the underwrite

There was a man—a writer, that most difficult, temperamental, and vain kind of man—who, having failed to a produce a novel of any kind in his life despite his years of effort, decided to burn his unpublished works, wipe his hard drive of all literary fragments, sketches, and drafts, and commit the rest of his days to a more fruitful cause. So one morning he gathered all his worthless literary productions—reams of pages, scrawled notes, crumpled folders, printouts, manuscript drafts bound at print and copy shops, USB drives, and so on—and placed them in a box, on the ground, in his back garden. Dismayed by the pathetic, dusty pile that all his time on Earth had amounted to, he gave the box a pathetic little kick. It slid forward less than an inch.           As a younger, more hopeful man, the writer had envisioned another life for himself. At this age he thought he would be surrounded by glossy volumes bearing his name and the logo of an esteemed publish...

Expiring Like dogs who drag themselves out of the house and crawl to a corner of the garden to die, there are people in this city who, sensing their vitality is at its end, descend to the underground rail network, take a seat on a 24-hour train, and ride through the tunnels until they expire. They board the carriage alive. Their body alights when they have died. What happens to their spirit down in the tunnels is anyone’s guess. Sometimes I wonder if the trains’ howls are the sound of their souls being ground into the dust that blackens our nostrils. Other times I don’t wonder anything at all.           Some of those who take to the trains for their final moments wish to prolong the experience. Food and water sustains them for days or weeks as they ride softly toward their fate. Others prefer to meet their end like the trains hurtling down these tunnels—rapidly, brutally, and without comfort. In either case, their bodies often ride the trains for days aft...