Bug Eyes and Tightness

In yet another instance of me attempting to read on the CTA once again, I glared up to quickly glance and study my fellow public transit goers. Many of the characters were mundane to the bone - the predominance was focused nearly entirely on their pocket screens, a handful with engaged in palaver, and very few stared out either into open air for contemplation or some woman's voluptuous figure.
One woman caught my attention almost immediately due to her bug eyes and fear-induced disposition: huddled up like a freezing denizen with one arm firmly attached to a pole. It could have been due to the fact that she was literally crowded in with an influx of goers arriving from the Grand Blue Line stop. But I placed the blame on the tall and bearded bloke in grey right behind her who got a little too familiarly close to her and had one hand above her on the window's zenith edge to support him in case the train conductor's morals became too unconventional or some worthless seeker attempting suicide.
As the train cleared more and more by the time it arrived at Logan Square, she was now huddled into a corner with now only a few bystanders standing idly by, awaiting for their stop. She still had the bug eyes, but they weren't as appealing as they were before, as terrible as that may sound; perhaps the tightness had scarred her permanently and this was her cherry-popping experience among the machine on rails.
After pausing on a page from a book that I loathed reading, I noticed that she was gone. It wasn't like I was going express a pleasantry - one towering figure already had her gears grinding.
I named her Serena, because her atavistic eyes reminded me of a friend from school.

Antonio: Sobs of a Tensed Up Bloke

Around 9:07 in the evening yesterday night, I was waiting for the O'Hare outbound train amid the winter air when I witnessed a tensed up man down the station's corridor with a friend, who was attending to his troubled stance of sorrow, angst, and, at least from my perspective, a little lost. My train would be arriving in a few minutes, so now my entire focus was on the Rolling Stones in my ears and on this man, now with a hand to his left cheek to shadow any emotion from afar. At one moment he turned toward the station's window panels and punched the air a few times, a mannerism I've seen only in ghetto fiends who get upset over the most frivolous of matters. His companion merely stood by with a hand on one shoulder in order to at least try to calm the poor fool down. Unfortunately I have no clue as to what he was sobbing about, for only his actions spoke dialogue like a silent film where we just have to assume without the assistance of subtitles in-between scenes. The pair remained dormant in their little secured area of emotionality - that's when my train arrived, taking one final look at the tensed up bloke down at the station and wishing that I knew just what the hell the world has done to this perturbed denizen.
I named him Antonio, because he reminds me of someone from my past.

When Eyebrows Aren't "On Fleek"

A child tears away his frustration toward his incompetent mother, sitting beside him while he rests in his stroller. Clicking away on her smart phone, the mother deliberately worked a few techniques to shut her child's frustration out. The most particular route was placing his blanket over his mouth but not his nose, allowing him to simultaneously shut up and continue a somewhat consistent flow of air to come through. My only issue, aside from worrying about the child, was the mother's disgusting pair of fake eyelashes, which were very distinguishable in comparison to her authentic thick hairs. Cringe-worthy at best, I decided to deviate away from the journalistic observations based on people in a state of melancholy, desolation, forlornness, etc., to head to a different approach that's based on wacky and bizarre characters seen on the train. This case being one them, specifically toward Fleek's eyebrows and negligence toward her child.
I've had my fair share of enjoyable humans that I've remotely encountered on the CTA, but there are a few that fuel my angst in a irrational way, i.e. failing to shut your child's mouth up.
I named her Fleek for obvious reasons. This lady's sense of grooming is more off the rails than a rogue Red Line heading north.