It was a blisteringly torrid summer afternoon, and the train was empty save for a well dressed businessman reading a newspaper, who sought refuge from the heat inside the marginally cooler carriage.
The businessman glanced up from his newspaper when two strangers entered his compartment. Up until now he had been alone, and so he paid careful, close attention to the pair of newcomers. The larger of the two, a rather revolting woman wearing cheap, tawdry clothes swept across the carriage and dramatically seated herself in the far corner. She had a face that deserved to be punched, and her clothes evoked a parrot with livor mortis. The best words to describe a grotesque character such as herself would undoubtedly be meretricious. This means “attracting attention in a vulgar manner” and indeed she did.
In the woman’s wake trailed a listless, ruminative child. He wore a pair of derelict spectacles, and a warm jacket which was rather unsuited to the weather. His dark hair was twisted and tangled like the plot of an unstructured mystery novel.
The boy sprawled next to the woman, perhaps a mother or aunt of sorts, and stared distantly into a world of brave knights, sly dragons, and wicked trolls. The woman took out her smartphone and started jabbing at the screen with a pointed, inelegant finger.
After observing the two for a while, the businessman returned to his newspaper, and a tense, awkward silence filled the compartment, occasionally broken by the rustling noise of a page turn, or the quiet muttering from the woman as she tried to use her phone.
Then, rather unexpectedly, the boy remarked dreamily, “Imagine if we were dinosaurs, and we were going to a museum to look at human fossils.” The woman twisted her mouth into a grim line and continued stabbing and pecking at her mobile phone. The businessman pondered the boy’s notion, turning it over in his head. It was quite a creative idea, and he held creativity in high regard.
The boy’s guardian was apparently in disagreement over this, because she replied derisively; “Well, isn’t your little head just filled with the most offensive ideas?”
The young child continued resolutely. “How do we know this isn’t a dream? Maybe my whole life is a dream, and you’re just part of my imagination.”
“Don’t be fatuous,” snapped the crone, snidely.
The boy was not discouraged. “And what if—”
“Have you ever heard,” said the woman forcefully, “of the story of Walter Mitty? He spends too much time daydreaming and in the end gets into a lot of trouble.”
A brief lull followed.
“Sometimes I imagine that we are actually part of a board game and are being moved about by giant aliens,” hypothesised the boy.
“Well don’t,” parried the woman. “There are far more important things for you to be thinking about, such as not bothering me.”
Neither the child nor businessman felt the need to point out this obviously flawed logic.
“I wonder if somewhere out there there’s a planet made all out of gold.”
“I wonder if you’ll ever stop talking about nonsense!”
This harsh retort was enough to sting the boy into a temporary sullen silence.
“If I concentrate hard enough maybe I can make you disappear,” the child eventually muttered. The woman looked up and stared him down. The businessman found himself rooting for the child. The woman opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“You might not even exist,” the boy added.
This latest revelation was met with a terse silence.
“I’m going to the latrine,” announced the woman. “Don’t you dare get into any trouble while I’m gone or there’ll be trouble,” she warned contradictorily as she heaved her bulk off the seat and strode out of the compartment.
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When she got back the boy was no longer there.
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She stared at the place where he had been sitting. Her mouth dropped open. “…What? WHAT?” The woman turned accusingly to the seemingly innocuous businessman, who had his nose buried in his newspaper. “Where did he go?” she barked at him.
The businessman blithely turned the page of his newspaper.
Her face as bright purple as a Roman emperor’s toga, the woman tore the page out of his hand and glowered at him. “Where,” she repeated insistently, “did he go?”
He answered her as he picked the torn page up from the floor and carefully inserted it back into the newspaper. “Hopefully some place where he can express his creativity and be free of your oppression.”
The woman glared at him.
The businessman looked up and regarded her evenly. “Or,” he pondered, “Perhaps he never even existed, and was simply a figment of your imagination.”
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And with that the businessman got up and left the train carriage, leaving behind only his newspaper and an outraged and flustered peacock.
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