Flash Fiction: The Magical Land of Janice

Janice fell asleep on her way to work. She’d got on at Greenwood and was lucky to find a seat. That, perhaps, was her downfall. She hadn’t drunk her morning coffee yet, and there was something about the subway’s side-to-side sway that set her mind adrift in the magical land of Janice. Ordinarily, she switched at the Bloor/Yonge interchange and rode down to the financial district where she worked in a clothing store that sold tight-fitting yoga pants to people with too much money. Had she been standing, she might have noticed the missed stop, but this morning she lay slouched in a corner, oblivious as the train rumbled past her station and continued west. She woke to a voice on the public address system announcing that they had reached the end of the line and all passengers must leave the train. Oh God. Janice jumped to her feet. Heart pounding, she grabbed her things and ran from the train.

The station didn’t look unfamiliar. It adhered to the rules laid down by a secret global society of subway station designers. All walls must be covered in glossy porcelain tiles that looked (and sounded) like the interior of a giant shower stall. All floors must be of a polished aggregate like the floors in virtually every high school ever built. And, most important of all, the structure must reinforce an ethos of soul-deadening conformity. By these rules, this station could have been the station she used when she left for work in the morning, or it could have been the station she used when she arrived, or it could have been the station she used for her regular visits to the local liquor store.

The only way to distinguish one subway station from any other was to look for the name neatly etched in the porcelain tiles, always in the same sans serif font, maybe Helvetica, like the default font setting for Janice’s email client. She saw that she was exiting Orchard MRT Station. She’d never heard of the Orchard MRT Station. Then again, she never went to the west end of the city. She harboured a private fear that if she went all the way to the west end of the city, she might fall off the edge of the planet, flailing her limbs and screaming into the soundless depths of space. When she shared her fear with her cousin, the one who lived in Wingham, the girl scowled and accused her of going full Toronto, what with her centre-of-the-universe pretensions and general uppityness.

Conveniently, the Orchard MRT Station had an exit straight up the middle of a mall that looked like any other mall. Janice rode the escalator and found the shop where she worked with its stock of overpriced yoga pants and its sales staff with their generic pasted-on smiles. She threw her bag in the back and swapped her flats for heels, then began her day. There were pleasantries with the customers. A few good sales. A short lunch break in the food court downstairs. It was a good day like any other.

When her shift was done, Janice swapped her heels for her flats and decided to go for a walk before riding the subway home. She strolled all the way down Orchard Road, in and out of malls, until it turned into Bras Basah Road, then she walked along North Bridge Road across the river and down along the quay. She paused for a drink at a table overlooking the water and waved to tourists who chugged by in a boat on its way down to the Marina Bay Sands. A little further along, she realized she was hungry and found a place that served fresh seafood. Others joined her under a patio umbrella, and although she didn’t know them, they would do just as well as any of her usual friends. Together, they drank. They laughed. They did group poses for influencer posts to their social media accounts.

It was getting late and Janice had to be up in time for work the next morning. She had to stop doing this, going out late, drinking more than she had planned, then sleeping past her stop the next morning. She walked over to the Clarke Quay MRT, and although she didn’t know exactly where it went, she had faith that, one way or another, it would take her home.