Subway - 1st draft

Plastic tiles reflect sour fluorescent light against the metal sheathing, broken only where the machine itself is segmented. Bile-scented wind forces itself down the throats of passersby dragging themselves about with manufactured purpose. A slight girl, dark skinned with black shiny hair wound in tight curls pushes a tall curving case in front of her, navigating the aimless who push without feeling and glare without seeing, mouths hanging open or pursed shut like a clasp. Settling herself, the colorless cocoon seals itself shut with an unnatural clang and a sucking noise. Captives are slouched around her, hanging from metal rods or packed neatly onto sad squares of bench. The windows reflect the shuddering masses as the girl straightens her yellow jacket and begins assembling herself to play an ebony guitar. She tunes it whisper soft, begins to hum from inside skin tight white jeans, binding purple tanktop and a matching prim headband. She seems to erupt in technicolor from her small throat-red sneakers. Fish mouths grope at sighs of air through which to grumble above the clanking and rocking. Song bursts through the rollicking corridor as the machine itself is suddenly thrust into sunlight, high in the air. Guitar strokes brush rapidly through the train, and the mumbles dissipate before her. She begins to walk and sing and play, heads turn like flowers to light after a long darkness. As she strums and pants for breath the train bends to her rhythm. An enormous yellow building covered in graffiti marshmallow letters and neon images is thrust through the windows. The garish colors and exultant noise melt and clink together, like drums and screams and a few people in the car begin to clap and sing along. One girl drops a ratty backpack to dance, sliding through the car with the girl-bard, slinking about the metal poles and passengers. The building is fleeting, slipping in pieces of images, a woman's shoulder, a snake tail, a naked breast, an unrecognizable face to further incense the passengers. Soon, the entire car is panting and rocking to the music of itself, as the track curves like a hip and the train is pulled, pushed from side to side and down back into the earth again, another subway station, another stop. As the friction of the wheels grate, vibrating the entire car, passengers collect themselves, their things, disengage and again adopt that hollow-eyed stare, but with a glean. The girl herself has thanked and smiled and collected what due she could manage, folds her guitar into its bronze lipped case. As she quietly rolls into the new hot passage of air, the next train howls through the station, ringing her hum to shreds.