Lūna

LŪNA is the temptress; she flatters to deceive. Paired with Sol. Similar; not the same.

6

I feel sick. My head pounds. Every nerve in my body feels shredded. Bea is gone. Taken. I stumble through the train in a state of numb fear, and find nothing. Every carriage is empty, as in not-a-single-soul-on-board empty. One carriage after the other, I find no trace of her, or anyone else.

But how?

People don’t just disappear. They don’t.

I try to replay what happened, but my memory is fuzzy. I get the feeling the whole episode lasted, I don’t know, a minute or two? A minute or two of madness.

I remember feeling weird, blacking out maybe.

Then the crash.

I remember the scream and that hideous thing—black eyes, pink skin, wings bent to the walls of the carriage—the creature.

I remember it reaching Bea.

And then? What then? Nothing. I fell. I hit the ground hard, and when I looked up, the train was empty and Bea was gone.

I double back to the carriage where I started and I stare at the crushed Starbucks coffee cup on the floor—hers—her name still scrawled on the side: Bea

I stare at the bare space where she’d been lying. I pull back my hoodie, and look up and down the deserted carriage. Nothing. I swallow hard and a bitter taste lingers in my mouth. My teeth ache. A persistent noise crackles in the back of my head, as if there’s a swarm of locusts in there.

I lean against the train wall to stop from hyperventilating.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. SHIT!

I blunder through the carriage in a daze. I find a door, broken open. I shoulder through it and race up and down a deserted platform, shouting for help.

My voice echoes in the empty space.

I feel sick. My head pounds. I put my hands on my knees and breathe hard.

I need to get help.

I give the train a last glance, and then I turn and race to the WAY OUT sign and I hurl myself up the nearest escalator, which, like the platform, is abandoned. Two, three, five stairs at a time. At the top of the escalator I trip and sprawl onto the floor.

“Anybody,” I wheeze. “Somebody. Please.”

No one hears me. The station is deserted, which can’t be right. I try to recall if any stops on the Circle Line had been closed for repairs, but I’m positive there weren’t. Which station is this? I forgot to look on the platform.

From the floor, I cast about for a sign, but see nothing and nobody—not a single Tube official, or even a tourist. I’m alone. Alone, without Bea.