Nowhere

I'm sitting at some suburban train station... waiting. This is not really where the story begins but it's where we come in; when they raise the curtain you can see me on stage, sitting, minding my own business... waiting. You should notice at this point that I look sick, sick the way you'd imagine a terminal cancer patient looks sick, these details are important, it will come up again later and you'll probably need to know this for the exam so lean in and get a good look. My face has that hollowed out feel, the greasy grey stained skin which coats my skull is sucked in around my cheeks and eyes. My eyes, red rimmed, sunken by puffy olive bruised bags sit deep in my sockets sliced through with jagged veins like so much broken glass. Double points for anyone who noticed my twitching left eyelid or my shaky hands.

To put you in my shoes, which at this point in time are fluffy bunny slippers: faded pink and worn through at the soles but stuffed with cardboard and tissue paper to prolong their usefulness, this bench bolted down at this station platform which connects this suburb to the city is the kind of place people call the end of the line. That nowhere that exists between wherever you are and somewhere else, this place is a place born by accident, stinking of failure and populated by people who are either stuck or passing through.

It is a late afternoon in summer and the lazy breeze sits heavy with the odour of spray paint; a group of sullen teenagers in dirty tracksuit tops emblazoned with the stage names of dead rappers sit sullen, cross-legged in a circle on the cracked asphalt passing a shopping bag which drips with metallic blue in one direction and a wine cask bladder in the other. Between huffs of paint and swigs of wine they drag on cheap cigarettes, scratch their graffiti tags into the ground with loose stones and shoot menacing glances in the direction of anyone who looks like they're trying too hard not to notice.

I slip the hood of my heavy army surplus jacket up over my head to hide my face, close my eyes and dream of cigarettes and codeine. My head is starting to pop and fizzle... fill with static; I feel the red rubber balloon of another crippling headache inflate inside me, my brain swelling up against the inside of my skull. Beads of sweat being pushed to the surface along the ridge of my brow and my temples pulse with every heartbeat.

I feel something hot and wet spreading over my right thigh, the burning sensation growing, spreading with every tremor that ripples down my arms... distracting me. My hand! That's when I remember that I'm holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee. The lid has come loose and every twitch sends a new wave of steaming black liquid to break against the shore of my flannel pyjama clad leg. The brown stain spreading, eating up every blue and red check in its path. The pain in my leg is caught up in a feedback loop, causing my hands to shake more violently until the whole cup comes crashing to the ground in a tidal wave of black muck which washes up against the briefcase of a young executive type with whom I'm sharing this bench. He looks me over before picking up his soggy case and relocating his sharp suit and crisp white shirt to the other side of the platform. Out here people may be willing to accept that a man in flannel pyjamas and an army jacket is waiting for the 4:45pm city bound but they're rarely willing to acknowledge the existence of any such strangeness.

As the lights begin to fade and curtain comes crashing back down to the ground I'm taking my nicotine stained fingers to my mouth to rip the crud out from under my yellowed nails with my teeth. It tastes bitter and gritty and the smell of stale smoke renews my desire for cigarettes.