[easyrazors]

I wrote this last summer, but my short attention span made me end it stupidly and suddenly.In two parts as it exceeds 10,000 characters. Might finish it one day...

NOWHERE GIRL a short story about meaningful nothingness.
Hugo sits on a train in an empty carriage. He’s old, or at least feels old – maybe late thirties early forties, difficult to tell, but he carries his experiences in the lines in his face and the manner in which he slouches in the dusty seventies fabric on the seats He knows he feels old because his body sinks lower into the soft cushions – there is a small feeling of relief from the constant aches and tiredness that come with being old. Aches not enough to hurt, but enough to be aware of, if they are really there at all. As a young man, he remembered, you were not even aware of your body, it just floated above seats, above the floor, never seeming to make contact or at least never feeling the pressure of being still. The velcro of age not yet fastening one to wherever it needed to rest.The small sign shows a picture of feet on a seat with a cross through it. He slings his feet onto the seats opposite, making a mental note of the justification that he’d use in the unlikely event of his being challenged. Travelling by train had always seemed romantic. Romance has many faces, though. He remembers the times when, as a young teenager, he would buy used porn from the second hand market in the city, and, having checked the adjacent carriages were empty, masturbate for the half hour journey home, before disposing of the glossy, sticky fantasy. Seats, windows and floors soiled, contaminated, but the contamination was pure, fresh, clean. Sociopathic, some may have called it, but he knew it meant no harm. Anyway, romantic is not what you’d call it, but it did have a strange kind of romance. Loneliness and solitude had always felt romantic. A life set to song lyrics and rain pouring down windows, the smell of industry and of the detritus of a thousand lonlier souls who inhabited the grey city. The man in the small booth selling clingfilm-wrapped sausage sandwiches to go with the newspapers that nobody ever bought, his shoulder length seventies hairstyle and yellowed moustache from smoking too many cigarettes suggesting a long life of hard work, but how hard can selling home made sandwiches be? As hard as you let it be, I guess. The sandwich bar, yet it was not even a bar, just a hole in the wall, was just upstairs from The Sunset Cinema Club. Hugo imagined the sticky seats in the darkness, stains illuminated by the flickering lamp of the projector. His defilement of public property was so much more noble, he thought, not seedy at all. How could it be seedy or dirty if it was him – he knew he was clean and pure of heart, in all the ways that counted, anyway. He looked out of the window at the familiar scenes of urban decay. On the back of one brick built terrace perpendicular to the railway, someone had painted in bright blue letters the words “WHY BOTHER?”. It had been there for years, and was a useful landmark when timing the journey. Today, he noticed, that someone from the adjacent dwelling had painted, in large orange letters, “WHY NOT?”. He had to laugh. Raindrops raced to the bottom of the glass, meaningless sperm racing toward a non-existant egg. “Romance”, it seemed, was everywhere.
Hugo awoke with a start. The raindrops must have hypnotised him. Opening first his left eye, he spotted a pair of purple patent leather Dr Marten boots on the seat, next to him, but not quite touching. “Don’t you know there’s a rule about feet on seats?, he asked without even turning to identify the culprit. “Oh yes. I’m a staunch believer in rules. I make a habit of breaking every rule I come across. If it weren’t for people like me, who break the rules, who would bother to make them? We who break the rules are as important as those who make them, wouldn’t you say? More important, even. The world needs order, and I am here to ensure that there are people who think it’s important enough to stop people like me from keeping them in employment.” Hugo nodded. He couldn’t fault the logic, and it was a much better reason than the justification that he’d always thought he would use if ever challenged for committing such a breach of the law. Turning his head to regard his new companion, he saw a girl of about nineteen, dressed as a girl of nineteen would have guessed a girl of nineteen would have dressed when he himself was about nineteen. Probably not fashionable these days, and far from individualistic. Derivative, even, but then what isn’t. Her hair had been dyed back or dark brown, he could see the blonde roots where it had grown out. Hugo could never understand why a girl who had been blessed with blonde hair would dye it black, but superficially, he liked the look of her. First impression, anyway. First impressions tend to count.
Hugo glanced around the carriage, and noticed that they were the only two in there.
“I collect the soundtracks to peoples’ lives”, she said. “Oh, don’t you have your own?”. “Nah, I’m transient. Other people lead such interesting lives in their memories, even if the reality is rather mundane. I’d rather suck some of the goodness from those memories, and pick and choose what I’d like to keep”. “So you’re after some kind of top five songs or something?”. “You’re so twentieth century”, she replied. “Not a top five. Not a top one. Just keep it real. Or make it false. People always make it false, they choose tunes that they think will be interesting to the person they’re talking to. Same with films. Waste of time, though. You can spot reality easier than a dogshit on an icecream cone. Tell you what… start with one song, that way I can judge if you’re really being honest or just shitting me. Give me a taster. Really, it’s not important, like your life depends on it. I might know it. I might not know it, and forget it as soon as this journey is over, or I might not know it and get to know it.” “I’m Hugo, by the way, in case you were wondering.” “Hugo? That’s a bit of a pretentious name, isn’t it? “Yeah, I hate it. Might as well have been called Twat. At school they teased me, called me Huge-O, which upset me for a little while, maybe because I was so skinny and weak, but in the end I didn’t really care. It’s just a name. You can’t live your life feeling defined by what your parents decided to call you in their infinite wisdom. I feel sorry for the kid at school calld Mucous, though, heheh. What’s your name?”. “Hmm. Whatever you want it to be”. “Sounds like something a whore would say”. “Well you were the one who said we shouldn’t be defined by our names, so call me however you think I should be called. Whatever suits, I really don’t care”.
“Anyway, why, in an empty carriage, did you decide to sit with me?”. “Well, you looked the most interesting person in here”. “But I was the only person in here”. “So, I’m not wrong then, am I?”

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