Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

63

For twenty minutes we ride like this. My friend fast asleep on my arm. Not snoring, not drooling—thank God—just quietly sleeping.

By now, mostly people are leaving the train at the various stations, but occasionally we pick up riders headed further down the line.

One, a scruffy-looking thirty-something, who has an air that doesn’t suit his scruffiness, ends up standing directly in front of us though there are plenty of empty seats nearby. After a minute or two—

maybe the time he needed to consider the awkwardness of my situation—he asks whether I’d like him to wake the youngster.

To my surprise, I say “No, I don’t think so. He seems to be exhausted. But I’m getting off in three stops. Perhaps then you could take my place.”

First published in Apocrypha and Abstractions March 31, 2014.