tunnel vision

every time i take the metro i can't help but look for rats. rats on the tracks. i'm not even sure i've ever seen one in the Montreal metro system - maybe once, in one of the dingier blue line stations.

i've always had a strange fascination with those tunnels. i think it has something to do with Stephen King but i can't say why exactly. i used to picture just calmly walking right past the dotted orange line and casually jumping into the tracks. i would walk between the electrified tracks and avoid all the small puddles. just to be safe. but there was always the question of whether or not i'd have enough time to jump aside when the train came speeding by. probably easier just to take the stairs after the head of the train and walk along the wall. i mean, that's exactly what we would all have to do if the power suddenly cut out between stops.

but it was the strange interview with the pudgy graffiti kid from the anonymous forum that really did me in. sitting right there in Press Cafe with a smug bullshitters grin, he swore to me that his partner in crime had actually ducked under the metro to save his life after it had caught him off guard during one of their late-night tunnel runs. i wanted to believe him so badly, but i couldn't bring myself to print that blatant exaggeration on my J School feature writing assignment. still, the lie did little to curb my enthusiasm. you know that strange feeling you get when you're in a high-speed vehicle and you try to focus in on something that is flying past your eyes? i'm sure Einstein could relate. anyway, that was me for the bettter part of a semester, eyes pressed against the windows scanning for graffiti on those grimy walls. trying to zero in on those small perpendicular alcoves that would flash by ever now and then. imagining who got to explore them - or at the very least, clean them. and just where they led.

probably to nothing more than just more rats.