The Frequency of Stray Gods: Chapter 3: The Pulse Beneath the Tracks

24 Sep, 2025

The train doors shuddered open at Circular Quay, spilling in a tide of briefcases, shopping bags, and wet umbrellas, the smell of salt off the harbour clinging to every coat. Claudette tilted her head, scanning the newcomers like specimens in a glass case.
“Look at them, all marching to the beat of receipts and rosters,” she muttered, gum snapping like a metronome.
Vinnie grinned, tapping his lighter against the rail.
“You can tell who’s already dead by how quiet their shoes are.”
Gabriel, eyes steady on the blur of ferries outside, spoke without turning. “Or maybe it’s worse, they’re alive, but they’ve traded their pulse for punctuality.”
Claudette leaned forward, watching a man in a pinstripe suit fumble with his newspaper.
“See, he thinks that paper keeps him safe, like words on a page can build a wall between him and the rest of us.”
Vinnie tapped the pole with his boot, not mocking, more curious.
“Maybe it does, maybe he needs that wall. Maybe if he put it down he’d see too much and collapse.”
Gabriel tilted his head, voice even.
“Then the trick isn’t to tear the wall down, it’s to slip a window into it, just big enough for him to notice the colour outside.”
A woman with a plastic shopping trolley heaved herself into the carriage, her cardigan sagging with rain. Claudette shifted in her seat, eyes softening.
“She’s carrying the weight of every dinner table in the block,” she murmured, almost to herself. The woman sat, exhaling like a punctured tyre, and for a moment the whole train seemed to bend around her sigh. Gabriel watched quietly, not with pity but with a kind of reverence, as though she were proof that survival itself could be an art form. Vinnie tilted his head toward the woman, then back to the others.
“You know what she makes me think of? This Mortal Coil, that cover of ‘Song to the Siren’, a voice so thin it sounds like it could vanish, but it doesn’t, it keeps holding on.”
He tugged at his Walkman cord, eyes restless.
“That’s what I want, you know? To sound fragile as glass but somehow outlast the whole bloody suburb.”
Gabriel nodded slowly, a flicker of recognition crossing his face. “Outlasting isn’t the same as living, though. Sometimes fragility is the only proof you’ve really felt anything.”
Claudette smiled faintly, chewing slower now.
“Alright, philosophers, pass the mixtape and prove it.”

Gabriel dug into his bag, pulling out a tape with the label scrawled in blue biro, half the ink smudged into a bruise. He held it up like contraband.
“Side A’s for when you want to disappear. Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, the stuff that makes your bones float. Side B’s for when you’re ready to fight. The Fall, Gang of Four, Birthday Party.”
Vinnie snatched it, grinning,
“Christ, you’ve got a war plan on magnetic ribbon.”
Claudette leaned in, eyes shining.
“No, he’s got a map. And we’re the ones riding it.”

The carriage lurched as the train curved back toward Town Hall, lights flickering in rhythm with the tracks. Claudette drummed her nails on the seat, humming tunelessly before blurting,
“Imagine if everyone on this loop had to swap Walkmans for a day, hear what the next stranger hears. Bet half of Sydney would crumble.”
Gabriel smirked, pushing his fringe from his eyes.
“Or maybe it’d heal them. Imagine the stockbroker suddenly crying to The Smiths, or the busker at Central discovering Kraftwerk.”
Vinnie laughed low, shaking his head.
“Yeah, and Mr. Walker the maths teacher stuck with Einstürzende Neubauten, poor bastard would combust before recess.” A group of schoolboys piled in at Wynyard, blazers damp, voices loud with the bravado of boredom. Claudette watched them jostle and shove, then whispered, “Listen to that, it’s not laughter, it’s armour.”
Gabriel nodded, eyes fixed on the floor.
“Every joke’s a shield, every punchline a way of saying don’t look too close.”
Vinnie leaned back, smirk curling.
“Give them ten years and they’ll still be humming the same tune, only softer, in offices with carpets that smell like dust.”
Claudette turned to Gabriel, her voice a low dare.
“Not us though. We’ll still be loud enough to scare the silence.” The speaker crackled above them, a flat voice announcing Martin Place next stop, words dissolving into static. Gabriel tilted his head toward the ceiling, as if weighing the announcement like a lyric.
“Funny, isn’t it,” he said, “how they tell you where you’re going, but never why you’re going there.”
Claudette kicked her boot against the pole, sharp and deliberate.
“That’s the difference between us and them. They follow stations. We follow songs.”
Vinnie grinned, tapping the smudged cassette in his pocket.
“Then Martin Place isn’t a stop. It’s just another verse.” The city outside sagged under fluorescent haze, sandstone scarred by soot, office towers rising like hollow monuments. Claudette pressed her forehead to the glass, muttering,
“Look at them, all polished dead things stacked on top of each other.” Gabriel didn’t answer straight away, just watched the old clock tower slide past, its face cracked but still keeping time. Finally he said, quiet and certain,
“That’s the only honest thing left in this city. It’s broken and it doesn’t hide it.” The train shivered through the tunnel, lights stuttering overhead, and Vinnie leaned forward, voice low but sharp.
“Ever notice how no one questions the driver? Whole city just trusts some faceless bloke at the front to decide when to stop, when to go.”
Claudette pulled her gloves tighter, eyes narrowing.
“Like priests with timetables instead of prayers.”
The carriage rocked, a groan of steel against steel, and Gabriel whispered almost to himself,
“What if one day the hymn doesn’t play, what if the train sings a different song?” At St James the doors sighed open, a tide of suits shuffling in, eyes glued to the tiled floor as though it were scripture. Claudette watched them claim their seats without speaking, bodies folding neatly like pages in a ledger. She leaned toward Gabriel, her words a spark.
“See, they don’t even notice they’re inside a machine. They think the machine is them.”
Gabriel’s gaze flicked to the ceiling lights flickering overhead, and he said softly,
“Then maybe the only way to wake them is to break the rhythm, make the machine stutter.” The train plunged back into the dark, fluorescent bulbs humming like tired bees, and Vinnie tapped his lighter against the pole in time with the rattle of the tracks.
“Imagine if we pulled the cord, stopped it right here, underground. No announcements, no driver’s voice, just silence thick enough to choke them.” His grin widened, not cruel but curious, as though testing the weight of the thought.
“Would they scream, or would they finally listen?” Claudette tilted her head, gum snapping loud in the hush.
“They’d scream first, of course they would, panic’s the only language they know. But after that, after the noise burns out, maybe they’d hear the real sound, the hum of their own fear, the hymn of being powerless.”
She looked at Gabriel, eyes gleaming in the flicker.
“And maybe that’s the only lesson worth teaching.” Claudette tilted her head against the rattling window, half-listening to Vinnie’s lighter snapping open and shut, half-watching the blur of tiled tunnel walls. In that half-light she caught something else, something softer. The way Gabriel’s eyes kept drifting, not hurried, not obvious, just orbiting back toward Vinnie as though pulled by a tide he didn’t know how to resist. It wasn’t hunger, not yet, more like a secret curiosity, the kind that sits in the chest and hums louder than any song on tape. Claudette chewed her gum slow, tasting the moment, filing it away like a lyric that only makes sense after the third listen. She let the smallest smile touch her lips, not mocking, not approving, just an acknowledgement that some truths don’t need announcing. They bloom quietly in the dark and ask only to be noticed. Vinnie snapped the lighter shut one last time and leaned forward, voice sharp enough to slice through the hum of the train.
“You know what no one ever says out loud? Machines don’t run the city. Fear does. Every timetable, every traffic light, every bloody train. Fear’s the fuel.”
He paused, eyes glinting behind scratched aviators, and grinned like someone who’d just uncovered scripture.
“So if fear is the driver, maybe it’s time we take the wheel.”