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The camera begins by looking out between a pair of subway train doors at the people walking by in the underground station. The sounds of ambient chatter and whirring machinery can be heard. The doors slide shut, and the subway takes off. On a seat near the front of the car, a tall gentleman in a dark suit with neatly-combed hair sits stiffly, bending his knees at an extreme angle to fit in the short seats. Across the aisle, a figure in a long robe-like hoodie is slumped over, elbows on his legs, sleeping soundly.
On a seat in front of these two characters sits a young boy, about 7 or so (I’ll call him Arturo for now). He has a small briefcase on his lap. He opens the briefcase and takes out a book (probably Carl Jung‘s Red Book) , which he begins to read intently, frowning slightly in concentration. A few moments of peace are shattered by a screaming baby from further back in the car. The mother pats the squalling infant as he tries to escape her arms, making shushing noises and clutching him tighter. Arturo glances over, annoyed, then continues reading. The train moves forward, then suddenly halts. It has come to a new station. The lady with the baby gets off, and another gentleman (much like the one already seated) boards the subway car. The only discernible difference between the two men is that this new gentleman has a heron’s skull instead of a normal head. Arturo notices, confused, and reaches for his glasses to better view this strange sight. The heron man calmly and politely takes a seat behind the sleeping robed figure, gazing wistfully out the window at nothing.
Arturo stares for a second, but as the heron man is not being especially interesting, he goes back to his book. He is soon interrupted however by an umbrella-like sound. Whump. It sounds like an umbrella being opened and then closed again. Arturo looks up. The other gentleman sits calmly in his seat. Suddenly with another strange whumph noise, the mans’ head explodes into a round lump of raw hamburger meat, then with another whumph goes back to normal. Arturo stares. The head explodes again, then goes back to normal. Arturo is getting nervous. The man’s head explodes again. Arturo closes his eyes, but he can still see the raw red meat, and now there are writhing maggots crawling in and out of it. He closes his eyes tighter, when, with a squeal of air brakes, the subway stops again. Everything goes back to normal. The gentleman serenely stands up, picking up his briefcase, and exits the train. The heron man follows.
Arturo’s eyes are still tightly shut, and he is shaking slightly, when something gives him a heavy prod to the shoulder, causing him to jump and recoil, eyes snapping open. A huge lumpy creature with large protuberances stares down at him. Arturo sits for a minute petrified. The creature stares down at him, giving a heavy burbling sigh. Unsure what to do, Arturo stands up gingerly and makes a frightened little bow to the creature. It inches closer, still staring down. Then it reaches out a massive paw/hand and gives him an approving pat on the shoulder. It flumps down on his vacated seat, spreading out wearily over all three seats and into the aisle.
Arturo moves over and stands at a subway pole, keeping his balance. The car moves on. At the next stop, in the window behind him, a face completely identical to his own, except for its extremely gray unhealthy pallor, stares in the window for a heart-stopping moment. The doppelganger boards the train and, oblivious, walks past Arturo and takes an empty seat next to the sleeping lump. It looks exactly like Arturo, but its skin and clothing is all a desaturated greenish gray. Arturo looks at this thing, appalled. He examines his own hand, then looks back at the green boy. Their hands are the same. He touches his own face, cautiously, while staring at the green boy. But Green boy ignores everything around him and stares intently at a small mechanical device in his lap, which ticks faintly. Arturo tries to get the boy’s attention. He waves his hand, but the boy doesn’t respond. He tries calling out softly, then louder, but Green boy doesn’t hear anything. Arturo’s noise seems to have woken up the sleeping hooded figure next to Green boy, however, as it is now stirring and making strange rattling and rustling sounds.
Arturo gives up calling out and looks, still a bit shell-shocked, at Green boy as it carefully winds a little key in its mechanical toy, stroking it lovingly and wiping a bit of grease off one of the gears. The hooded figure, still rattling, sits up straighter. It pulls long stick-like fingers out its sleeves and slowly begins to wave them hypnotically. For the first time, Green boy takes notice and looks down at the fingers, intrigued. The stick-bug creature waves its fingers faster, making complex figure-8 patterns. It leans in towards the green boy. He stares unblinking at the fingers. The stick-bug slowly, gently begins to ooze a bright colored liquid from one of its fingers, forming a sort of colorful drop at the end of the stick-finger. The green boy is still hypnotized. The stick-bug spins more drops out the other fingers, each one a different color. Green boy is enthralled.\Arturo too is becoming hypnotized, when out of nowhere, the green-yellow color of Stick Bug’s finger-balloon becomes the green-yellow of intestines. Rapid flashes of images show Stick-bug enticing, then killing some small indistinct creature (Arturo himself?), with much red blood and yellow-green guts spilling nastily out. Worms and bugs writhe on the ground, covered in blood.
Arturo jolts back to reality, where Green boy is just reaching out to touch one of Stick Bug’s balloon-fingers. Arturo, a look of absolute horror on his face, throws himself across the aisle, screaming, to stop Green boy touching Stick Bug’s trap. But as he does the train lurches and throws him against Stick Bug. Green boy’s finger has just touched Stick Bug’s, and precisely as Arturo falls on the two of them, Green boy and Stick Bug suddenly vanish. When Arturo collapses, it is on an empty seat. Fade to blackness.
A loud cough above Arturo brings him back to consciousness, making him jump. A tall mustachioed subway official stands over him sternly, peering intently at Arturo’s face. The official holds Arturo’s briefcase out to him in hand, with the other hand stretched out to him commandingly. Arturo sits upright looking frantically round the subway car, but the many people now seated on the car look completely normal. Stick Bug and Green boy are totally gone. The official gestures to Arturo’s briefcase, then to a tiny mechanical device, which is still lying on the seat where Green boy was. Arturo sits for a second, then, very gently, picks up the mechanical thing. Cradling it in his arm, he takes his briefcase and follows the official. The two stand behind the subway doors as the car slows once again. The doors open, and the boy’s mother is standing outside beaming, arms outstretched. The boy slowly, hesitantly steps off the train, clutching his suitcase, and his mother embraces him in a smothering sort of way. He gazes over her shoulder at the subway car behind her, looking a little dazed. As she hugs him, however, his mother’s broad back and strong arms transform. Arturo is suddenly being held by a machine made of wing nuts and screws and hydraulic cylinders. His machine-mother wheels away, carrying him. Arturo’s trapped, unfocused eyes stare into the subway car behind her, until the doors slide shut once again and Arturo and his mother are lost to view.
