He was just an amateur writer, but he was always on the lookout for a story.
He’d been sitting in the carriage hardly noticing his fellow passengers for some time. It was a long journey and through boredom he began looking around at the others. The carriage was full. From his window seat he could see them all quite well.
He noticed for the first time that the man opposite had the word ‘Vacant’ tattooed on his large forehead. He looked slowly along the seats at the other four. The next was an elderly lady with a bone through her nose. Next, a man in a suit with a parrot on his shoulder. Then came a young man in white tennis clothes holding a wet fish across his knees. At the end a man sat staring into half a coconut.
The boy next to him was trying hard to hide the fact that he had a tail. Further along sat a man holding a briefcase and wearing muddy wellington boots. He could see the woman beside him had snails in her hair, and by leaning forward a little could just see a girl wearing goggles and holding a snorkel.
He stared out of the window, wondering.
Surely, there had to be a story here somewhere…