Push

It isn't a practised art. Just the right pressure to get the job done, not enough to be misconstrued as aggression. It didn't take me long to pick it up, and I've been perfecting it ever since. Years and years stood on this platform, the air unnatural and artificial, any breeze generated hot and unsatisfying. But my obedience is feigning, boredom taking its place. As I enter the tunnel each morning, the light blinding me in waves - corresponding to each step I take - I feel a hush press about me. It constricts me. Embracing me in a forced silence, hundreds of feet below the organic sounds of surface life. My undeniable authority originally apparent in my attire, challenged by the mandatory quiet. A uniformed conformity to my meagre responsibility. The people all look the same now. I've begun to wonder whether the pattern of commuters has caused me to grow accustomed to faces I see every day, or whether I now don't recognise individuality. It's hard to appreciate it in a crowd like this. Body parts being pressed against you from every angle in a desperate necessity to surge forward. As the train pulls up to the station the edging begins. A communal glance behind separate shoulders and then a step. Anticipation mixes in with the hot damp sweat in the air as each person fantasises about the seat they may claim for the journey ahead. The odds are against them. Shuffling methodically like corpses in rapture they rev for the race. Competition screams from every face and as the doors announce their opening - the battle begins. They start alone, no need for encouragement. I stand with my back to the wall and my cap pointed down. The panic that gripped me when I was first employed doesn't faze me anymore. Instead a new excitement is born, somewhere sadistic in the depths of my exhausted, humiliated mind. As their struggle announces my requirement I step to them, arms outstretched in preparation. They thrash and squirm like cattle heading for slaughter. Their bodies half constricted in a confused conflict between the want for freedom, and the need for transport. I place my palms flat against the jumbled heat of their clothed skin, and I push. Beginning with a soft nudge and progressing to a desperate heave, I push. As they edge inwards, past the automatic door and onto the carriage, I realize my chance will soon pass. I remove my key from its strap around my neck, and slip it between my meaty fingers. Closing a fist around it I begin to jab. I watch the faces of the people it impacts. Their confusion and their pain expressed abashedly through their generic features. Men's gasps indistinguishable from women's, both alike in collective suffering. Before they can respond I pull back my assistance and the doors close on them, symbolizing the end of my responsibility. Confusion plauges them and as their gazes fall on my twisted features, contorted with unquashable ecstasy - acceptance leaks in and occupies their resolves. Through the glass their eyes accuse, pounding against the smudged divide. Unable to escape, unable to catch me, to punish me. Their focus is torn, dragged away and ripped from me. And in that moment I forget that I wanted to be a lawyer, that I am impoverished - hindered by a meagre salary- presented only with a fabricated title, supposed comfort for a glorified herder. Paid to touch but leisurely never allowed to. In that moment, as my sinister eyes fall back to the floor; I smile.