It remembered the air raids as a haze of Loudness - loud sirens screeching across the night sky, louder explosions rocking the world and showering it with dust. Loudest of all were the people piling into the underground and filling its home with far more noise than any train ever could.
When this happened, it would crouch beneath the platform and swipe at the children who got too close to the edge. They'd run off to tell their parents but they were always brushed off - who cares for a child's imagination gone wild when the threat of being buried alive looms over them so heavily?
Once or twice it managed to snag a couple of younger children and snap their necks before they had too much of a chance to cry for help. The parents would think they'd been caught in a bomb's path, mourn and unconsciously move that little bit further from the platform next time.
After the air raids had ended and infrastructure slowly began to increase, it found itself missing all the meat it gathered over those troublesome and noisy months. It soon found another source - the workers who came to expand the lines.
They were good at following its orders over the radio, a little trick it picked up from the bag of a particularly delicious older man whose neck made such a clean, satisfactory snap. It would ask them for help in a random sector, wait for them to wander away a bit and drag them down one of its burrows in a split-second.
Once the works were completed, maintenance was sparse and its hunger grew once more. For the first time in its life it stepped onto the platform, all gangly limbs and tattered scraps of fabric torn from its victims barely-warm bodies.
When this happened, it would crouch beneath the platform and swipe at the children who got too close to the edge. They'd run off to tell their parents but they were always brushed off - who cares for a child's imagination gone wild when the threat of being buried alive looms over them so heavily?
Once or twice it managed to snag a couple of younger children and snap their necks before they had too much of a chance to cry for help. The parents would think they'd been caught in a bomb's path, mourn and unconsciously move that little bit further from the platform next time.
After the air raids had ended and infrastructure slowly began to increase, it found itself missing all the meat it gathered over those troublesome and noisy months. It soon found another source - the workers who came to expand the lines.
They were good at following its orders over the radio, a little trick it picked up from the bag of a particularly delicious older man whose neck made such a clean, satisfactory snap. It would ask them for help in a random sector, wait for them to wander away a bit and drag them down one of its burrows in a split-second.
Once the works were completed, maintenance was sparse and its hunger grew once more. For the first time in its life it stepped onto the platform, all gangly limbs and tattered scraps of fabric torn from its victims barely-warm bodies.
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