I don't know where to start. I know where I want to go but not how to get there. How do you introduce something like this? How do you set it up? How do you get from point A to point B when point B is bigger than anything, than everything? I just want to talk about what happened that day on the subway, because that's all I think about anymore. Every single minute of my life it's all I think about, it's all I hear and when I dream it's all I dream about because there's nothing else anymore. I'm stranded in time on this one moment and there's no past or future anymore, it's just the two minutes on the subway with that man. I would give anything to get away from this horrible moment but I can't stop reliving it, and the sound, the sound is always there and I am always, always hearing it and I wish I could make it stop. I don't know what else to do except to vomit this up and cast it out and hope to God that maybe this will turn the machine off, stop the wheels and let me sleep for just a little while.



    It was early and I was eating a bagel. A sesame seed bagel with strawberry cream cheese. There was a bit too much cream cheese in the middle, filling the hole on top. I remember every single detail, and I feel nothing but sympathy and pity for the woman I read about once who can remember every detail of her day. Hell is in the details. I was holding the bagel with a piece of wax paper because I was wearing my new suit, and I knew if I wasn't careful I'd get it filthy.

    The train had just left Grand, and it was full. I wasn't paying attention to anyone else because my bagel was the most important thing to me right then. Isn't that ridiculous? Nothing else in that moment, not the person across from me or the baby crying three rows down or the man jiggling his foot, was more important than that bagel. I took a bite and I was wiping my face when something about the way the person behind me whispered made my ears prick up a little. Maybe it was the fact that he said it quietly on a crowded train, on which you can't hear yourself think, let alone talk. Or it could have been that he said it in my ear, although I don't think he meant to. Either way, I turned my head back, to the right, and I felt my stubble scrape along my collar.

    "What?" I asked, swallowing.

    He was a young black man and he was grinning. He looked from the woman sitting next to him he raised his eyebrows at me.

    "That guy looks like he's gonna flip out."

    He hooked his thumb back and I leaned to look down the aisle.

    It was a man, just another man in a suit like me and half the train, but his foot was jiggling up and down up and down and his arms were crossed, which I remembered reading somewhere was a sign of hostility. He was glowering at the person across from him and that's when I actually heard the baby crying. Isn't that amazing? I'd completely tuned it out until that exact moment, but once I'd heard it I couldn't ignore it.

    A young Hispanic woman was cradling a baby, probably no more than three weeks old, and it was squalling. Babies that little sound like kittens, don't they? Like very angry kittens. She was wearing a loose brown coat and the baby was swaddled in a pink blanket with rabbits on it, and she was touching it and saying something, cooing at it and no one else payed her any attention except that man. He couldn't stop looking at her.

    We should have known then. We should have all known that something was wrong, that no one looks at anyone like that with anything but bad intentions, but we didn't do anything, we just sat there and waited to see what he would do. In all of us there's that little black thing that thrives on seeing people do terrible things. That black thing just eats it up, just loves knowing that that person is going to suffer for what they've done. Stupidity is a drug that we put right in our veins and it goes right into the heart of that little black thing and it loves us for it.

    His foot went up and down and up and down and he said something under his breath and there was sweat rolling down his face. The baby let out a loud screech, and a few people turned to look but this man, he shoved his fingers in his ears and bent his head down and planted his feet on the floor. His whole body moved with the tapping of his legs, and I frowned. I was still holding my bagel but I'd forgotten about it because I was thinking about what a display he was putting on. It would only be a matter of minutes, I thought, before he started ranting about how babies shouldn't be allowed in public. No doubt he had places to be, he was a very important person with very important business to attend to and he had no time for little babies that were tired or scared or hungry or whatever it was that was upsetting the little creature in the pink blanket. Mom slung Baby over her shoulder and patted its back, but Baby kept squalling in big hiccups, and now more people were watching this man, who still had his fingers stuffed in his ears and was singing to himself. I heard a snatch of the lyrics, and the song played in my head:



    Take me out tonight

    Where there's music and there's people

    Who are young and alive

    Driving in your car

    I never never want to go home

    Because I haven't got one anymore



    Someone next to him got up and moved farther down the train, shooting him a nasty glance, but the man was hunched over, fingers in his ears and singing and rocking, and Baby was cradled in Mom's arms, waving its little hands around and grasping at nothing.

    "Dude's fuckin' on something, man. Fuckin' crazy, man." The young man commented.

    I felt a blob of cream cheese fall out of my bagel and onto my wrist but something very interesting was happening to the man and it was as if I was hypnotized and I found that I couldn't look away. His rocking increased until the people next to him loudly commented on it, and from where I was I could see that there was blood on his fingers and running down his neck and onto the white of his shirt. I thought, he's really got his fingers in there, doesn't he? Baby shrieked and Mom continued to shush it and there was sweat pattering onto the floor, and the man's feet jiggled up and down and up and down and his face was very red, and the young man behind me said,

    "Holy shit, dude's gonna stroke out-"



    And then things happened very quickly.



    I remember everything.



    Baby let out a final, earsplitting screech, Mom shushed it, and the man leaped out of his seat. He was so fast, and none of us had any time to react. We just watched, spellbound, as he ripped the child in the blanket with the rabbits on it, and held it to his face. He screamed at it, the child screamed back, and in a fluid motion he raised the child in one hand. For a moment, it was beautiful. The blanket fell away, and the child, which he held by the chest, was lit from behind by the light of the ceiling runners. The man's suit jacket flared open around his chest, extending behind him like strange wings, and he craned his head to look up at it, and for that moment there was grace and stillness and we watched him, the whole train, mesmerized at the strange beauty of the scene that we could not comprehend. And then the moment ended, and with all the strength that the man had, he threw the baby to the ground, and with one shiny black wingtip he stepped upon its head and crushed it.



    There was a splatter of very pale red, and a sound like the cracking of an eggshell.



    The train was very still. It was quiet. The only sound was the wheels against the metal of the rails below us. The train swayed. Mom's arms were outstretched slightly, the hands cupped. Her eyes were downcast, and an image of the Blessed Virgin could not have matched the reverence in which her fingers curled against the empty air. The man, his shoe still upon what remained of the child, breathed heavily, blood running out of the ear that I could see.



    We were all very still.



    Then the mother began to scream.



    An explosion of movement around the man, like the flurry of birds taking flight, startled him, and caused him to blink rapidly. His face lost color and sagged, and his eyes went wide with shock. He lifted the shoe, which was caked in tissue and blood and hair, and a piece of skin was stuck to the bottom. It lifted the tiny body up slightly. He reeled back and his legs struck the bench behind him, which he fell upon with all his weight.



    Chaos. Absolute chaos. The mother fell to her knees and cradled the broken body. She screamed and screamed and there was more pain in those screams that anyone has ever known. The young man behind me shouted something, got to his feet and ran over, while his female companion collapsed in a dead faint into the aisle. Several people grabbed the man, who was clutching his chest. His eyes rolled and his face hung off his skull and he was saying something, saying it over and over. I was not aware of moving closer but I must have because I could smell the acrid stink of him, and I could hear what he was saying:

    "What did I do? What did I do? It's never been that bad before, what did I do?"

    He tried to break out of the cluster of hands holding him to reach for the mother, who reared away and brought her child to her chest. The blood was pink and it stained her coat, and absurdly I wondered if it would ever come out. I remembered reading somewhere that blood could be removed with common soap and I wanted to tell her this but when I opened my mouth nothing came out.

    I was still holding my bagel full of pink cream cheese and she looked at it and her wailing tore open the world.

    The man continued to scream, and from somewhere there was the sound of someone else yelling into a phone.

    "Oh my God I have a condition! I have a condition I'm so sorry, please what did I do? What did I do?"

    The bagel was soft in my hand and when I crushed it the cream cheese covered my fingers and palm and I dropped it, hissing, as if it were hot.

    "What did I do? Oh my God what did I do?"

    From outside the windows came the flicker of the lights in the next stop. A crowd was waiting at the edge of the platform, and I thought how lucky they were that policemen were there to push them back, back, so that they would never bear witness to the end of the world. And all the while, the mother split the air open, and the man continued to cry out against the hands that held him to the seat.

    "What did I do! What did I do!"

    The Man and The Mother; it was a terrible symphony.



   For me, now, there is no past or future. There is no softness or joy or taste. I am stranded at the end of the world where there is nothing. Where there can never be anything



    In my dreams, I hear the cracking of eggshells.