I had been working for 36 hours straight. If you could call it working. By hour 16 it’s more like sleepwalking. Fall down on cot in lounge, sleep for an hour, Get paged, get up, see gunshot wound, sew gunshot wound, sleep again. Occasionally coffee. Occasionally nurses giving ‘thumbs-up’ or other harried residents scurrying by me in the hall. I looked in the mirror, and could barely make out my reflection beneath the bloodshot eyes and suicide beard. When I dream, I dream only of wolves.

Eventually, I’m on the subway, headed home. I try a bit to stay awake, not wanting to miss my stop. But the gentle rocking and rhythmic thrum of the train are a lullaby. I slump down in my seat and fall asleep somewhere between Powell and Ashby.

I wake up from a dream about piñatas (I watch as blindfolded nurses and patients take turns swinging wildly at a piñata donkey in a white lab coat, squealing with delight. One final swing connects, and out pours an endless torrent of Ativan pills). A woman is screaming.

I’m hoping I’m still dreaming, so I look at my watch. 3:27. In the morning, of course. If you look at a watch or a clock during a dream, it’ll either be blank or just start spazzing out, breaking apart or randomly spinning dials. Your subconscious doesn’t know what fucking time it is. Jerk.

The woman isn’t screaming anymore. Just begging.

“Oh please oh please let me go let me go don’t do this please oh please I’m a virgin oh my god please please let me go I won’t tell anyone oh please no no no please no no please-”

I sit back up. The train car is empty except for me, another man, and a woman. A man is holding the woman against the side of the train car, a knife against her neck. Her blouse is torn, and his jeans are slumped, as if I’m looking at him while passing by urinals in the bathroom on the way to the toilet stalls. He hasn’t noticed me. Probably didn’t see me when he came in, I was slumped down so low in my seat. The woman is crying, quietly, as if resigned in a way to what’s about to happen. She is hopeless.

I get up, slowly, as quietly as possible. I step out into the aisle, putting a finger to my lips, but the woman hasn’t even noticed me, nor does she, until I am right behind the man. Her mascara has run with her tears, tracing the trajectory of tiny streams down her cheek-bones.

I grab the man in two places simultaneously. One on the front of the throat, depressing his trachea, causing his erstwhile heavy breathing to be halted by a distinct gurgling sound. The other hand is in his greasy matted hair and clamped into his scalp. There is a great abundance of nerve endings at the top of the cranium, so when I yank him back off the window, he peels off easily.

The subway train windows are Plexiglas. They are made hard enough as to not break under normal wear and tear, but light enough to shatter in the event of an emergency (train on fire, people clawing wildly at the doors, one guy gets the bright idea to punch through the window, everyone is saved, keys to cities are awarded and engineers pat themselves upon the back). I take my hand off the rapists scalp and press it against his forehead before using the combined force (step in to the movement) to slam him straight through the shattering window.

I shift the hand on his forehead to cover up his face before pressing his head into the tunnel wall.

He tries to scream at first, but after the skin and skull bone flecks away on the friction-heavy brick, we’re into the brain, and only a low, hollow moan becomes cerebrally possible. As I continue to feed him into the wall, his eyes begin to bulge and blood trickles out from his tear ducts. The edges of skull cap grind slowly, but not long enough for tedium to set in. Soon enough, we’re past most of the skull and the previously attached skin and muscles feels like a squishy orange peel beneath my fingers. I place my hand on his chin, feeding his jawbone out against the wall. I wonder vaguely if they will bother to clean off the stains. Anyway. When the jaw is almost gone, I lift the body up by the collar, making the cut as clean as possible.

I drop the body, my hands covered in blood. It slides down along the train car wall, a decapitated, pantsed corpse. I back away, and turn. A tired voice comes over the intercom and announces ‘North Berkeley, North Berkeley Station.”

That’s my stop. The train doors open, and I go home.