"My theory is that everyone is a potential murderer." - Bruno Anthony, Strangers on a Train

...

"Hey! Hey, hey , hey, pretty girl! That's right. Too good to look over here? Yeah? Bitch."

Rachel walked faster past the shuffling man on the sidewalk, hunched over an empty rusted shopping cart. He was calling to her. Reaching his hand toward her. And she hated it.

Walk confidently and with purpose. Always carry a whistle and pepper spray. Always be mindful of your surroundings. She kept meaning to take that self-defense class they offered at work. Always too busy was Rachel Dawes. Never a moment to herself. There was always the next case and the one after that and the one after that. This city wasn't going to fix itself. And really, taking a self defense class showed little confidence in a city she was hell-bent on recovering.

So when some desperate screw-up made a comment usually ending in "You bitch" or "worthless cunt," Rachel would have only those fleeting desires to take the class before walking away, guiltily ignoring the human face of all she was working for. All the while, that nagging voice in the back of her mind calling her hypocrite and reminding her she worked in mere ideals.

As Rachel stepped onto the train platform, she couldn't quite get the man's leering face out of her head. She reminded herself that she was the one who had run from him. He was probably harmless and crying out for help and she had ignored him.

The train came screeching to a halt in front of her as if screaming a reminder of where she was. She told herself that she had to stop dwelling in her own thoughts and get home to feed the cat.

Rachel looked down. There was a huge gaping hole between the concrete platform and the open door of the train. She hated those. She took a shaky breath and hopped the distance of the bottomless gap.

Really, there was no point in dwelling on these things.

She sat down on the seat nearest to the door and took in her surroundings. The first thing she noticed was that she was alone. This she hated more than the gigantic trench she had just conquered. There was nothing more discomfiting than riding an empty subway car. She would have rather entered one teeming with Maroni's gangster buddies than one that threatened unknown menaces.

Rachel tried to tell herself that she was being ridiculous, that her fear was simply that. It was small, pointless and disgusting. With all its bravado and self-importance, this particular fear was something that needed to be accepted, used, and then tossed away like a soiled sponge.

But that fear was being true to its spongey nature because, in no time at all, it had soaked up Rachel's resistance to it.

Screw acceptance. She was just going to go right ahead and toss that sponge back in the sink. She'd do the dishes later. But first, she'd go over to the next car and find some human contact.

Oh right. Feed the cat, do dishes, then find boyfriend who doesn't leave you to go jump off rooftops.

Rachel stood up and staggered her way over to the next car, hoping there'd be at least one other person over there. The train lurched around a particularly sharp turn and Rachel quickly grabbed hold of the hand rail. She swung open the door that connected the two moving cars with her other hand and looked through.

This was a bad idea. The quest to conquer the gap was nothing compared to this. There was a narrow walkway held together by suspension wires. There was a thin metal bar on either side that she supposed was to serve as a handrail. A cruel joke made by the engineers of this death trap, more like.

Above her, sparks flew where the train connected with the narrow tubing of the subway. Rachel didn't even want to look at what would be below. Instead, she looked through the glass window that led into the next car to make sure this would even be worth it.

There were two men in the car that she could see. They appeared to be talking with each other. One was sitting down and looking up at another man who stood, holding with one steadying hand to the bar above his head and gesturing animatedly with his other.

Rachel took about five deep breaths and tried to think about the lesser of two evils - being choked with loneliness or falling to her agonizing death by subway car crushing.

She chose the crushing death. At least it would be quick.

Rachel closed her eyes - perhaps in hindsight not the wisest of ideas - and navigated the lurching walkway in three shaky steps. When she opened her eyes again, she was in the next car, no longer alone, and exuberant.

Her exuberance, however, was short lived. The men whom she had thought were a pair of friends having an animated discussion, were not at all what they appeared to be. The man seated - she could barely see him behind the larger, standing man - was watching as the man above him waved a pistol in his direction.

The man being threatened was, from what Rachel could see, much smaller, thinner, and younger than the other man. he wore a ratty olive colored corduroy suit and dirty white sneakers. His hair hung in his face and partly hid his eyes behind a limp fringe of dirty blonde. Yet Rachel heard no cries for help from this man.

The older man with the gun leaned a bit to the left and Rachel caught a glimpse of the younger man's face.

He was smiling.

Rachel couldn't suppress a shudder and the thought that everything she knew was wrong. But she shook it away and forced herself to think of the man who had called out to her earlier. A thinly disguised plea for help. She wasn't going to let this one pass. So she reached into her bag for her tazer and crept silently towards the attacker and his victim.

The smiling man's eyes flicked towards her and his grin got even wider.

"Stop!" Rachel's voice sounded small even to her own ears as she held out her measly weapon with a shaking hand. And once again came the thought that this was all wrong.

The man with the gun instinctively turned towards her and everything changed in an instant. The smiling man stood up like he had just popped out of a Jack-in-the-box. He twisted the larger man's arm behind him, wrenched the gun from his grip, and sent it skidding in Rachel's direction. And before she could close her eyes to block out what she had known was coming since she saw that hateful grin on that too young face, that same smiling man pulled a knife and slid it effortlessly across the other man's thick neck.

The man made a gargling wet gasping sound and fell to his knees. The smiling man nudged him the rest of the way down with one knee - never taking his eyes off of the dying man's face as if he was trying to decipher some encrypted foreign language. Even as he cleaned his bloodied knife along his trousers, leaving strange brownish streaks on the fabric, the smiling man watched as the other took his final, wheezing breath. He cocked his head to one side when the scene that must've lasted less than a minute but seemed to last hours, came to an end. Smiles placed his knife gingerly back into his coat pocket and said in a strangely nasal voice, "Now. That's much better. Much better, isn't it, Comrade?"

Rachel's legs wouldn't move. She was frozen, the tazer useless in her trembling hand, when the smiling man looked at her again. She saw him for the first time - really saw him. His skin was sallow and pale and his eyes were beautiful and gleaming but hidden in shadow. His smile was wrong, though. Like so much else. He had two scars on either cheek, drawing the corners of his mouth up in a grotesque sneer. Then that horrible mouth opened and he spoke the words to her that she instantly regretted hearing.

"Thanks, Friend."