ISSN 1758-6488
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Slash Fiction |
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Thinking of it later, the strange thing was he didn’t run. He understood that he wasn’t a hero, had accepted this, but thought he’d at least have the courage to run away.
“You,” says the man. “You didnae see nuthin. Whit did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Naw, fuck. That’s whit you didnae see.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Aye, that’s right.”
The man in the suit walks towards the escalator, seems to think better of it, turns and comes back. The lobes of his ears are large. He reaches back into his pocket.
“You’ve got good grammar,” the man says. “Good grammar is dead important.” He takes out his phone and punches at the keys, squinting. He doesn’t speak again till he’s finished texting and then only to say “Goodnight” and nod and step into the darkness.
The boy isn’t writhing anymore but his eyes are open and he is emitting odd snuffling noises. His long hair drabbles as a weeping willow in the bright blood pools.
The train is due in seven minutes, so the board claims. It will be late.
He waits two of those minutes and runs up the escalator. Only one employee at the desk this late and she hides her cigarette quickly under the counter and stubs it out.
“There’s a man been stabbed on the platform,” he says. “You need to call 999.”
“How’d you mean?”
“This guy in a suit took a razor to him. Gave him a right going over.”
“That’s no being stabbed,” she says. “That’s being slashed.”
“Can you call?”
“Whit would ah say? How do ah know yir no jist winding us up?”
“Listen. There’s somebody lying on the platform down there, a human person, an emergency this is. This fella needs an ambulance.”
“There’s a phone ower there, you need tae make yir call.” She points. “See it?”
He can’t find change beyond pennies in his pockets and then there’s a nickel, her coin, mixed in with the rest, which is not good.
A roar of phone static in his ear, loudspeaker’s crackle-mumble unintelligible overhead, he is all so helpless and it isn’t fair.
Her face was so, so pretty. Once upon a time such a sad look she gave him from the window of a taxi taking her away from him forever.
Whatever she’d whispered into the glass, he knew it had been important now.
