A Wellness Check

The glow of Times Square at midnight gave off the strangely warm feeling of sunset. Nestling his beanie over his headphones and throwing up the hood of his jacket that was much too old and much too big, nineteen-year-old Felix leaned into that feeling of digital warmth while the baseline of ‘Come Together’ took him to another place.

Thousands of strangers bustled around him; across crosswalks, dodging in and out of shops. Camera flashes glittered throughout the square; sometimes so close it was blinding. Felix did not mind, though, he was somewhere else and that was just another part of the glow.

Finding his grove, he tucked through the hordes of people seamlessly, feeling like a timid mouse weaving through a stampede of antelope. If it were possible for a passerby to even take notice of him, Felix would have looked less like a dish boy that worked doubles in the heart of Times Square with barely a penny to his name, and more like a skilled gymnast.

‘What can I say,’ he thought to himself with a shy pride. ‘I’m just that go-.’

At that second, he ran into what could only have been a towering brick wall with shoulders.

“Sorry, sir,” Felix stammered as the brick wall turned back at him with a glare.

Quickly, he tried to sidestep past the large man, but found that he had somehow stumbled himself into the middle of a massive crowd of people at some sort of standstill. There were so many of them that they filled every standing inch of the sidewalk and some even trickled into the edges of the street. The fact that not a single taxi had swiped up to the curb to pick up a fare and accidentally killed someone was more than a small miracle to Felix, that is until he noticed that even the never-ending ocean of cars had come to a halt as well.

He froze, feeling like he had finally noticed the flaws of a perfectly real dream. And then he noticed the biggest flaw of all. The electric buzz of billboards that always illuminated the bright glitzy advertisements for everything from skincare products to Coca-Cola, had vanished. Every digital billboard in all of Times Square had instead gone black, with only one sentence displayed in jagged white letters:

‘The Society of Wellness will invite you to win $20,000 dollars in 15 seconds.’

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13

“I bet it’s like one of those reality show quiz things,” a tall blonde clad head to toe in ‘I Love New York’ garb whispered excitedly to her boyfriend. The gum in her mouth smacked with every syllable.

3

2

1....

The words on every screen faded to black. And then nothing. A disjointed murmur filled the air but still no one moved, as if they half expected dollar bills to suddenly start raining from the sky for their patience. Finally, after a long moment of teasing, another sentence appeared.

‘$20,000 dollar will be rewarded to one of you on the 42nd Street Shuttle in ten minutes.’

Again, the words faded away - but instead of each and every sign returning to its regularly scheduled broadcast, giant blue arrows appeared on them to guide the way forward to the nearest subway entrance.

That prompt erupted chaos in the square like an un-paused war movie. Immediately, there was so much pushing and shoving, pulling, and prodding, smacking, and nudging that the sidewalk became a cattle corral. Horns blared from the street, a symphony of pandemonium.

‘I’ve got to get to the 42nd Street Shuttle, now,’ Felix thought in a panic.

With stampede charging ahead toward the worn green subway entrance in the distance. Felix saw his chance. Like a convict on the run, he plunged into the empty side alley on his left. It was wet and grey, completely devoid of all the glamor of Times Square. When he came to a small service staircase, he did not hesitate and descended it underground two steps at a time. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ began to play.

Entered into the subway terminal from a small side door, Felix’s anxiety reached a pounding peak. Hundreds of people were packing into the station from the north entrance with the intensity of a zombie horde. Their scattered screams reverberated off of the white tile walls and cement pillars like an incoming army. Felix didn’t waste another second. He ran to one of the gates and whipped out his bent metro card, barely a breath ahead of the oncoming crowd. Grabbing the ticket that spat out of the stainless-steel box, he shot towards one of the shuttle doors. He had only barely made it inside when a clump of at least sixty people tore their way in behind him. They were followed instantly by another group of thirty more.

Through the smudged glass, everyone aboard could only watch in disbelief as at least a thousand or more people bombarded towards the shuttle. With each new flood of them, the car trembled ever so slightly like its knees were ready to give out. This was anarchy, and it was unnerving; so much so that Felix caught himself staring at the shuttle ticket stub in his hand for any kind of distraction. Halfway down the ticket, hiding amidst a maze of plain type numbers, were the words ‘Good Luck’ printed in the same jagged letters as the message in Times Square.

At well past capacity, the doors finally hissed shut and the shuttle began to move. ‘The Society of Wellness congratulates you,’ read a dusty television screen in the top corner of the car. But Felix didn’t pay it any attention. He wasn’t interested in whatever reality show quiz some society was offering. This shuttle was how he got home and the second this Society of Wellness pandemonium had started; Felix had known that it could take him hours to get home if he didn’t beat the crowd. So as far as he was concerned, now that he had claim to his cramped foot of space in the corner the twenty thousand dollars, if there even was any, was theirs to kill each other over.

Everyone else, meanwhile, was craning their neck looking for clues. They pretended civility as they checked for envelopes under their seats and sifted through brochures of Manhattan. They also glared at one another to no end. There was no conversation, save for the occasional sharp “excuse me” whenever someone tried to move down the aisle for a better vantage point.

In the lull of the train, Felix could have fallen asleep. It felt like cinderblocks were pulling his eyelids closed from another long day. Tempering his excitement, his brain began calculating just how many hours of sleep he would be able to pull off before starting again tomorrow. He had almost concluded that he could just barely get six hours, when his eyes wandered to something on the ground.

It wasn’t a golden ticket or a duffel bag stuffed with bricks of money, but a man in a tattered camouflage coat. He was laying on his side, tucked in the fetal position - his head driven between his knees so that only his long yellow locks of hair could be seen. He was as still a post.

“...Sir, are you okay?” His voice came out as a nervous whisper, as light as a feather.

The passengers who surrounded Felix whipped their heads immediately to the unmoving man. Deciding rather quickly that he was not their prize, however, they pushed past to continue patrolling the rest of the train car. Seeing an opportunity, Felix crouched to the floor and dove over to the man in the corner.

“S-sir, are you okay,” he asked again, tapping his shoulder. “Are you in pain?”

The man still did not move and gave no sign of life, except for a painful groan.

A dizzying panic set into Felix’s ribs then, along with a potent amount of adrenaline.

Help.

Help.

Get help.

Felix shot up to yell for help but was beaten by a toneless, mechanical voice that crackled to life over the loudspeaker.

“We are about to arrive at our stop,” the voice said. At that very moment, the shuttle’s breaks let out a thundering whine. “Don’t miss your chance for all that money.”

“Um..ex..excuse me, we need help over here,” Felix said, begging his immediate neighbors to respond.

But the crowd didn’t have time for his nonsense. The voice had given a renewed energy to the zoo and now everyone aboard, aside from Felix and the injured man, were bombarding the windows. They stretched and shoved any way that they could, each determined to be the first one to see any clues at the approaching terminal.

“W-WE NEED TO GET THIS MAN TO A DOCTOR!!!” Felix shouted; his head becoming as hot as a poker. Before he could think he had stumbled to his feet and began pushing his way through the car.

“WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP?!”

“I BET THE NEXT CLUE IS IN THE TERMINAL!” a booming voice among the crowd announced as the shuttle came to its final stop.

“WILL ANYONE HELP? PLLLEASSE!!!” Felix cried.

His heart was in his throat. He didn’t know what to do. As a last resort, he tried to tug at any coat or arm that he could grab. But it was no use. the mob was pooling at the shuttle door in anticipation. Anyone that couldn’t hold their own was trampled. Finally, the door hissed open and the crowd burst out onto the platform with fervor. As fast as it had filled, the shuttle car had emptied into silence.

A hot tear of anger slid down his face. For a second, he could only stare aimlessly out at the dispersing swarm of people in disbelief.

“It’s....it’ll be okay, sir. We are going to get you help,” he said, turning back. “Let me help you u-“

But the man wasn’t there.

“Sir?” he called out to no one.

Felix walked back to where the man had been in a daze of confusion. He needed to be sure. But the man was, in fact, gone. It was then that he saw the little notebook. It sat in the exact place on the floor where the man had been, it’s jet-black cover as inviting as it was startling. He picked it up and opened it to the first page. It was creased. There was only one line of text in the notebook, scrawled in the same jagged handwriting that had sparked insanity.

‘For compassion above self-interest, The Society of Wellness congratulates you.’

Beneath the text glittered a small piece of thin paper. It was unmistakably a check. With shaking fingers, Felix opened it and began to cry.

Through his headphones came the unmistakable sound of David Bowie as ‘Changes began to play.