Ty woke up, not really sure what happened. All he could remember was the screaming, the gun fire, the fear.

He looked around and saw the carnage, the blood. Ty could hear the sirens, the hustle of paramedics bringing whoever was there up and out the subway.

Interrupted by the roar of a train, Ty looked at the tiles on the wall, “42,” which must have meant he was at 42nd Street. How did he get here?

“Drop the gun and put your hands up!”

Ty turned around and saw three guns aimed at him, held by New York’s Finest. Badges in the air, and Ty was not going down quietly.

“Drop this, bitch!” he yelled at the cop that screamed out the order. He pulled the trigger and the cop went down screaming.

Ty turned and ran up the stairs, jumping over the turnstile when he reached the top. He heard the footsteps chasing after him, and the roar of the 7 train pulling out the station. Realizing the situation, he jumped and somehow caught the back bar of the train, holding on for dear life as he was whisked away from his pursuers.

Knowing he’d have to jump off before the next station or risk being caught by waiting police, he evaluated the speed of the train. The last thing Ty wanted to do was to roll into the third rail. Death was not a part of Ty’s plans today.

Luckily, the train stopped. A relay switch was up ahead, and the light was red. Ty took advantage of the opportunity given to him, presumably by God, and jumped down onto the tracks. He ran to the nearest emergency exit stairwell and found his way down to the street below.

Ty took his cell phone out and called one of his friends, told him the deal, and found out that the police had been by the shop, roughing up people to get information. “Motherfuckin’ pigs,” he mumbled before hanging up. Ty walked to the nearest train station, 74th Street, and instead of heading back up to take the 7 train, he went downstairs to catch the E into Manhattan.

He didn’t jump the rails this time. Like the thousands of others that morning, he paid his fare by swiping a card - stolen, of course - and walking through. Ty went further down, waited for the train, and boarded like everyone else.

Nobody knew that just a half hour earlier, he had killed two people on the streets of Queens. Or that the killing wasn’t over.

At the 50th Street stop, all Hell broke loose. Cops boarded the train, obviously pinpointing Ty’s whereabouts somehow.

“Stop, police!”

“Oh, fuck!” Ty yelled, drawing his gun and knocking down a woman at the same time. The doors were about to close but Ty got through just in time. Laughing, he ran towards the stairwell, only to turn around once he saw cops waiting for him.

Ty crossed the platform and down the open track, running for his life. Aiming blindly behind him he shot back at the cops chasing him down. “Fuck you, pigs!” he screamed as he pulled the trigger. He heard the heavy footsteps of at least three cops chasing him down the tracks.

The roar of the train was louder in the tunnels. How a homeless man could live here was beyond Ty, but he knew more than enough bums to know it happened, and a lot more than the city would tell anyone.

“Drop your weapon!”

Ignoring the calls from the cops behind him, Ty looked ahead and saw lights. He kept running, knowing he was almost clear. He’d get to the end and climb up the ladder, bolt up the platform, and be out in the streets of Manhattan, something he’d done many times before.

What bothered him was that he didn’t hear the police anymore. “Fuck,” he thought. “Pigs must be waiting for me up ahead.”

Ty stopped running, listened for cops chasing him, and when he didn’t hear anything, he got nervous.

“What the fuck am I gonna do now? Come on, Ty, think!”

The last time he was arrested, he did a bullet in county jail. Nothing big, nothing special. But his lawyer told him that if he was arrested for anything violent again, even mugging an old lady, he’d be facing some serious time. “They don’t let niggers like you walk the streets,” he told Ty. “And they don’t like it when niggers like me come up to them; dressing all White and talking all cracka get you off with a slap on the wrist.”

Ty realized that the system was going to drown him this time, and he wasn’t going to go back to jail. He came up with an idea. He’d back track; go back the same way he came, and nobody would expect it. He’d crawl up, wait for a train to come, and walk out with everyone else like he was on that train.

That’s when he fell. “Fuck,” he screamed. Ty got up but realized he dropped the gun. “No, no, no! Fuck!” He looked around, trying to find it. After five minutes he finally saw it between the rail and one of the ties.

As he went to get the gun, he knocked it closer to the wall. “Fuck,” he screamed, but reached for the gun.

“Gotcha, bitch,” Ty smiled, but only for a second. His hand was stuck.

He saw the lights of the train barreling down the tracks. The horn, the screeching of the rails, and the bone-chilling scream that would be the last he heard… his.

That’s when one of the medics picked up his head off the platform and put it in a gurney, kind of where Ty’s head should have been if it hadn’t been ripped from his own body two hours earlier.