Exercise 1: Subway

Exercise: Year's after the rapture has claimed the world's Mormons, a man stands on a subway platform in Salt Lake. He see's a girl with green hair across the tracks, and two men who are approaching her from behind.

Additional Context: Blatantly Unedited.

2030 had been a rough year for Trick Wilson. He missed his friends and family. The Salt Lake Underground Transit Station at the corner of Joseph Smith Pkwy and Salvation Blvd just wasn’t the same anymore. He and Obediah and Job had spent many an hour leering at the girls in their long skirts and thick sweaters back in the day. Then they had all gone, and he had spent the ensuing year beating himself up for not telling that store clerk who accidentally undercharged him a pack of strawberry gum when he was 10.
He cursed and pulled the unopened pack out of his coat pocket. He had carried it ever since, a reminder of the devil’s wiely ways. For the millionth time he thought to cast the curse’d object aside, let it fester and burn on the third rail, but back it went into the dark of his jacket. Trick hunched his shoulders and slumped against the cold brick wall, and he waited.
It was cold so late at night. Really, Trick knew he had no business being out and about by last train, and spiraled further into the self-loathing that he hoped beyond hope might someday grow sincere enough to please the master of the missing.
A breeze rushed in, the first sign of the great metal tube rushing down the line, notable long before the sound or light would come rushing in. Trick took his eyes from the floor and stood tall for the first time in a quarter hour. He was startled to notice that he wasn’t alone. Across the tracks, leaning against a wall of her own, stood a small woman showing an unusual quantity of leg for the barren wastes of Salt Lake, though Trick didn’t notice on account of her shocking green hair. She carried a black purse and was watching the tube for the oncoming train.
This was all odd for any number of reasons, not least of which was that she was waiting on the Inbound side of the UTS, and that train had stopped running and hour ago. Wilson was, quite fundamentally, a nervous person around girls, and as the roar of the train threatened to force him to raise his voice, he finally found the courage to speak up and inform her of her mistaken location. It was then, as his dry tongue clicked through his parted teeth to speak, that something else strange befell his vision. Two men slinked their way quietly down the stairs across the way. They wore black, too much black, like comic book ninjas (comic books! Doubtless another reason Trick had been forsaken) creeping out of the concrete jungle.
“Hey!” He eeked out, but she didn’t so much as look his way.
“Hey! Hey you!” Nothing.
Light from the train flooded the station, and long shadows erupted from all four figures. The girl with the green hair looked over with a notable start as one ninja’s shadow crossed over the gentle little bump in her skirt where her legs connected to her loins. Trick damned himself for noting this, but by then it was too late. The train had come and blocked his view. He ran to tell the conductor, but stopped when he found only blinking robot eyes in the cockpit. He jumped inside when the bell rang that the train would depart momentarily, and planted his face firmly against the far window to discover the girl’s fate.
At first, he saw nothing. His heart sank. Then he saw blood, and his heart leapt into his throat. All in all, it was quite the workout for poor Trick’s heart, especially since the next thing it did was damn near explode. The train raced away from the station, and then the banging started. It was the girl! She was holding on to the outside of the train, desperately trying to get the doors open. He ran over and pried with all his might, but couldn’t budge the hydraulically shut slats. Trick looked around, and reached for the emergency stop button, but he heard the girl screaming at him.
“No!”
“What? Why?”
“Don’t stop the train!”
Flustered, the young Wilson quickly walked down the length of the car. Ducking his head under one of the seats, he found a strikingly convenient loose bar. He grabbed and pulled at the metal. It came loose in his hand and he wasted no time jamming the sharp end into the rubber slit of the doors to pry them open.
The pipes hissed violently as the twin panes parted. Wind filled the car and she fell in. Trick gasped when he lost control of the pipe and feared the sharp end in her gullet, but she stood and handed the metal to him with a smile before kicking the doors. They closed without effort and some semblance of calm was restored to the car.
Trick stared at her, but she paid him no apparent mind and so he didn’t catch it. She ran her long painted nails down the clean white front of her all too short dress, returning the hint of her red panties to their naturally hidden state. She pulled a cigarette from her coat and then searched the rest of her pockets.
“Got a light?”
Trick didn’t say anything, his habit of staring had taken his eyes down her legs and back to the floor. He stammered. She followed his eyes.
“Oh. That. Yeah. Never know, since… you know.” The hatchet lay inert on the pale floor of the train car, a small spattering of blood thinning out as the inches grew away from the blade. Trick nodded, though he didn’t really know.
She looked at him. He couldn’t believe how long her lashes were.
“Well, no light, huh? How ‘bout some gum or something? You gonna keep staring at me like that I’m gone need something in exchange. Tit for tat and what not. But no tit, not like that. Not yet, anyway.”
Trick reached into his pocket and took out the unopened packet of strawberry chewing candy. He looked at it, the red package filling his palm. He sniffed once and dug a fingernail under the little thread marked, “tear here.” He wondered if it would even still work, so many years had passed since tiny Vietnamese children had stamped and filled the foil.
The wrapper came off with a noise that was barely audible over the sound of the train as it rushed through another tunnel. Trick’s ears were flooded, and he felt almost faint as he slid a silver stick out and handed it to the strange young woman with the ninja stalkers and bloody hatchet.
“You know ninjas are monks, right?”
“What?”
She took the pinkish red stick of gum and stuck her tongue out to accept its sweetness beyond her lips, pulling it in slowly. Trick was mesmerized.
“Ninjas are monks. Agents of god. They were here to save you.”
“Save me? From what?”
“From completing your sin.”
“I’m… I’m sorry, miss, I’m very confused.”
“Exactly the way the devil wants you.”
She turned and bent, Trick felt his loins a rattler as the fabric tightened to the pronounced cleavage of her perfect ass. She picked up the hatchet and smiled, chewing loudly.
“It’s time, Trick Wilson.”
The next thing he saw was how pretty her toes looked in peeking out the ends of her high heel shoes, and then he saw fire, an eternity of fire, all for want of some gum.