The Iron Monster

Frost clings to the iron monster. I wait.

Every morning is the same, every morning I am waiting.

Then the people are boarding.

Colourful old ladies and tracksuit-clad mothers. The familiar suited corporate slaves, barking down silver mobiles, clasping espressos and lattes. Bespectacled students in chequered shirts, clutching streamlined laptops.

And then I see him.

The fat man.

He sits perched on the plastic seat at the end of the carriage. The same seat. He pulls gently on his ebony moustache, occasionally repositioning the hat on his shocking white hair.

The train lurches and we’re off.

The station slips away swiftly, faster than the rising sun. The sky is clad in grey today, a woolly, damp grey. Several minutes wander by before I notice he is closer.

The fat man has moved closer.

As I attempt to interpret this uncharacteristic manoeuvre, his eyes suddenly flash up and I flinch.

I am staring into the fat man’s grey eyes, the grey of the sky’s jacket.

Mortified, I stare at the dirty floor, almost wholly covered by shoes.

Brown brogues. Black heels. White trainers.

I instinctively grab the delicately folded newspaper on the seat next to me, opening it roughly between my face and the rest of the carriage.

After several moments the words slither out and slap me across the face.

Unemployment reaches all-time high.

I close it hurriedly, nausea leeching through me like an unwelcome breeze. Then I take in the front page.

A psycho-analysis of the homeless: what drives their will to live?

Below the caption is a bloated cartoon of a bearded man dressed in newspapers, feeding pigeons. The nausea seizes my mind between its teeth and I am vaguely aware of the newspaper falling from my unresponsive fingers.

And then, realisation. The fat man is standing right in front of me, one fat hand clamped round the roof bar.

I turn my body away from him, staring out the grubby window at the waning city, held in a suffocating duvet of white.

Suddenly the man clears his throat and leans towards me.

‘I’m sorry,’ his voice is higher than I had guessed, his face too cheerful, ‘I see you on this train every morning, but never see the stop you get off at.’ He waits expectantly. I feel the train slowing slightly.

I say nothing, panic kindling inside me, so he continues.

‘So it’s not London Bridge then? Well, I work at the bank you see,’ gesturing pretentiously at his fitted grey suit. That’s when I realise where’s he’s going with this, my heart races, eyes darting round the carriage for some means of escape.

Then he asks it,

‘What is it that you do?’

A sickly light flashes behind my eyes, the floor swaying as I stumble to my feet, train slowing further. The man steps back, alarmed, fat face reddening.

The train stops.

I mouth profuse thanks in the general direction of the sky as I shove past him, falling towards the door, and punching the open button. A blast of icy air attacks my face and I scurry into the cold, glancing behind me.

The fat man stares, head slightly cocked. His mouth is opening-

The door slides closed slicing his words into fragments, quickly cradled by the wind and carried far away. I watch his face crease in surprise and then I hurry into the station. The iron beast rolls away.

Words chase each other around my mind, the words of the fat man.

Soon I find myself floating through a shop. My feet stop at a stand, eyes glued in alarm at the rack of newspapers.

Line after line of them.

I stare, desperate to rip my gaze away, but my eyes seem frozen, locked on the cartoon on the front page. Repeated dozens of times over.

The cartoon of the newspaper-clad man.

The man with the beard, feeding the pigeons.

By Bethan-Ann Scott ©