Gamita.

It snakes through the unsurpassed depth of blackness, riding a feral serpent's back. Once every two seconds a grey ferrous support bolster pockmarked like a Swiss cheese flashes by, lit up from somewhere above by a seedy orange light. Every two seconds, swish, then swish, then swish, the effortless yet eternal seethe of featureless vertical metal shafts are passed by. Beyond that, only that ageless emptiness, the other side of night, a potential universe unfurling somewhere there. Forwards, ever forwards, gently curving this way, then again before lurching viscously around the other way once more, pulsating side to side on some deranged sinusoid motion.
It makes an inhuman active keening; aural verve on it's edge. A wail bordering on an introspective curse, punctured by a cantankerous constant churn of heavy pulses, of syncopated thunks, rattling from way forward until way back, one after the other. Here, there, a rush of what may have been air, or may just be some idle thought made real somehow, a heavy huff in the ear. The air itself has an appalling texture, one of fetidness, of greasy carpet and old cigarette stains, of a hodgepodge array of human odours, of a queasy inescapable grime inhaled and processed with every reluctant breath.
Like a hospital ward under reserve electricity the little cramped environment itself is lit by a series of pallid and somewhat cold yellow lights sealed behind oblong shafts, the plastic imbibed into the faded metal roof. One of the lights flickers with a somewhat random attitude, but the rest do little enough to just form pods of sebaceous glow across the ceiling. The windows, if indeed that's what they are, not just some build up of a crawling and oozing transparent grey bacteria, serve as portals between the emptiness outside the carriage and the vacuous inertia within. Row on row of vinyl-covered benches to serve as seats, the greenish material tacky with a wet edge of reminiscent atmosphere, and sealed in place with a once silver-coloured steel pipe now dulled to a harsh grey sheen by countless human hands. The floor had at some time long past been buttered unevenly with linoleum, then worked up into a gritty carpet of dirt, dried soda stains, hair-collecting oily sheens and hard-case relentless pods of blackened chewing gum imprinted with the sole marks of a thousand different feet.
Observation through the sheathes of two slit-like eyes reveal a collage of images twisting inside one another; a cubist interpretation of a pointillism nightmare: a seething, oozing overlay of colourful lines like computer circuitry meld with the fabric of the wall in a fixed space not too long, and not too high. To study the image would reveal bunches of characters, written in an obscenely familiar language, though through no means could interpretation of individual words be achieved. These slits like elongated singularities in the fabric of space-time, vanish but moments later reappear, this time not slits but gashes, and focus on the map on the wall, following first one line of colour along its length, then following another colour back. In a few moments it would become clear along which line this carriage shuddered. A few moments later, it was clear the map did not indicate this journey whatsoever.
Abandoning the map, the focus of those eyes shifted to first the left and then the right, assimilating the immediate environment, seeking some variation. To the left the soggy haze slowly resolved to form some sort of portal, a foreboding black emptiness falling away into a stale hallway. To the right, the rows of green seats, the pointless view from the windows, that icky and every-so-slightly undulating horizontal surface of the floor. The focus returned to the map on the wall, again tracing and seeking across the array of lines and amassed congregates of letters, but still no meaning could be found.
This time the focus shifted upwards, evident of the laborious effort taken to keep the eyes focusing on anything. Several times the heavy slits folded down over the eyes, a dark haze falling over the two orb-like shapes underneath, but now – always now on – the sight returned; the slits reopened. Sliding up the wall, the focus picked out more words, yet the meaning, the grasp of shape of individual letters and of whole words remained veiled. Some other understanding bubbled to the surface of consciousness – “blue”. More words arose, but they had little meaning. Soon the effort of holding the focus on this object came too much, and the focus fell away sharply, this time back to the floor.
There was a sharp snap, but not that of something physically breaking, but of sudden realisation deep down behind those eyes. Strong enough was it to dissolve this cloud of vision; a few blinks followed this process through. There was some other kind of recognition going on, and not through the eyes. Still, the focus remained low until they found another item hereunto undiscovered: feet. Shoes actually, though there were feet in them. Here another bubble of understanding interjected itself into consciousness: Red shoes. Drawing back along the feet, kinking at the ankles and flowing along the legs until they became obscured by a indurate red cloth. Still flowing against the underlying shape, the focus passed by as legs became hips, and there formed a tubular mass which bulged out at one point in two strangely familiar geometric globules. The focus could not travel much further along the red mass than that, and so returned to the familiarity of the map.
Still that other sensation continued behind the eyes, and as time passed it became apparent that the sensation had a tempo, a repetitiveness about it that seemed enticingly comforting. Again the dawning sensation of understanding resolved several unasked questions, and also brought forth words and concepts: this noise; the sound of breathing. This hideous flow of air drawing back and forth, the sound itself as corrupt as the texture of freshly rasped timber – not rich and supple and warm and wet, but dry and harsh and hard and stale. Breathing? How could life be delineated from such an abominable noise? And what is this punctuation – this puncture in the fabric of sound; this differently accentuated rhythm that happens deep down inside? This ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom that continues on eternally under its own ceaseless ideal? A beat, a beat and something else, a pulse. This pulse, this beat, this rasp of breath: this aggregate of noise becoming sound is not without meaning, only explanation.