train observations

Pyllyp was uneasy. The train was moving backwards and he was facing forwards; this fact, coupled with the sound of an old rusty saw blade hacking through a massive oak tree somewhere outside, caused Pyllyp to suffer a mild aneurism. It felt like a headache to Pyllyp but in reality he’d be dead before the day was out.

* * *

A little boy threw a peanut at the window. It bounced off the glass and landed on Elmyr’s lap. Elmyr was asleep. The peanut stayed on his lap for the remainder of the journey.

* * *

Tomas’ pocket watch announced silently that the time was 4:45 in the p.m. The watch was running slow. Tomas was not aware of this fact. Tomas would, subsequently, miss his connecting bus later that night. Whilst waiting in the bus station he would fall in love with a woman’s voice, a voice like frail honey, and spend the night trying to track down the owner of the voice, only to find that the tannoy announcement was a week-old recording and the woman had died of cancer two days before.

* * *

Someone coughed in the next carriage.

* * *

The ticket collector didn’t collect one ticket.

* * *

Coral wished he hadn’t bothered wasting money on a ticket. His shoes were too small. He undid the laces and yanked the shoes off, placing them in the luggage compartment above his head. One sock was yellow and one blue. Neither had holes but one was stained blood-red where he’d stubbed his toe on the table leg the previous morning.

* * *

A man fell off the train. The train continued on without him. Nobody noticed. He probably died.

* * *

Joan was talking to her mother on the telephone. Three weeks later Joan’s mother won the lottery and disappeared from her daughter’s life forever.

* * *

At some point the sunlight disappeared. It was effortlessly replaced by darkness.

* * *

A woman shone a torch on a newspaper.

* * *

Where was the ticket collector?

* * *

Pyllyp died in his seat (facing the wrong way) without so much as a murmur. Nobody noticed.

* * *

A child ate a peanut whilst watching the lights flash by the window.

* * *

etc etc