After last night’s encounter with the group of thugs, I was quite shaken. I’d prepared myself for angry glances and insults, but not the prospect of being beaten to a pulp. Still, I continued on, not knowing what day three would hold in store for me…
I still kept to people watching, and I still made up stories about the few companions I had during the quieter hours of the day, but not in an overly annoying fashion. That’s how I came to notice a certain middle-aged woman. She wore a long skirt, a blue sweater, and had her hair tied in a ponytail. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about her. She was just another passenger, getting on at point A and off at point B. But then, I saw her again, entering the tram at a different station further down the line.
At first, I thought I was mistaken, and my eyes were playing tricks on me. In a city of more than half a million people, surely some could look similar. As I watched her more closely, I noticed the same skirt, same sweater, and even the ponytail. No, it was her. This was impossible. She’d gotten off ten minutes ago, a few kilometers back. There was no way she could’ve reached this station so quickly. Unease watched over me when she disembarked again, only to reappear fifteen stations later. I counted seven times she boarded the tram at entirely different locations within an hour and a half.
Yet she wasn’t the only one. There were others, just like her. One was an older man, about fifty years of age. He wore a suit, carried a briefcase, and I saw him five times. Some were children, just laughing children, entering the tram on their own, leaving, only to reenter again. They only ever appeared when the tram was empty, or almost empty. At least, that’s when I caught sight of them. Whenever I did, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. They did nothing; never looked at me or approached me. No, they just rode the tram.
At one point, my eyes met those of an older woman during her fourth ‘iteration’ as I came to call it, but she didn’t even bat an eye and gave me no attention. Still, these people were amongst the most unsettling things I’d noticed so far, and I made sure to stay clear of them.
Another passenger was a young man, dressed entirely in black. I first noticed him in the early evening hours. He entered the tram and stayed on it, just like I did. For long hours, he just sat there, in the same seat. At times, he stared outside, watching the scenery, but at others, he watched the people around him. Occasionally, I even found him staring my way. When he did, an unexplainable wave of fear washed over me, and I couldn’t help but squirm in my seat.
The reason was his face. He wasn’t merely staring, but grinning. His grin was comically wide, almost dividing his face. Yet he wasn’t focusing on anyone. Instead, he seemed to just grin to himself. It was the strangest thing.
At one point, I saw him lean forward, his grin stretching wider and wider, until his face hovered inches from the woman beside him. She stiffened, clearly freaked-out, but never looked his way, almost like she couldn’t see him. She was far from his only victim. He did it to countless other passengers, and none of them called him out on his creepy behavior.
The longer this went on, the longer I watched him, the more often I found him staring my way. As much as I told myself to ignore him and not to attract his attention, I just couldn’t. I was driven by the strangest sense of curiosity. This guy, whoever he was, or… whatever he was, was just wrong.
It was shortly past midnight when I noticed the change. For the first time, the guy wasn’t grinning to himself anymore. No, he was grinning at me. I saw how he leaned forward in his seat, his hands on its edge, as if he was about to push himself up at any moment. I tried my best to ignore him, but whenever I took a sideway glance, he was still doing the same thing. My heart began pounding, and I felt my palms getting sweaty. With each passing second, I was growing more and more nervous, more fidgety, and eventually anxious.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I was about to get up, to leave my trusty row of seats behind and flee to the back of the tram. Then, already halfway up, I stopped. The strangest of feelings washed over me, one that told me to stay right where I was. If I moved now, he’d get me. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was trembling, but I told myself to stay put. I felt like a little boy again, terrified, frozen, cornered by a neighbor’s guard dog, its rusty chain the only thing keeping it at bay, powerless to do anything. I could see the anticipation on the guy’s face, his wide eyes, the way his feet shuffled over the ground, and his posture, ready to pounce on me the moment I got up.
Finally, after more than half an hour of this game of sitting duck, he just got up and left the tram. Outside, he simply walked off without so much as looking back at me. A sigh of relief escaped me, and I slumped back in my chair, finally able to relax. I had no clue what was wrong with that guy. Maybe he was just some asshole trying to fuck with me, but after everything that had happened, I believe he was something far worse. Yet, as terrifying as this encounter was, it shouldn’t be the most terrifying thing I would witness on day three.
It was later that night, as I sat in my seat, unable to fall asleep, that I noticed changes to the scenery. I told myself it was because of the night, the darkness, and my sleep deprived mind, but I’d now ridden this damned tram for two and a half days. I knew the areas it passed through. Hell, I knew what buildings were at what station.
Station 17: a giant mall.
Station 44: an old hardware store.
And so on.
Yet that night I occasionally saw different places, areas that were still part of my city, but were also… different.
At one point, the tram passed through a street lined by nothing but giant, derelict tower blocks. Before long, even the tracks themselves seemed to deteriorate. The tram rambled on through this forlorn area, shaking slightly. We were there for almost a quarter of an hour, and never stopped at any station, which is absolutely impossible. On the way back, we never passed that area again, almost as if it never existed.
At other times, the tram veered into impossible bends or around corners that shouldn’t exist, winding through half-hidden streets and alleys from forgotten parts of the city. They were too narrow, too claustrophobic. Whenever we reached one of these places, I couldn’t help but stare outside, driven by an unnatural sense of curiosity. Some streets were so narrow, the tram was only a few inches away from the walls, allowing me to steal glances through open doors and windows.
What I saw was… utterly surreal. I told myself I had to be dreaming, and all of this was nothing but a weird dream. Hell, maybe a hallucination conjured by being perpetually stuck on a tram. Yet, somehow, it felt too real, looked too real… and so I looked on with wide eyes. In one window, I was greeted by four people. They weren’t just inside their apartment, but were leaning out the window, their face almost pressed against the passing tram. Their eyes were empty, their faces without emotions. When they were right beside me, I couldn’t help but inch away from the window, afraid they’d do… something.
In another window, one belonging to a tiny inconspicuous building, I saw a giant hall that stretched on without end. I saw only the floor, but no walls or ceiling. It just continued on endlessly, and was much, much too large for the building it contained. Yet from the far back, in the darkness of the most distant parts of the hall, I thought I saw eyes watching me.
Eventually, the tram approached the station in one such area and came to a halt. Outside, the entire area was shrouded in shadows. After a brief moment, I made out a figure. At first I thought it was a drunk, given their strange posture. Then my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I realized it was something entirely. It wasn’t a person, but some sort of… deformed thing. Its limbs sprouted from places they shouldn’t, and were bent at strange angles as if they had too many joints in them.
As the tram stood there, it cooked its head slightly in my direction. Then its head pushed forward, the neck stretching further and further, much further than should be possible. Sweat broke out all over my body when the ghastly creature’s eyes wandered over my body. This time, it wasn’t just fear that came over me, it was full on panic. My body started shaking uncontrollably. I had to cling to the seat in front of me to keep my panic at bay and not to lose it.
Then the thing moved, approaching the tram door on its long, spidery limbs. Its motions were jerky, as if controlled by an invisible puppeteer; no fluidity, no life, stop-motion animation given flesh. And yet, the thing appeared ready, like a stalking, insectoid predator, ready to strike its prey at a moment’s notice.
As it took these first few steps, I hoped, prayed, it would stay away, but finally panic took over. I jerked up in my seat, yelled, screamed through the empty tram for it to go away. Until, finally, the doors closed, and we left the walking nightmare behind.
For the next minutes, I sat in my chair, eyes closed, knees below my chin, rocking back and forth like a scared little child. Eventually, when I opened my eyes again, all was normal, and the tram continued on its usual route for the rest of the night.
By now it’s early morning, but I still haven’t slept. I couldn’t. Whenever I was about to doze off, I was afraid I’d end up at another surreal location, and this time, the creature would enter the tram.
When the sun came up, I thought about giving up and calling it quits. Then I thought about it. I was on day three, on day fucking three. If I stopped now, my friends would never let it go. Even worse, I had told myself I was going to do this the full week. I thought about all the things I’d wanted to do before, only to give up halfway-through. No, this wouldn’t be another one of them.
Most importantly, though, as horrifying as all of this was, I couldn’t deny it had a pull on me. It was fascinating, more fascinating than anything I’d ever seen. This was no longer a stupid dare. It was a glimpse into a twisted, secret world hidden in plain sight, and I wanted to see more of it. If I were to get off now, I’d probably regret it, and be left wondering what else might have happened on the Long Ride.
