No Middle Name

He is short. His suit is too big, he looks like a child dressing up as Daddy. Okay, so it would be a sinister, wiry child who looks as if he could force your nose out through your ear with one punch from his gold sovereign decorated knuckles, but you get the idea. Parted in the middle, his dark, wavy, bobbed hair gleams as it undulates to his shoulders. He used to be an enforcer for the local Mafia, a job at which he excelled. Due to his small size he was often dismissed as an opponent before a fight. Few made this mistake twice. A midlife crisis made him re-evaluate his situation and he returned to school to pursue his first love, accountancy. [also posted to Ficlets ]

The 7:45 is on the platform already. Suits are bleating their way on board as she walks briskly towards the last carriage. She's bent over to one side slightly, her bag is weighing her down. Her heels clack-clack, her flowery print dress ripples and sways in her wake, her sensible overcoat and cardigan keep her warm. She finds a seat, near the aisle, not too far away from either set of exits. Her bag clanks a little as she sets it down between her feet. It's the hunting knives. Normally they'd be strapped to the inside of her coat, but she's running late and barely had time to put the sawn-off in the sleeve holster before leaving the house. The knives, the Glock, and the piano wire she scooped off the dining room table into the carpet bag. Most unprofessional, she thinks, but there's plenty of time to sort it out at the other end before starting work. She also decides to have a muffin and a coffee after the job is done. She gets off at South Yarra. [Also posted to F...

A later train than usual. Mostly full, but I see several empty seats clustered together. I sit down next to a skinny man, who is wearing denims and is hunched over the freebie newspaper. There are a couple of other empty seats near us, but people are standing. The man's jeans are dirty enough to have become shiny in parts. The skin on his hands and neck is papery, blotchy, abraded in strange places. His hair is cut very short and is either naturally a faded ginger colour, or the man smokes a lot and has white hair. We sit next to each other for a few more stops. Nobody sits in the seats opposite. He carefully folds his newspaper, then puts it in his holdall before getting off at his stop. He leaves behind a slightly sickly, persistent smell and a fly which will not leave me alone.

Across the aisle from me, is a woman with the flawless complexion of a terracotta warrior. Same burnt orange colour, same featureless, uniform texture. She looks plastered, rather than made-up. To relieve the monotony of hue, her lips are picked out in a subtle shade of neon pink. Her dyed hair is a strange purply-red colour, a little too short for the artful piling she has attempted, varnished with a stupendous amount of hairspray and buttressed with an assortment of hair grips the size of girders. For good measure, a large, green, silk orchid is glued to one side of her head. Her black uniform bulges in all the wrong places, and she stares vacantly into space. On her shirt is the name of her workplace, a beauty salon. You too could look like her, it says.

Imagine a balloon squeezed at one end, the other end swelling and - well, ballooning. Paint a face on it and you'd have a first approximation of the guy that sat opposite me on the train the other day. He looked as if his tie was too tight. His eyes seemed to bulge, showing too much white. His face was almost purple. If he'd been frowning you would be concerned about how much fibre he was getting. Smiling beatifically, he stared at a point about two feet above my head and a foot to my right for the whole journey. It may be that his over-starched collar had forced his head into this position and he couldn't move any more. I surmised that he must be on his way to see a doctor, or perhaps a tailor.

The most beautiful woman in the world sat opposite me on the train the other morning. Eyes like polished emeralds watched the suburbs slide past. Succulent lips pouted above a delicate chin, cradled on long, elegant fingers. Her shoulder-length, blonde hair was restrained in some complicated folding arrangement the secrets of which are known only to women. The most beautiful woman in the world dozed off not long after I got on. Her head would slowly fall forwards, jerking herself awake in a glamorous, heartwrenchingly sexy way, followed by mopping up the drool from the corner of her mouth. The most beautiful woman in the world woke up a few stops from the end of the line. She ran an unpainted fingernail around the inside of her right ear, delving into the folds. The most beautiful woman in the world wiped whatever she'd excavated on the lapel of her fashionable jacket before yawning and returning to her quiet contemplation of the world. The most beautiful woman in the world lurched...