Every night, for the past I don’t know how long, the noise was so loud that he could not sleep. So remedy after remedy, from mugwort to red poppies, he stopped drinking his potions and took to the streets at witching hour. The dark felt more welcoming outside than it did in, as the silvery moon lit his path along the wet streets of the city. He saw some figures skulking in the shadows at odd alleyway openings, but he minded his own business because he knew what was good for him. The noise was still there as it always was, but at least now it was drowned out by the sounds of nocturnal urban life, but tonight, on this night of All Hallow’s Eve, Steve, decided to find the source for the insatiable cacophony that tortured him so. So he walked through the dark, as lonely as he was, but never forgot his manners as he tipped his hat to foxes that he passed, and then as if pulled by strings, he felt himself stop right in the middle of the street.
Next to him, the flickering lights of the station interrupted his thoughts, so he walked over to the gates that were provisionally locked. But Steve, as he was known on the streets even though that was not his real name, was a slippery sort, and so he slipped his thin wrist straight through the diamond gap and popped the lock with a small pocket knife that was much more innocent than you may first assume. He looked both left and right, and as a large rat passed that caused him a mere moment of fright, he slid the gate across just enough to squeeze himself into the station, and then fled down the stairs in a hurry.
The abandoned tunnel of glossy cream and green tiles felt safe, but still not so quiet, even as he was stood in the station’s quietest moment, yet he listened intently and caught the wave of sound coming from beneath his feet. He descended the narrow stairway between the cold steel escalators that he never fully trusted, and when he arrived at the bottom, he saw a wooden door in front of him that had been there for the whole of his existence. Trepidatious though he was, he walked over to the door and turned the knob that was polished enough to tell him that he was not the only soul to pass through for a while, and as soon as the door had creaked open, he heard the raucous din that rose up from the depths of the earth.
The heat hit him in the face just as hard as the racket did, and as bold as the brass handle that had let him inside, he descended yet another stairway to the oldest street in the city. There were no glossy tiles here, no neon lights to dazzle or anything else to suggest anything, where as above everything was everything. The tunnel smelt as green as it was hued, damp and earthy but anything natural had to seep and creep through the concrete stretch that didn’t appear to end from where he was standing. But the noise continued to taunt him, the confusing noises that rang out layer by layer, one unrecognisable noise on top of another, crossing over to create pure chaos on poor Steve’s senses.
The noises of memories and hardships, regrets and fury that could only have come from the flaming pits of hell, rang through his heavy head. So Steve, tired of running the other way, did what any street urchin wouldn’t do when faced with the dangers of the darkness, he rushed straight into it, running relentlessly along the tunnel at full speed, until he smashed into a black metal coal cart on tracks that sped forward without any encouragement. Steve, in true style, held onto the metal bin with a firm grip and leapt over the top to land within the cool metal basin, as it whirred and purred itself along the track, down, down, down, at a speed so fast that felt static, and as he rode into the darkness, his torment and fear quickly transformed into sheer joy.
It was the greatest ride of his life, as he got closer to the source than ever before, and as the cart ripped through obstacles that he could hear smashing around him, not needing to know ‘nor care what they were, only that they were now gone, leaving nothing in his way and he could simply just be, he rode screaming out “ALL HALLOW STEVE!” at the top of his lungs, all the way back into HAIDES.
Fin.