uniform and hoisting up the clear bag filled with school supplies, she took out her future lunch. Slowly peeling away at the remaining shell pieces of a hardboiled egg, the girl stayed focused. Her eyes narrowed in on the treasure of the rubberlike egg suspended within the gate of the shell. Minutes after waking up from what seemed like a brief nap, I mustered up the ability to ask what train this was and what was happening.

"Excuse me, do you know where we are at? What line is this?"

Her brown hair, tousled and sloppily braided, fell to one side of her shoulder. Twiddling around with her food, she paused a brief moment to look my way. With an annoyed glare fueled by pure teenage angst, she responded to my question with a cutting tone.

"It's the red line. We just left Jackson. They said the train will skip a few stops to avoid construction."

"Thanks."

She nodded and continued to focus her attention on the egg again.

--------

It must be morning then. At least some basic deductive reasoning lead me here.

We are on the red line, passing Jackson, and heading somewhere. That explains the train going incredibly fast since they didn't have to stop at a few places. Okay, great. But it still doesn't answer why pieces of my memory remain missing, or why I am here without any logical answers to back it up.

With all of this piecing together, I didn't even have time to assess what I was wearing or what was next to me on the seat. Looking down, I noticed that I had on a navy pressed suit with an ID tag. The ID looked scratched, but it lead me to believe that I worked over in a laboratory somewhere up north. Next to me was a white styrofoam box, and I was scared to lift it open at first. That is until I remembered how stupid it was to be afraid of a pointless box.

Upon opening it, I saw the remnants of blood samples.

PBMC isolation.

It was a process of isolating blood cells. With freezing. Something about liquid nitrogen.

Yes.

I had to get the blood over to the lab before it coagulated into a gel that was unusable for extracting serum into aliquots. It was a process of separating lymphocytes from the rest of the blood and had to be done in a sterile hood with utmost accuracy. Looking at the blood below me, I realized that it wasn't changing into the unwanted gel texture. It looked normal, almost unaffected by the passing time since I had woken up. Whatever amount of time had gone by, the two singular samples in the box hadn't changed.

I'm remembering bits and pieces.

I was employed as a research technologist, at a lab somewhere here. I had to wear a suit to present at our usual Monday afternoon meetings.

That explains the suit part. But what about the train? Rolling over aging metal, the train never seemed to slow down. It felt like it was getting even faster.

---

Loudspeakers over the L train cars coughed out a static announcement:

"Doors are closing. Doors are closing."

The train never even stopped, yet the conductor still stumbled over his words a little to give us this information.

What?

I looked at the blackened window showing the tunnels that stretched beneath the city and thought I saw faces.

----

I have to have a wallet here somewhere, maybe some ID. Hell, even my train card would be nice.

But for some reason, my pockets held blurred cards that were heavily scratched out. It looked as if someone took a box cutter and erased the names and credit card numbers in a hurry.

Remembering why I got on the train or even my own full identity now became a desperate mission.

While I did remember some things, it felt like a slow recollection that comes through in spurts during a bad hangover. Unfortunately for me, I don't think this was happening because of a post-wild party haze that took place in some high-rise downtown.

GOD....this is so frustrating.

I just want to know why I can't remember anything!

I need to ask someone if I can get off or where I can find the nearest hospital. After checking my pockets for the millionth time, I couldn't even find a stupid phone.

How much time was even passing by?

Was this train ever going to stop?

To my right, that girl was still tampering with the egg.

----

I remembered once that I was incredibly sad during the summer months.

Chicago summers could be very vibrant if you made the best of them. I always watched people across from me in towers picking out dinners with their significant others, playing with their children, and spending time throwing toys across the room for their pets. The dissolution of the American nuclear family hit me hard when I was 10, and the feeling has never left me the same since.

In my solitary hub, I came home on timid evenings to my own company. No dogs, no other pets, and no family close around. I was met with a singular dinner table that awaited instant meals from Dollar Produce to prepare for another day at the lab.

I know that my girlfriend left a while ago. I still loved her, I think.

I was thinking back on the feeling of a weight on my chest that tore through arteries and bone marrow. It was a nonexistent knife that kept driving itself into every vein and neuron within my frail body.

For a while, I think I forgot how to function. I saw people as fog, and I saw my work as a means to live.

I didn't have many plans, I suppose.

Everything molded together into one big dream. I felt like going through each day wondering if my waking moments were just another form of sleep paralysis. I remembered the time each gram of Zoloft crashed onto the bathroom floor or the time I punched the mirror into a cracked mosaic of unreleased anger.

The memories began to hurt.

The train didn't stop either.

-----

All I see is the girl, the egg, and the same passengers.

The scratched IDs tell me very little, and the train has not fully stopped. In the passing reflections of the L window, I thought I saw the past.

Come home for dinner soon please, I miss you. Don't stay too late at work.

Salma's voice echoed.

Happy Anniversary, my love.

Where did she go?

The train car felt like it was spinning in a manic tilt-a-whirl ride, as the volume of the wheels grew more intense.

Metal crashing violently against metal.

I looked up to see my face covered in red clotted blood, sunken in like a deflated tire.

A few walkie beeps and blips, which confirmed what I had done, came through the tunnels.

These witnesses have attested to seeing him here around 15 minutes ago. I'm so sorry, mam.

Salma's heaving cries echoed through the station, wrapping around the train car. I thought the plexiglass itself would burst.

The girl with the egg didn't hear, though the noise was deafening.

"I did, too."

She looked over at me, eyes now sunken as she responded to a question I never asked.

Wait...no. What? What is going on?

The other passengers all nodded.

"Do you remember how long ago, it was? Why did you do that? Where are we now?"

The girl never took a bite of the exposed egg, only twirling it around as it regrew its shell again.

"I think so. I can't remember exactly. Sorry. I think this is the front of the train car."

I paused again.

"Can we somehow stop the train?"

"No", she said curtly.

-----

I hope I can see Salma again.

I love you, Jesse.

Now within the car, I saw that the faces around me were kept frozen in their own time. The tri-colored train didn't stop, but we all kept going.