As the train pulls into the station, everyone on the platform is simultaneously decapitated. This sounds like the start of a horror story, or perhaps a great tragedy, but it’s nothing of the sort. It’s a strange phenomenon on the Madrid Metro whereby people waiting on the opposite platform have their faces completely obscured.

While standing on a packed train, I often stare out of the window. For most of the journey I’m greeted by the abyss, a blackness interrupted by the occasional flash of an air duct or the roar of a train passing in the other direction. I gaze out of the window in order to dissociate, to block out the noise and the smell of the people packed into this claustrophobic space. As the train enters the next station, though, what would typically be a chance to catch a glimpse at the faces of others is usually anything but. There’s a thick black line that separates the top part of the window as the part which can be opened. This line sits at just the right height to stand directly between my line of sight and the heads of those on the platform. When the train pulls in, all I see is a mass of torsos and limbs. I see no faces.

This has always struck me as disconcerting. Ironically so, as the precise motivation behind my staring out of the window is to avoid looking at people. This falls in line with human nature: we are all a walking contradiction. But I think it also speaks to the abject dehumanisation of the metro, the big city, or way too much time spent in both.

These faceless people fascinate me. From their gait to their clothes to their distribution along the platform, I try to glean what I can about them. Their age, their subculture, their relationship to those around them. I love the mystery of it all. But a certain and rare subgroup within this faceless parade draws me in even more.

These are the people that do not board.

For context, the Madrid Metro is a simple system where all the trains from any given platform are headed in the same direction and make the same stops. Each train is the same as the last. So why, then, do people stand and watch as the trains pass them by? Sometimes the carriage is too full and other times the train may be scheduled to stop circulating at a given station, but this doesn’t happen very often. So, given ideal conditions, why do people remain firm on the platform? Why do they not board?

I have been one of the non-boarders once, as I waited for a friend on the platform. As I waited, though, I found a bench on which to sit and occupy myself with my phone. It is those who stand with an air of disassociation and barely flinch which interest me, the ones who stand completely still, except for the slight wobble of their bodies caused by the blast of polluted air pushed through the station by the train that they have just declined to board.

Do they too await the arrival of a friend? Are they preparing themselves for the arrival of a foe? Perhaps the thought of reaching their destination fills them with dread, or perhaps they have no destination, and are rather idly traversing the underground labyrinths as refuge from the surface heat or the stresses of the world above.

It is only human to allow your eyes to sweep the train as you embark, to check out with whom you are sharing a carriage. What I find much more interesting, however, are not those who have boarded with me, but those who will not board. It is in order to look at them that I turn my head as the doors open, and it is they who fill my mind with vague questions and invented narratives as I crane my neck and the train begins to accelerate.