* A party occurs on campus, among other trivial things *
In the final scene, I land somewhat in a hurry on Central Park West, bags and all. I am just trying to get home with all the stuff I had accumulated. I approach the ATM on the sidewalk, and as it senses me coming towards it, it dispenses a single dollar. “Oh, no….” I think, “this is some sort of test, and I don’t need any more trouble. I won’t take it.” Trying to ignore the menacing dollar, I punch in my numbers and whatever, get my money, and head downstairs to the subway.
Abject despair in the underground. Before I even got to swipe, a wretched beast of a black man was curled over the turnstile, homeless and rotten. I couldn’t even see his face. He was moaning indecipherably, but it was obvious he just wanted some change, or a swipe. I thought I could almost hear him crying, and thought he might have been crying all day. It was at that moment that I realize I almost had a dollar for this man, if only I had cooperatively taken the one at the ATM. Certainly, I could not surrender to him one of my own dollars. Nevertheless, I had to keep going, to catch my train.
Making my way further into the station, when I get downstairs, a phantom of a costume of Michael Jackson is leering at me. It is as if he is wearing a mask, for he makes no discernible facial movements… only an exaggerated smile, empty eyes, pointy chin, following me with a swiveling neck that leers lubriciously in my direction. Though I am not too nervous, I retreat a bit when I ask him bluntly and timidly, “What... do you want?”
“THAT is the Question!” he shrieks in response! And satisfied, possibly with the existensialism of my curiosity, he climbs onto a slow-moving bicycle and squeaks away, morphing into a shadow of a phantom of a costume of the artist formerly known as Prince in the process. But this was not the last I would see of him.
As soon as I made it through the turnstile, the subway platform was no longer... instead now a circular rotating disk, like some haunted carousel ride, and I in the center. All scenery melted into dark shapes, purple and yellow fog, swirling around the spinning floor, suspending me in this tortured limbo. “I want to leave!” I desperately cry, and exit, spiraling outwards, towards the outer edge of the ring, where I see Michael again, pedaling from far away. I call to him… maybe he has an answer! But joker as he is, he turns himself into a grotesque caricature of Spongebob Squarepants, bloated and decrepit, and itself assuming a multitude of faces simultaneously. He was of no help.
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