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CONAL MORGAN
I travel to work each morning over four different lines, railways begin and end the journey, underground in between. This story was inspired by a certain type of fellow commuter.
COMMUTER
Though John was a small man, five-foot four inches in his stocking feet, he was not a little man, he constantly reminded himself. He did feel, though, that he had been unfairly put upon at many stages in his life. First his brutal father and his nagging, subservient mother, then there had been the teachers at school with the other bullies, prefects and other assorted sadists. Still, later there had been a string of sociopath bosses. It was so unfair, it could not go on, it had to stop. Because if life was not bad enough, he was now being persecuted and there was not a thing he could do about it, or was there? He had considered making a complaint to the police but what could they do, even if they wanted to? What the man was doing to him was legal. John felt that it ought not to have been.
He was standing on the platform, under the open sky, waiting for the tube train. The pale spring sunshine streamed wanly over the screen of trees along the road, and the air was alive with the steam rising from the breaths of those around him in the crisp, cold air. He felt in his inside jacket-pocket for the fifteenth time in the last five minutes. The long hard weapon had a comforting feel to it. John was ready, retribution was at hand and he was its instrument. It may not come today, he said to himself, but some day this week he would have to face his persecutor. The man was deliberately trying to drive him over the edge, but now he would stick up for himself and strike a blow, a blow for all the small people, against all the bullies of this world who were depriving them of their rights and making their lives intolerable
It was so unfair, he did not want this confrontation, but there was nothing that he could do to avoid it. This man was a bully and, as his boss once said, bullies must be stood up to. The man must be a maniac. He must be following him. John had had a prolonged period of contentment in the last two years, that is until this obscenity had begun one day nearly three months previously.
He had got on the train as normal, found a seat and was just descending into his novel when the train had pulled into and stopped at the next station. A young man got on the train. He was dressed in a pair of denim jeans, a denim jacket and a tee-shirt. His inanely grinning face was adorned with a pair of dark glasses and surmounted by a pair of headphones. As the man took a seat next to him, he first heard what would become thereafter a part of his life, a penetrating disjointed tinny clicking noise coming from the head phones, and a tuneless humming from the man.
John had barely tolerated this for the next fourteen stops till he was, gratefully, able to get off and struggle on to work where he regained his composure. The trouble was that was just the beginning. The following day the same thing happened.
John was distraught and spent the whole of the day in a highly agitated state. The day after he caught a later train and spent the day in a serene mood. This respite, however, only lasted a week. The following Monday his nemesis was there again.
In the next three months John vainly tried most of the available options, a different carriage on the train, standing in a packed carriage, an earlier train, a later train, all to no avail. Sooner or later he would see him there again, his inane grin and all his filthy obscene noise pollution. For a while he considered cycling but it was too far. The man must be doing it deliberately. Had he been paid by some enemy to persecute him? He could of course change jobs, but work in this recession hit time was hard to come by. Could his boss be behind this? If not him, then who? How on earth could he find him with such seeming unerring accuracy? John looked along the line of people waiting. There was a furtive looking man using a mobile phone, was he acting as a spotter? How could he tell? He moved toward the man in time to catch the words, 'Yes darling I 'll remember the dry cleaning.'
He moved away again, it sounded innocent enough, but was this some form of code? What about the other man up there on the stairs? Perhaps they were working in pairs. John felt again, the cold steel comforting in his hand. Retribution was at hand.
The train came in and, as the doors slid open, he spotted an empty seat in the middle of a full row. He felt momentary panic as the train stood, would to-day be the day? Had he the courage to strike this blow for justice. He clenched the instrument in his pocket and took comfort. Would he be found out? The plan was to wait for the moment when he was ready to disembark, before striking, and then to get off and lose himself in the crowd.
As the train pulled into the next station, a young woman next to him got up, the doors opened, and there he was grinning inanely as usual. John felt a panic rising, and he desperately tried to appear as if he were immersed in his novel. The man sat down attended by his click clicking and the tuneless humming. John could feel his anger level rising. He wanted to grab hold of the man and say, why are you doing this, why don't you turn that noise down, why can't you leave me alone? Grasping the weapon in his pocket for reassurance, he gritted his teeth and desperately pretended to be indifferent.
It seemed to take an age for the train to progress on its journey. At every stop people trickled on to the train. With every stop he glanced at the map and counted the stops before he was ready to get off. Was there really ten to go? Could he survive? Would he loose his cool and give himself away? Could he really count on his fellow passengers in their peculiarly London way to see nothing and do nothing?
The stops moved along to zero hour, five stops the train was crowded. Four stops when the doors opened passengers bulged onto the platform before getting back in. Three stops, two, one. Oh God, could he really go through with it!
He had never stood up to a bully in his life. He had watched others try, only to be mercilessly beaten when those they had relied on to help had either, turned away, or stood around enjoying the spectacle.
This was it then, his station. He rapidly thrust his book into a pocket and grabbed the weapon with his other hand. The passengers in the packed aisle between the seats moved back slightly as he got up. Good! He pretended to stumble momentarily and thrust with his weapon.
Retribution.
He slipped quickly out between the human walls. His victim sat there, impassive behind his dark glasses, tapping his headphones, feeling his player in his pocket, then holding the severed wire in his hands. John could just see the lips as they mouthed, 'Oh hell.'
Then the doors closed and the train began to glide out of the station.
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