A Journey into Night

Strangers on a bus ride

There were plenty of free seats on the top deck but he did not choose to move.

The night’s chill had insinuated itself beneath his winter jacket and he huddled, hunched up against the window, head bowed, hands tucked into armpits, desperately attempting to coax blood back into his fingers. His toes scraped back and forth against the insoles of his shoes in a quest to encourage life into his extremities.

If it weren’t for the reflecting light on his wet hair he’d have appeared as a dark shadow in the deep shadow of the broken light above. He wore black as a uniform: differing shades attesting to each article’s longevity.

Add to this visual mix his black hair and heavy stubble and it was no surprise that the gaze of the girl in the faux-fur coat missed him during her visual sweep of available seating.

He glanced up.

The pallor of his countenance sent a shock through her system, eliciting an instinctive yelp of anxious surprise as she noticed him: her lipstick formed a well-practiced “Oh!” she unconsciously took one step back towards the stairwell.

Stay or go he didn’t care. His attention had already drifted: her attractive face already forgotten in a pleasurable tingling that signalled the return of his circulation.

His eyes drifted to the passenger’s refuge, a window onto darkness.

In that reflective surface, the emergence of a stocking clad leg from beneath a faux-fur coat signalled the beginning of a different kind of tingle…