Yamanote Spirits
an excerpt

If you jump in front of a train in Japan, etiquette demands that you leave your shoes by the platform. This lets the station staff know it was intentional and allows them to send the bill to your relatives. However, the first thing they'll do after you're gone is draw lots to see who will be the ones to clean your blood off the tracks.
Yume, although that wasn't her real name, rubbed her shoes against the back of her ankle. Two trains had already passed and she wondered if she could really do it.
He shoes were sparkling silver, designed to draw attention to her legs. She towered on high heels, their curves matching her own. Two straps began either side at the heel and wound their way up, criss-crossing her calves. When at work, they were drawn tight and she would never tell her clients how they cut off her circulation and left dark lines the next morning. Tonight she had loosened them. It would probably be possible to slip them off just as the express came speeding though the station. If not, there was no one to send the bill to anyway.
A third train arrived. People pushed past her to find a seat. It was the local train and passed through the station slowly. It wouldn't have been fast enough, Yume told herself.
On the board above the platform, numbers told her how long she had left. They seemed to swap decimal points and skip to the next line without warning. They were a mystery. Maybe there had been more than three trains tonight.
Shinjuku's skyscraper district towered in the background, glittering with broken promises. Huge banks of offices still lit with golden light spoke of late nights and unpaid overtime. Although they seemed like a city in their own right from this distance, as you approached from any number of lines that fed into Shinjuku, they just got bigger until you were at their base. If you looked up, they hid the sky.
She was further away, but near enough that her skyline was all city. The numbers that kept rearranging themselves in front of her as she tried to read them told her the next train was it. The express. Not stopping, just passing through.
Just like everyone else on the platform, she stepped up to the yellow line. No one objected as she seemingly pushed to the front of the line for the train after. No one stopped her and no one asked why. Yume wondered if they knew and, if they did, if they cared.
The blood roared in her ears, mirrored in the sound as the train approached. She heard the mechanical warning to keep behind the line and the rot of old cigarette smoke and stale sake met her nose.
Then, like the train, she passed through.

The Express was packed as usual and the floor awash with blood. It looked the same kind of texture and thickness as the coffee that used to get Yume out of bed in the morning. A thick lump here, where the creamer fused together. Grainy where the granules didn't dissolve. The smell was not what she thought of as blood, but engine oil and disinfectant. Someone had tried to clean this up, she thought.
She had forgotten to take her shoes off, although this hadn't been a problem for most of the people around her, all barefoot. Their hands snatched at the space over her head, looking for something to hold onto as they tried to avoid the fact that they were slipping on the slick floor. Not only was everyone already holding onto all available straps, but one more person – Yume herself – had arrived. Apart from the smell, it was just like rush hour.
Yume turned to her right, then her left, hoping to find someone sympathetic to whom she could talk. There was little doubt in her mind that this was death. But what manner of death? There had never been any clue in the temples she had prayed at that the afterlife was a rush hour train. Despite everything, it wasn't even awful enough for her to describe it as 'hell'. She'd had worse commutes. Everyone in Tokyo had.
"Where is this place?" she asked no one in particular, hoping that the person most receptive to questions would answer.
"The Chūōcide Express." It was a salary man that answered her. He had adopted the pose of the successful commuter; without leaning to the side, his body slumped forwards, his head hanging down. In only the next part did he differ. His head was held on by the tiniest exposed vertebrae. Fleshy tissue surrounded the open wound, but it looked as he had finished bleeding a long time ago. Still, it looked as if he would snap any minute.
"We're not on the Chūō line," she said. Her words weren't empty. Even through the man's seemingly unhelpful answer, she was learning things. She was getting hints about the kind of place she had found herself in. The Chūō line was notorious for the amount of daily suicides, although the people who voiced this spoke mainly of the numerous delays. Among the bitter middle-aged, it had earned its "Chūōcide" nickname.
"The Express doesn't care. Any line is fine."
"Where does it go?"
"Anywhere it wants." He laughed, almost severing his spine in the process. "It goes wherever there's a soul waiting who needs a ride."
"And what about when there's no one who needs picking up?"
"There's always someone. Always."
"So where are we going now?"
He pointed to the black and electric orange ticker above the door and read it aloud. "Shinjuku. The final stop."
A memory leapt into Yume's mind, but she shook it off. She looked at the same ticker, but could see only the station name. "The final stop?"
"Perhaps only I can see that. That's where I'm getting off."
"And then?"
"I don't know. Depends what's there."
"You don't know?"
"No one does. But when they're ready, they leave."
"How long does that take?"
"As little as a couple of years, sometimes. I've been here since the Shōwa era though."
Yume marvelled at how much he must have seen. So much more than her... Something inside stirred and she pushed it back down.
"I was a World War Two veteran," he added, as if that explained everything. "Would you mind retrieving my hat? It's on the luggage rack above me."
The hat in question was the dismal brown worn by office workers everywhere. Yume eased the man's head up, taking care not to damage his spine, and placed it on his head. Suddenly, he looked of his era.
"I wanted to wear it, but it kept falling off," he explained. He stood up, holding his head upright with his left hand, and gently pushed through the crowds to the door.
Beyond, there was only darkness. As he left, it seemed to swallow him whole as if it were not really there, but only a representation of something that humans wouldn't be able to comprehend otherwise. Even the half-dead.
Yume turned to see that the salaryman's seat was already taken. Before the door could close, she leapt after him.