Whistling.
Someone in the lodging house was whistling.
What did anyone have to whistle about?
An extra dime at the end of every workweek? Enough saved to maybe buy a prostitute or a ticket to the vaudeville?
It was hard enough to believe that three hours ago he had been whistling too. Happy with a jacknife he'd found in the gutter, sharpening it happily and whistling.
The rest was an accident. He tried to convince himself it was an accident. He surely hadn't meant to stab anyone.
Had he?
Well, maybe he was feeling a little more possesive than usual that night. It was a really good knife. And it was his.
Yes, and it was really good at sliding smoothly through skin and muscle and blood. And that act had been his, too. Irrevokably, unchangeably his.
Whoever was whistling now was sure to find the body. Was it Mush he had killed? Blink? Racetrack? He had looked down to see who it was, but now he had forgotten the face. He only remembered the blood. You couldn't tell individual people by their blood. It was all red.
Everyone would know it was him that did it, and they would all be looking for him. Maybe they would get Spot and them to help them look, and Spot and them would find him. They would find him in the end.
The whistling he heard signaled his death.
He ran.
He did not run in a straight line and he did not look where he was going.
It was pitch black, maybe two or three AM, and cloudy. Had he done it on purpose? No, he answered himself.
He kept running. Well, maybe I did.
He found himself a long time later at Grand Central Station. He couldn't remember how he got there. It was still dark.
He huddled in the corner of a bench near the tracks. After awhile, he slid under the bench, instead.
They would find him. It didn't matter if he did it on purpose or not. They would find him.
It wouldn't be fast, either. The one he'd killed had died fast. He wouldn't be so lucky.
He felt in his pockets for the knife. It was gone. He'd left it at the lodging house.
They would probably use that knife on him.
He would deserve it.
It didn't matter whether he meant to do it or not. That sort of thing was irrelevent. What mattered was the act and not the motive.
Whistling.
He heard whistling.
A train, a little ways from the station.
It grew louder. It grew and grew and grew until it filled his ears, until it wasn't whistling anymore. It was screaming now.
The train was coming fast.
They would find him. They would find him and his death would not be fast.
The train screamed.
He walked over to the tracks and watched it come.
It screamed.
He walked onto the tracks and watched it come.
Whistling. He'd been whistling before he killed someone, probably his friend. He couldn't be sure.
Someone else had been whistling before finding the body.
The train was close now. Screaming.
Whistling. He heard whistling in that scream.
A/N: I have no idea where this came from. No clue. But I think I should be scared…