Jehovah. Appearances deceived: he was about as dangerous as the Easter Bunny. This was 
not the Subway Slaughterer. But by the time the cops had worked that out, Mahogany had 
been about his business a long while.
    
    It was eleven-fifteen when Kaufman got on the Express through to Mott Avenue. He 
shared the car with two other travellers. One was a middle-aged black woman in a purple 
coat, the other a pale, acne-ridden adolescent who was staring at the "Kiss My White Ass" 
graffiti on the ceiling with spaced-out eyes.
    Kaufman was in the first car. He had a journey of thirty-five minutes" duration ahead 
of him. He let his eyes slide closed, reassured by the rhythmical rocking of the train. 
It was a tedious journey and he was tired. He didn't see Mahogany's face, either, staring 
through the door between the cars, looking through for some more meat.
    At 14th Street the black woman got out. Nobody got in. Kaufman opened his eyes 
briefly, taking in the empty platform at 14th, then shut them again. The doors hissed 
closed. He was drifting in that warm somewhere between awareness and sleep and there was 
a fluttering of nascent dreams in his head. It was a good feeling. The train was off 
again, rattling down into the tunnels.
    Maybe, at the back of his dozing mind, Kaufman half-registered that the doors between 
the second and first cars had been slid open. Maybe he smelt the sudden gush of 
tunnel-air, and registered that the noise of wheels was momentarily louder. But he chose 
to ignore it.
    Maybe he even heard the scuffle as Mahogany subdued the youth with the spaced-out 
stare. But the sound was too distant and the promise of sleep was too tempting. He 
drowsed on.
    For some reason his dreams were of his mother's kitchen. She was chopping turnips and 
smiling sweetly as she chopped. He was only small in his dream and was looking up at her 
radiant face while she worked. Chop. Chop. Chop.
    His eyes jerked open. His mother vanished. The car was empty and the youth was gone.
    How long had he been dozing? He hadn't remembered the train stopping at West 4th 
Street. He got up, his head full of slumber, and almost fell over as the train rocked 
violently. It seemed to have gathered quite a substantial head of speed. Maybe the driver 
was keen to be home, wrapped up in bed with his wife. They were going at a fair lick; in 
fact it was bloody terrifying.
    There was a blind drawn down over the window between the cars which hadn't been down 
before as he remembered. A little concern crept into Kaufman's sober head. Suppose he'd 
been sleeping a long while, and the guard had overlooked him in the car. Perhaps they'd 
passed Far Rockaway and the train was now speeding on its way to wherever they took the 
trains for the night.
    "Fuck it," he said aloud.
    Should he go forward and ask the driver? It was such a bloody idiot question to ask: 
where am I? At this time of night was he likely to get more than a stream of abuse by way 
of reply?
    Then the train began to slow.
    A station. Yes, a station. The train emerged from the tunnel and into the dirty light 
of the station at West 4th Street. He'd missed no stops... So where had the boy gone?
    He'd either ignored the warning on the car wall forbidding transfer between the cars 
while in transit, or else he'd gone into the driver's cabin up front. Probably between 
the driver's legs even now, Kaufman thought, his lip curling. It wasn't unheard of. This 
was the Palace of Delights, after all, and everyone had their right to a little love in 
the dark.
    Kaufman shrugged to himself. What did he care where the boy had gone?
    The doors closed. Nobody had boarded the train. It shunted off from the station, the 
lights flickering as it used a surge of power to pick up some speed again.
    Kaufman felt the desire for sleep come over him afresh, but the sudden fear of being 
lost had pumped adrenalin into his system, and his limbs were tingling with nervous 
energy.
    His senses were sharpened too.
    Even over the clatter and the rumble of the wheels on the tracks, he heard the sound 
of tearing cloth coming from the next car. Was someone tearing their shirt off?
    He stood up, grasping one of the straps for balance.
    The window between the cars was completely curtained off, but he stared at it, 
frowning, as though he might suddenly discover X-ray vision. The car rocked and rolled. 
It was really travelling again.
    Another ripping sound.
    Was it rape?
    With no more than a mild voyeuristic urge he moved down the see-sawing car towards 
the intersecting door, hoping there might be a chink in the curtain. His eyes were still 
fixed on the window, and he failed to notice the splatters of blood he was treading in. 
Until- -his heel slipped. He looked down. His stomach almost saw the blood before his 
brain and the ham on whole-wheat was half-way up his gullet catching in the back of his 
throat. Blood. He took several large gulps of stale air and looked away-back at the 
window.
    His head was saying: blood. Nothing would make the word go away.
    There was no more than a yard or two between him and the door now. He had to look. 
There was blood on his shoe, and a thin trail to the next car, but he still had to look.
    He had to.
    He took two more steps to the door and scanned the curtain looking for a flaw in the 
blind: a pulled thread in the weave would be sufficient. There was a tiny hole. He glued 
his eye to it.
    His mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing beyond the door. It rejected the 
spectacle as preposterous, as a dreamed sight. His reason said it couldn't be real, but 
his flesh knew it was. His body became rigid with terror. His eyes, unblinking, could not 
close off the appalling scene through the curtain. He stayed at the door while the train 
rattled on, while his blood drained from his extremities, and his brain reeled from lack 
of oxygen. Bright spots of light flashed in front of his vision, blotting out the 
atrocity.
    Then he fainted.
    
    He was unconscious when the train reached Jay Street. He was deaf to the driver's 
announcement that all travellers beyond that station would have to change trains. Had he 
heard this he would have questioned the sense of it. No trains disgorged all their 
passengers at Jay Street; the line ran to Mott Avenue, via the Aqueduct Race Track, past 
JFK Airport. He would have asked what kind of train this could be. Except that he already 
knew. The truth was hanging in the next car. It was smiling contentedly to itself from 
behind a bloody chain-mail apron.
    This was the Midnight Meat Train.
    There's no accounting for time in a dead faint. It could have been seconds or hours 
that passed before Kaufman's eyes flickered open again, and his mind focussed on his 
new-found situation.
    He lay under one of the seats now, sprawled along the vibrating wall of the car,