“That was a good match, Alex. I see you’ve been practicing with Wii Sports.” The wolf that Alex had been playing tennis against joked as she slung her duffle bag over her shoulder and took a big sip out of her obnoxiously large insulated water bottle. Alex, who was digging through her locker for her phone, let out a chuckle and turned her head over her shoulder to look back at the wolf. “Oh, fuck off, Cassie. You got LUCKY with that last point.” She chuckled. “It’s not my fault that my apartment building doesn’t have a tennis court like your MANSION does.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m pretty sure you can find a place that HAS one. It’s a big city.” Cassie rolled her eyes and adjusted the sling of her duffle bag before she headed out of the locker room. Alex wasn’t going to let her leave without landing a jab on her, too, though.

“Mhm, if I had rich parents, I too could live wherever I wanted.” The tigress pressed the power button on her phone to see what time it was, but her phone didn’t respond; the battery was kaput. Letting out a sigh, she dropped her phone into her duffle, shut the door to her locker, and grabbed her tennis racket as she headed out. Catching up with Cassie, they walked out of the indoor sports complex together.

“How are you getting home, Tigs? Uber?” the wolf asked her tiger tennis pal as she typed away on her phone, probably telling her driver that she was ready to be picked up. After a few loud clickity clacks of her claws against the glass of her phone screen, she looked up from her phone and at the tigress as they walked through the long corridor that took them from the locker rooms toward the lobby. Alex glanced at the pocket of her duffle bag where she had put her phone and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, my phone’s dead, so I’m just going to take the train.”

Cassie’s privilege showed on her face when she heard the tigress mention taking public transportation to get home. Her nose scrunched up and she had a look on her face that if you saw it without any context, you’d have thought she caught a whiff of the worst smell ever known to the man; durian. When in reality it was the worst smell ever known to the 1%; poverty. “Aren’t you afraid of getting murdered? It’s public transportation, Alex, worse yet public transportation late in the night.” The thought alone was enough to make the wolf shiver. Alex let out a chuckle and rolled her eyes. “You watch too many movies, Cassie, when’s the last time you heard of anyone getting murdered on the train?”

“It’ll be like The Mid-.”

“The Midnight Meat Train.” Alex cut her off and finished her sentence for her. She scoffed and rolled her eyes again. Cassie furrowed her brows and gave the tiger a confused look. “How did you know that was what I was going to say?” she asked.

“Like I said, you watch too many movies. And it’s a Bradley Cooper movie, of course, I’m going to know it.” Alex laughed. After just a few minutes of walking, they arrived at the fancy and futuristic access gates that they needed to tap their membership passes against to be let in or out. With two beeps that happened within just a few seconds of each other, the girls walked through the access gates, pushed through the tall glass doors at the other end of the lobby, and stepped out onto the street. Once outside, Cassie smiled when she saw her driver in a black Mercedes waiting for her. The tint on the car’s windows was so dark that the driver had to roll his window down so that Cassie could see him. Alex was 1,000% sure that a tint like that was illegal, but there were different laws for wealthy people like Cassie.

“You sure you don’t want a ride? My driver’s already here, and he’s paid by the hour, so you get a free ride home and you make me a little less of a rich bitch in the process.” The wolf raised a brow at her tiger friend and stopped walking once they were just a few feet away from her ride.

Alex shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, “It’s alright, call it a lucky break for your driver, he looks tired and ready to head home to his kids.” The tigress gestured to the driver, who looked miserable sitting behind the wheel of that fancy German car. “Plus, if there’s any chance of me seeing Bradley Cooper on the subway, I’m going to take it.” She joked.

Cassie let out a snorty laugh and shook her head. “Alright, alright. See you next week, Tigs. Put in some more hours on Wii Sports and maybe you can beat me.” The wolf stuck her tongue out as she walked up to her driver’s car, pulled open the door, and hopped inside. She closed the door behind her and the car wasted no time in driving off. Alex waved as her friend/tennis rival’s car drove off into the distance. And once the car turned a corner and she couldn’t see it anymore, she turned on her heels and walked toward the entrance to the subway station that was conveniently just a zebra crossing away from the sports complex.

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Alex’s paws pitter-pattered against the tiled steps that took her underground to the subway station. As with most metro stations in metropolitan areas, it was a little bit run-down and colorless. Fluorescent lighting was efficient but it sucked the color of everything and made it all look sanitized (ironically) and cookie-cutter. And without the hustle and bustle of the usual daytime ridership, the station looked like something straight out of 28 Days Later. After walking down the stairs, Alex slipped by the empty ticket office and the ticket vending machines and made a beeline for the gates. She tapped her metro card on the reader and the gates opened to let her through.

‘Beep.’

The tiger adjusted the strap of her duffle bag over her shoulder as she made her way down to the platform. It was so quiet that she could hear the electrical whirring of the lights and her own paw pads as they squished against the cold tile floor. She twirled her tennis racket around in her hand as she bounced down a few more flights of stairs.

The platform was just as empty and eerie as the parts of the station closer to the surface were, the lights were bright, almost blindingly so, and graffiti, grime, and general ickiness were everywhere. Alex very quickly wished that she had chosen to put shoes on today. But most shockingly, there was not a single soul in sight, save for the occasional feral rodents that scuttled along the floor looking for food scraps. Not even the homeless bums you’d usually find sitting around, it was as if the people in the city just disappeared. The tigress had taken a midnight train many times before, and it was never this empty. With her two feet on the train platform, the tigress looked around before she moved from the foot of the stairs to the edge of the platform where the sign that showed the estimated arrival time of the next train was. Still twirling her tennis racket around in her hand, the striped kitty cat looked up at the sign and took a few seconds to process the information displayed on it.

‘GREEN LINE: SOUTH (LAST TRAIN) ETA: 20 MINUTES.’

Just as Alex read the ticking LED sign, the announcement system played and startled her.

‘Ding!’

“The next southbound Green Line train will arrive in approximately 20 minutes. Please note that this is the last train.”

“Jesus fucking Christ…” The tigress bounced back a few steps from the sign and almost dropped her tennis racket. With a heavy exhale she took a look at the sign again. A disappointed look spread across her face, her nose scrunched up, and her lips pursed into the poutiest pout. 20 whole minutes was a long time, and with her phone dead, those minutes were easily going to feel like hours. She idly kicked at a candy wrapper on the floor and walked away from the edge of the platform toward the big white wall lined with empty benches where she could sit down and wait.

She tapped her foot against the floor as she sat on one of the benches and waited. Her eyes bounced between the different LED screens playing ads for a bunch of things that people didn’t really need but really wanted. New phones, new TVs, and new streaming services among other things. It felt like she had been sitting there forever when in reality it hadn’t even touched a minute yet. Just to be sure, she glanced at the ETA for the train again.

’ETA 19 MIN.’

With a frustrated sigh, she slowly started regretting turning down Cassie’s offer to give her a ride. She fiddled with her tennis racket as her foot tapping echoed throughout the station. She squeezed the soft rubberized grip on her handle and tilted her head to the side slightly. She flipped the blue racket that matched the rest of her blue tennis kit around over and over. She then turned over her shoulder to look at the wall behind her. She raised a brow and a smile slowly started to spread across her face. She set her duffle bag down unzipped it and stuck her hand into it to fish around for something; she had an idea. After a few seconds of clunks and clanks, as she rummaged through her messy tennis bag, she pulled out a tennis ball, tossed it up into the air, and caught it. Her smile grew wider as she rolled the green and fuzzy ball in her hand and ran her thumb over the white seam line. She stopped once her thumb ran over a small area of writing on the ball.

The tigress stood up from the bench, turned around to face the wall, and took a few steps back. She stopped after taking seven steps, which was far enough to use the wall as a backboard but not too far that she was dangerously close to the tracks. The station where the tigress was now was one of the city’s bigger ones, one of the ones that connected to multiple other lines. This made the platforms a lot larger than your typical metro station platform, which was perfect to be used for a little extra tennis practice. She could use it, after all, to prove to Cassie that she wasn’t actually using Wii Sports to get good.

Alex began bouncing the ball against the floor and the sound echoed throughout the empty station.

‘Thock, thock, thock.’

Once she was ready, she tossed the ball up into the air and gently hit it toward the graffiti-splotched wall.

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