I wish it was fiction

The man behind me on the train is chewing gum, and making the most godawful noises. I didn't know it was possible to breathe out of your nose that loudly. His mouth is open - I can hear the spit swirling around his tongue. Why do people find a piece of artificially flavoured resin so appealing? It's one of those things I just don't get.

He's an older man, but as slack-jawed as the shrill valleygirl teens from a bad '90s movie. It's like being at a meal with someone who slurps their soup - not just as a one-off, accidental thing either. I'm talking noisome, concentrated, and continual. Slurp, slurp, sluuuuuurp, spoon clicking against their teeth like the gum clacking in that old man's mouth. It's almost as if he swallowed a drunk and disorderly metronome, and it got stuck in his gullet.

Gullet. Birds have those. Now I'm imagining him with the vacant gaze of a seagull at the beach. To be fair, nearly everyone subjecting themselves to public transport looks like that. I think it's a defense mechanism, especially if you didn't bring something to read. I check my translucent reflection in the window. My hair's gone fuzzy from the rain, but I don't look brain-dead. I'm too bemused my the sounds of gum and spit swishing about between the man's teeth and tongue.


Written on the train, unedited apart from words I scribbled out and re-did. Preparation for JulNoWriMo; I haven't written prose since my Creative Writing course last year!