At 8:43am the train pulled up into the station and I got on. Carriage D. Seat 63. That was me. The small bag nestled under my arm, the only thing I had with me, was full of papers and notes and was just small enough, thankfully, that I could put it anywhere so I set it down on to the vacant seat beside me and kind’a forgot about it.
After that, I closed my eyes.
I wanted to sleep, badly.
But I couldn’t.
At all.
The head was humming so it was. My head. Full of noise and problems. Issues and agencies. So I opened my eyes and with nothing else to do so early in the morning, I stared at the sleeping woman across from me at the same table. This strange sleeping woman in seat 61.
She was a little younger than me this woman. Probably a student, I thought. And definitely more beautiful. From where I was sitting, because she had her head tilted so far back against the headrest, I could actually see right up underneath her flickering eyelids – right into her eyeballs. Here she was now, in a large grey hoodie, twitching like a mad thing, curling up her fingers and biting her lip.
Probably dreaming of something, I thought to myself.
Or better yet, was she having a nightmare?
In the end, I found myself to be looking at this stranger so intently, for so long, that I didn’t even feel the event of the train pulling out of the station. That initial jolt, where you are thrown ever so slightly back into your seat, a thing I do enjoy so much, had escaped me entirely.
We were moving through the countryside now, at a decent oul tilt, scaling over thirteen miles of track and guess what – I hardly felt a thing. Then I thought:
“What if this girl here, what if she’s a student of ‘sleep’ or something mad like that. Can you imagine? And the way she’s plonked there in the chair like that, that’s actually her studying. Going over notes. All because she has a module starting at twelve noon today and she’ll need a much better grade than last time if she wants to pass. This lady ain’t sleeping.” I thought to myself.
“She is working hard.”
Away from sleeping beauty, my eyes were drawn then across and over to a man who was sitting at my diagonal. This guy, I reckon, was about fifty or so. Real good looking, and foreign too, if his skin was anything to go by. He wore a light blue t-shirt and had thick dark locks draping down to his shoulders, just like Bob Geldof had when he started all those concerts in the eighties – only without the leather. Anyhow, as soon as I see this guy, straight away I can tell that, for a long time, he has loved one thing and one thing only –
“Watching other people screw.”
“He’s going into the city this guy.” I thought. “Yes he is. He’s going in now to watch people, strangers, couples and midgets go at it and he’ll do that for the whole entire day. And he’ll stay there so he will, watching them for as long as it takes, until he himself is all sweaty and used up.
Just like the women.”
Right then I felt my seat start to rumble a little beneath me. We were slowing down. And a’course a few seconds later, just as I suspected, we pulled up into the next dreary station.
It was an odd looking place, covered in moss.
And like an excited child, with my face pressed against the glass, I ran my two eyes up and down the length of the platform, hoping to see something nice, or even interesting.
“Here we are now.” I thought, breathing against the window. “Momentarily stuck in the middle of frickin nowhere and still miles away from where we all want to go.”
The big shock came when I looked back into the carriage and found that my voyeuristic man-friend was nowhere to be seen. Just like that – poof – he seemed to disappear into all the air that was thin. Him and all his belongings.
I’d have to ask myself a few questions now, filling out the next couple of minutes with a series of ‘what ifs’.
WHAT IF, in the end, the police had managed to figure out the intricacies of his sick little mission? Did they, four detectives and a sergeant, drive all the way out here to this station just to make an arrest? When I wasn’t looking, did they pull him off the train and stuff him into the back of their squad car? Then I thought,
“Or maybe a farmer got the fucker. Yeah. Someone like The Bull McCabe or my oul fella. That kind’a tyrant. Who’s angry all the time and because of that, because he’s angry all the time, all he wants to do is Kill, Kill, Kill.”
After that, I checked the girl across from me again – the student.
Still fast asleep.
Snoring now in fact, like a little piglet.
Funny how, even after all this time of travelling, I can still clearly see up underneath her two fidgeting cleopatra’d eyelids.
“Bless her.” I thought. “She hasn’t a bloody clue what’s going on around her does she?”
At 9am on the dot, we pulled out of the station and still, much to my dismay and confusion, there was no sign of your man.
“What if I’m being a little overdramatic about this man’s life.” I thought. “I don’t know him from Adam. The man, he could very well be a loving father of two beautiful children and a sound faithful husband to a stunning wife. Maybe that’s where he’s gone now. Off this train and home to them. He just might not be into all that kinky stuff after all. And here’s me blowing the whole thing sideways and out of proportion. BUT. . .
And let’s not kid ourselves.
There’s badness in us all, and that you can believe. Every single one of us. Whether you like it or not. For that man there, instead of going into the city today, maybe he just wanted to be in his own home. At least there, when he’s balls deep in coitus, he can be picturing the missus getting it off with other people, much BIGGER and more beautiful men. Dirty fecker.
That’s exactly why he left in such a haste I’d say, I bet you any money, coz he needs to go and drum up a few more new heads for himself, and for her. Men he’d only love to see take control of the situation.
And it can’t be any of his friends from the office – not a chance. Coz those goons, they got their shot last week.”
AT 9:30am, I take out a pen and a piece of clean paper and, using the small bit of table that’s in front of me, I begin – at last – the gruelling work on my Official Letter Of Resignation, where I’ll tell those dirty heathens straight out that “It simply wasn’t working anymore.”
IF ONLY this young woman across from me was awake. Knowing me, I probably would have told her all about it.
But she’s. . . .
