The Skin Room by Morgan Fleetwood

Author:Morgan Fleetwood [Fleetwood, Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Howarth Press
Published: 2017-06-23T22:00:00+00:00

I was just one face in the milling crowd. The station was a place of echoes, the voices crisscrossing the halls. I thought I would be harder to recognize here, tougher to find. Did they have security cameras? I tried to keep my head down.

“One adult fare to Paris, please.”

“Returning when?”

“No return.”

“Aller simple.”

Yes, my dear, one-way.

Her hands moved quickly like a butcher’s slicing meat. She punched the numbers and stripped the ticket from the machine as though pulling white skin from a carcass. In her eyes: tedium. Yes, this is what I do for a living. I punch and strip. Why are you staring?

I looked away. The hall was as noisy as a busy indoor swimming pool. A couple of Arabs in tracksuits sold drugs by the door. I was almost tempted. The pain in my side was as strong as ever, despite the tight bandages. I felt the cramps rising, pricking my ribs.

“Are you OK?” she asked, betraying more suspicion than concern.

I nodded but said nothing.

I swiped the ticket from the plastic trough beneath the perforated glass and turned toward the platforms. My train was possibly the longest I had ever seen; I kept walking past the first-class carriages waiting for a chance to hop into second. I stepped on and found a single unoccupied seat. The seat opposite was reserved from Aix to Paris. I hoped that person would fail to show up. I didn’t want to be in full view, observed, feeling ugly and nervous behind my Audrey Hepburn shades. Were the police or Carlo’s gang still on my tail? I huddled down with my head pressed against the window and looked out at the pigeons on the platform as they fluttered in bunches, nodding mechanically at crusts of baguette.

I saw a security guard on the other side of the platform; he caught my eye. I turned away from the window and looked along the corridor of the train. Kept my eyes dead ahead, afraid to look back. Had I adjusted my gaze too quickly and attracted suspicion? I shut my eyes and waited a few seconds. Turning slowly, I peeked out of the window again: the guard had moved away. I sighed and leaned back. There were rows of equidistant seats, a stained red carpet, gray folding tables; I smelled the odors of paper coffee-cups and leftover sandwiches.

I begged the train to start moving. Minutes passed and the screech eventually came; the carriages wavered and rocked together as they trundled out of the station.

Block-letter tags were sprayed on the low walls exiting the station. Even the suburbs were splurged and flowered with graffiti. Soon, the greenness swelled and zipped past, the utility poles and power lines dipping and rising in rhythmical waves. The speed was hallucinatory. I had been a passenger on a TGV before but never felt such an unceasing rush—we were sucked forwards as if through a spatial wormhole.

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