<div style="text-align: center;">In a mad world.<br/>Only the mad are sane<br/><br/>--------------</div><br/><br/><br/>It should have been so easy. At least, that's what her rational mind had said.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">'Just turn up that chaotic ensemble playing bliss in your ears. Pivot on the stubbornly planted heel and retrace those dust trodden footsteps up those littered stairs'.</span>Surely somewhere out there in the busy crowded world, there would still be a half drunken cab driver still lurking about the streets waiting numb for their weekly wages. And surely there was a lazy bus filled to the windows with careless minds and cigarette smoke; puffing and passing by this area sometime within the next hour or so. Something. Anything. The common sense would say:<span style="font-style: italic">'Just walk out of here. Run. Go home. You have done your share. You're finished. You don't need more regrets. Please just go... please.</span><br/>But that was nothing compared to the other. No where close. Behind that voice. Behind the pitifully pleading conscious, there was another sound. Quiet. Niggling. Teasing. Whispering it's gentle subtleties between each stale tainted breath. Sweetly singing it's flirtatious lullaby of<span style="font-style: italic">what if's</span>and<span style="font-style: italic">could be's.</span>'<span style="font-style: italic">You know it likes these puzzles. These places. Stay with these people. Play these games. You know you want to jump on those tracks again. You know you want to. Come on. Come on! Let's play </span>. It didn't stop.<br/>That logic and instinct. Reason and intuition. Over and over and over again. The arguments went back and forth, racing a grand Prix in her mind within s second of glancing at the stairs for the forth time of coming here and yet.... Yet the only words the female took heed to.... the one voice Leonora thought of answering, was the sultry multi-pitched, genteel mewling of the unusual mau feline in front of her. Yep. Leonora Maietta was talking.... to a cat.<br/><br/>Perhaps the Doctors had been right after all.<br/><br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">I'm HIS carer, thankyouverymuch. Maybe Soon I will be yours... now, pick me up, that bag of yours seems comfortable.~' </span><br/><br/>A tired sigh left the slightly down turned lips as she absently dragged the steady fingers through the cat's fur, allowing her hand to lightly trace the tail to it's tip before scratching it around the newly groomed ears once more.<br/>Of course she wasn't really talking to the seemingly pretentious animal. How could she? That's ridiculous. Her mature mind would constantly remind her that humans were incapable of understanding the complicated language of felines. There was no way they could comprehend them.<br/>But then again, when she was of a far more imaginative age, the young girl had come across another cat which looked just as scraggly and lost as she had been. When this old patched up creature had started yowling, crying at her in it's fractured voice, Leonora had just pictured what it was saying and replied. No one else would listen so she had thought, why not? She had never expected to get an answer and for it to make sense in her twisted little mind. But before the child knew it, she was having a simple conversation with someone she could really connect to.  In the end, it became something that she had never grew out of.<br/><br/><span style="color: #0080FF">"I should have known. My apologies"</span>She had said, letting a half smile lighten the confliction in her hardened features.<br/><span style="color: #0080FF">"But I am my own carer. Don't think you can boss me around like you do with.....</span><br/><br/><br/>The sound...was unmistakable.  The bone grating scream of metal grinding against metal. The rumbling of an engine like a monster within a mountain. And the roaring winds that followed like the smoke trail from it's mouth.<br/>The train itself was the perfect match to its run down little station. In fact, the woman would almost say that it was like two connecting puzzle pieces. With it's unique, distinctive clunking as it rumbled down the rails. The shredded edges and faded paint; it looked like the old locomotive had made a couple trips through an elephant graveyard in it's extensive life cycle, with no one caring enough to give it a clean up. It was forgotten just like the train station it had arrived in. Another miserable pile of metal buried under the footsteps and the lives of the people that walked through it. However...there was something else about this that caught her attention. Something that stood out from sounds and appearance of the London Train. Something off: That's right. It was the smell. An evil concoction of iron and rust mixed with the scent of rotting meat, smoke and oil. The last time she breathed in toxic aroma it was more than a year ago and in a very different place. A very... violent place. The tainted oxygen. The musty air so thick with this miasma was something that you could never fully remove from the lungs.<br/>And you never forget.<br/><br/><span style="color: #0080FF">"Yeah sure... go ahead. Help yourself to the tuna sandwich if you can get to it. Just.... be careful not to scratch anything in there okay. I have some... special equipment that I don't want damaged" </span><br/><br/><br/>She knew it was her voice that spoke, but the words were as distant as the place before<br/>Her attention was on the train... or rather the people that were getting on to it. At first it was just the stragglers that walked towards the mobile wreckage. The ordinary disbelieving civilians, the morbidly curious students. She watched them as the first moved to their assigned cars.... then slowly, slowly move off towards the third car from the front. One man in particular; she could have sworn he was going to move in to the car before it. He even got his hand on the door way, shifted his weight and was about to lift his foot off the ground... when he too suddenly let go and walked towards the other car. And not only that; now those other individuals, the stranger entities that she had singled out just moments before were starting to follow them as well.<br/>One by one they filed on. First the man who spoke up with his strange words further fueling the conflict in thoughts and then the angst filled teenager following close behind. It only took a moment's glance for her instincts to zero in on their selection of weapons like a snipers cross hairs on an easy target. It was....<span style="font-style: italic">interesting</span>. Their choices were predictable and his would help him in the long run. But she might have well been wielding a pencil as a defense.<br/>Next was the Egyptian styled gentleman. Like the younger girl, it was the first time she had heard him speak. He mentioned that he too was here to find the cause behind this phenomenon, and that the feline in her bag was named Belle. A name that quite well suited the sophisticated creature. She watched as he strode proudly in to the car, taking a seat in the disabled spot like a Pharaoh assuming his throne.<br/>The female who bravely.... boldly stood up to the hunters challenge was next followed by the anxious male, who still continued to mirror her thoughts of this whole situation as he sat down and tuned the world out with his headphones.<br/>The last person who approached was the only one that hesitated. A priest type person with more questions and more ideas.<br/>To her perceptions he was the strangest. People of God had a faith to be reckoned with. So what was this one afraid of?<br/><br/>And then. It was her turn.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Turn around now. It's not too late. <br/>Join in the game, play it again. </span><br/><br/>Adjusting the bag over her shoulder, the brunette headed past the rest of the train to the only used car in the tunnel.<br/>At first glance, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the other parts of the train. They didn't smell, or look dirty. If anything they looked to be in better condition than the occupied area that people were drawn to. In fact, there was no sign or any indication why they would need to only go to that one car and not any of the others.<br/>Either way it didn't matter to her. Leonora was not one to draw attention to herself, so like everyone else she hoisted herself up in to the third car from the front and found one of the only remaining empty seats towards the back. With her bag resting securely between her feet and music playing on a low volume in her ears, she then leaned back against the ancient stained seats and waited for one of the most tense train rides she would ever embark on in this city. Hoping that the occasional stare and strangled feeling in her gut would be the only things she would receive between now and when she could finally... finally return to her sky high apartment.