Jostle

 

Sabrina was used to crowded subway stations. She knew the rhythm of rush hour: the bored expressions, the quiet sighs, the occasional muttered apology as strangers bumped shoulders and stepped on toes. But today felt… off.

The jostling crowd wasn’t just dense, it was aggressive. People weren't brushing past one another; they shoved, elbows digging, feet trampling, bodies pressing forward with unsettling urgency. There was no anger, no yelling. Just this silent, collective need to move.

Sabrina shifted to the side, trying to let people pass, but the current caught her. She stumbled forward, barely keeping her footing. The crowd was too tight to break from. It was like being caught in a flood.

She turned to glance at the man beside her to ask if he knew what was happening, but he was already staring at her. She realized his face was too still, too smooth. A smile stretched across his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Eyes that were glassy. Blank. Like a doll’s.

“Hurry up,” he hissed, breath sour against her cheek. “You’ll miss it.”

That’s when Sabrina realized: no one was speaking. No one was looking at their phones or checking the train schedule. They weren’t acting like people at all.

They were all moving in perfect sync, eyes wide or empty, breathing in strange unison, feet dragging with the same mechanical rhythm. It wasn’t a crowd anymore. It was a single thing, a vast, living organism, pulsing with one thought.

All pushing toward the same goal.

But what was it?

The tiled walls began to blur past her. There were no exits in sight now, only dimly lit corridors that sloped downward, deeper into the tunnels. The air grew colder, heavier, filled with a distant hum that vibrated in her chest.

She tried to turn around, but the bodies behind her wouldn’t budge. Their limbs seemed stiff now, their faces more waxen. She reached out to steady herself and touched someone’s arm—cold, clammy, unyielding.

Her voice caught in her throat. No one responded when she finally cried out. No one blinked.

They just kept moving toward whatever awaited at the end of this descent.

Sabrina’s heart pounded as a terrible realization bloomed in her chest: She wasn’t sure if she was being pulled toward a train, or toward a destination the crowd had chosen long before she arrived.

By the time she found out, it would already be too late to stop.

***

408 words. 

Another "long" story by my standards. It feels nice to get caught up in an idea and let the words flow, though.