One Way.

One Way

Tom more hid than sat, on the back of the train, avoiding eye contact with any passengers that came walking down the aisle. He looked at his watch. It was a Russian watch, a pancake, so called as it was completely flat. Then Tom put his hand inside his jacket and felt the old Russian notes. Funny he thought to himself, when they find my body, they’ll think that i was a Russian, just like they did when my brother died.

In a large carpeted room, behind an heavy oak desk, Toms brother paced up and down getting more and more agitated,
“That fool, he’s an idiot, a boob”
“What on earth does he think he’s playing at”

With a thick head of black grizzly hair matched by a full beard, and dark bristles sprouting out his nostrils, Toms brother looked like some sort of later day prophet, or an angry bear, behind closed doors his colleagues in false bravado would call him, Moses. To his face they only ever called him Instigator.

The other occupants of the room, whose sombre misdemeanour and squalid features made them appear as mere shadows blotted out by the rather powerful and ripe sun, that was Toms brother, tried to calm him down.

“Now now Instigator, there’s no need to be getting upset”

Big mistake. The instigators fist crashed into the desk with a fury, which made the coffee cups jump clinking off of their plates to spill their contents all over the place.

“Wrong, now is exactly the time to be getting upset”

Tom felt thank full that none of the other passengers on the train knew what he was going to do.
You’d think they’d be able to work it out somehow, but they can’t. There’s no signs.

“Any unchecked tickets please”
Tom who already had his orange striped ticket in his hand held it up for the ticket inspector
Tom didn’t say anything; neither did the girl sat next to him
“Thank you” said the inspector, before moving up the carriage.
See it’s as if I’m a regular passenger and everything’s perfectly normal.

“Don’t do it!”
Tom nearly dropped his ticket in shock,
“What did you say?” he asked the girl,
“Do you mind?” replied the girl hauntingly, “I’m trying to have a conversation”

Tom realised with relief the girl was on one of those hands free phones and hadn’t been talking to him at all.

“I didn’t do what i did all those years ago for my half-wit brother to try and copy me and throw all our hard work away”

The instigator began drawing furiously with a piece of white chalk on a black board.
It was a picture the occupants of the room had seen before, the earth, floating amidst the stars, with the sun, the moon, and all three were represented half black half white, just like ying yang signs. Then the instigator rubbed them all out, and fell to the floor with his head in his hands and cried, moaning strange ethereal wails like a wounded beast, or a mother who has just lost a son.

The train had reached the coast. Final stop. This was exactly where Tom thought he was heading.

“don’t need money, don’t need food, don’t need anything, can do what i want, rape, pillage, steal, shout, sing, It’s all over, fuck it all, it’s easier to do nothing and just die.”

Staring out the train window Tom didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but he felt alright as he watched the coast get further and further away.