Flash story (2)

(Photo by mark jones from FreeImages)

I promised you a new story every Friday throughout November while I take part in #FlashNano. The challenge is going well and I've managed to come up with something each day. I think the strangest prompt was to write a story with ten sentences and each sentence had ten words! Having being taught that writing needs a combination of short and long sentences, this proved a little tricky. I tackled it like a poem and gave each sentence a line of its own, and I also split it into stanzas of five lines each. So, it reads more like a poem. I've yet to put the piece together as a whole.

I thought I'd give you something a little lighter this time. The prompt was a story that takes place entirely on a commute to work. Enjoy, and please free to leave a comment.

Fixing the nightmare

He sits down with a grunt, his arse pushing against my side. The morning commute is bad enough without him taking a quarter of my seat. I turn to the window, watching houses fly by as the train hurtles towards the city. Gardens boast bare trees as the sun creeps sleepily over roof tops. I yawn. The big arsed man pulls out his newspaper, turning it to the puzzle page, hovering over the Sudoku puzzle. He puts the number 7 on the top row in the last grid to right. It isn’t right. It should be in the next row down, middle box. Keeping his thumb on the top of his ballpoint pen, he clicks it in and out at odds with the rhythm of the train. This grates against my OCD. He stops now, poised over another box before entering number 5. Well, at least that one is right. But he is going to come a cropper soon. A smile forms on my lips and I turn away to look at the luggage rack. No one ever uses them. People would rather pile their rucksacks and holdalls on the seats or block the aisles with them. I try to count how many women there are in the seats ahead of me, but that doesn’t work because I can only see the heads of some people.

A grunt from the man next to me draws my attention back to the puzzle. How is he doing? Oh, no, he’s got two 3’s in the middle grid. I open my mouth and promptly shut it again. This is his funeral. Doesn’t he know you should never write in pen? Makes a complete mess when you come to cross things out. And there he goes. He’s realised that 7 is in the wrong place, but he seems unsure where to put it. I think of telling him. Instead, I shift slightly. My shifting makes no difference as his flesh just fills in the space.

The train stops, and the already filling train pumps on more passengers. There is nowhere for them to go, so they hang on to anything there is to hold on to while listening to music on their mobiles or reading books. By the next station, they’ll have trouble even doing that. Scratching noises bring my eyes back to the Sudoku puzzle. Yes, he’s found the two 3’s in the same grid. I glance up at him. Bushy eyebrows move with the concentrated effort of this morning’s brain teaser. He is younger than I first thought, a bit of stubble (intentional?) and he is sweating in his puffer jacket. Someone should open a window. If I wasn’t pinned down, I’d do it myself, but if I move, his arse will take even more of my seat. I shouldn’t have chosen this airline seat. The forward and back type would have been better.

I turn to the window again and wish I’d remembered my book. I always take one with me, but in my rush this morning I had left it on the hall table. Very unlike me. As the train draws into Clapham Junction, the newspaper is lying on big arse man’s lap, the whole puzzle crossed through. I feel a tough of grief. Suddenly he leaps up, grabs the newspaper and pushes his way through the passengers like a bowling ball towards the doors. He is almost flattened as a crowd tries to enter before he has got off. People have no manners. Let the poor sod off, I think. He’s just been defeated by a Sudoku puzzle. Have a heart.

A lady sits down next to me. Her perfume makes me sneeze. She wears a camel wool coat and a neat black suit underneath. She fiddles with a large bag, eventually drawing out a newspaper with a half completed Sudoku puzzle. At least it’s in pencil. I lean slightly her way and she moves the paper as if she knows what I am doing. Even so, a glance tells me there’s a potential nightmare waiting in line three.

The train stalls outside Waterloo station while we wait for a platform to be freed up. The woman’s phone rings and she drops her newspaper as she answers it. I lean forward to retrieve it for her and eye up the combination of numbers in their boxes. She has tried to fix the nightmare only to cause another. I place the newspaper on her lap. She smiles distractedly at me while I itch to sort out her mess.

As we pull into Waterloo, bodies heave towards the doors. Bags are grabbed, laptops packed away. The lady next to me stands. She places the newspaper on her seat and edges out into the aisle. I grab the paper and stuff it into my bag. I can’t stand half completed puzzles. They are like lost children wearing someone else’s clothes. Don’t you worry, I tell the Sudoku, I can fix you.