Warning: character deaths, mentions of suicide

I felt evil and dystopic today. This might be a bit too morbid for comfort, and for that I'm sorry.
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The walls are white, gleaming tile. The lights reflect orange and blue onto them in stripes and circles. The floor is a grey brown black, totally absent of colour, though not in the way children learn in primary school, ‘all the colours make white and none of them make black, here is a prism, this is why the sky is blue, two times two is four, ta ta ta’. Set upon the voids are little tables, and these are hard grey plastic and metal. Looking up at the tiles we can see four entrances set into the room, where they naturally flow from one wall to another, making corridors and doorways look as if they were formed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Through these holes stream a continuous line of people, wearing nothing on their heads save stubble and white gowns on their bodies. These people stand in loose rings at their tables, and as they take their places more file in until the room - no, it is a station, for this is a closed down stop on the Underground, scrubbed and made new for this last travel to a different place - is filled. But oh so orderly, with all the people in white packed as if to be seeds in a sunflower. It is beautiful. And even with the bleached look of the gowns and the harsh light on porcelain, it looks natural too.

When all of the tables have been filled all the people in white relax their postures, standing at ease. Smiles grace their faces. The terrible military precision with which they arrived is gone now. They are safe, as it were, on the journey. All of the platform anxiety has gone, even though if you looked for the life of you the sight of a screeching metal beast would not be seen anywhere.

A little woman of slight stature who can’t be more than twenty reaches into the pocket of her beautiful white gown and brings out a pill, small and orange. Its colour stands out against the clean fabric and she sets it down in front of her on the plastic table set out for the purpose, like this is her contribution to the world’s largest picnic. Like the cracking of a glowstick or an invisible signal sent through a hill of ants everyone else does the same, still smiling calmly or with a concentrating look. The only emotions missing on every face are those of worry, fear or doubt.

Some of them bring out letters. A few, with a sheepish roll of the eyes or a grin, bring out stuffed animals or other lucky tokens. Others bring nothing at all, save the little orange pills. But that’s all right. This is only a journey, a means to an end.

After the rustle of reedy arms on the shore everyone has at least a little capsule in front of them. A full minute passes whilst everyone stands as statues. It would be uncanny and inhuman if it were silent, but here and there is a whisper, or a murmuring voice. People are praying. People are running through lists in their heads.

People are saying goodbye.

At a half past noon on this day - except how could any of these people know that, for they surely are not wearing timepieces - another secret signal passes between the beautiful people, and they take these pills, and swallow them.

Again, it’s a little like a drama, like a group of children have been sat down and told to improvise or over-act some seemingly innocuous action. Some of the pills go down gullets quick as a wink, whilst others carefully position their own on their tongues before slowly rolling them up into their heads and gulping with as much fanfare as a boardwalker. Some of them are furtive about swallowing their pills. Some of them - mainly smiling older man and women - reach wizened hands out and feed the pills to each other, a cracker-pulling of a celebration. All of this , once more, takes less than a minute.

You would not be alone if you wondered whether this was a rehearsed thing, if it truly were a performance of the most beautiful and deadly kind. But nothing more than a shared belief holds these people’s actions together.

Of course, hours later when a lone survivor is torn from the smiling, hugging bodies, their stomach pumped and their simulated stroke treated, their sobbing pleas to be left alone ignored - only then will those unaware of the bewitching event know what happened. The papers will ignore the unwilling testimony of this survivor, call it a rehearsed event of a brainwashed cult, but this survivor’s secret will be safe with those who witnessed it - those who have journeyed on, and you.