Milk Train. (Flash Fiction).

Stinging ice-tipped rain sluices down the squeezed cans and broken snack packets tumbling over in jets of coal-black sludge along the station platform. He comes a-swaggering, shoes sneaking, hips a-sway with leather creaking. Bantam cock, hair coaxed and gel-spiked to threats of bristle. Between the shadows of benches and rain-dark puddles, gleaming street-wise and dripping. Buzzing with night and molten speed.
Sees her through wolf eyes. A mouse with limp locks hanging, runnels of mascara streaking white pale faced, ready for running, whiskers aquiver, lost in the predatorily night. One shoe leaking, another with a soul hanging out, inside out umbrella dripping.
‘From the valleys, is it? Missed the train. Next one is the milk train.’
She looks across the singing lines of the rails and says, ‘go away. I know where I’m going.’
Swiftly sidling, sizzling with snake venom. ‘Show you around, sister, I know places nice and cosy…all for a kiss?’
‘Mine come dear,’ she says, ‘leave me be. Herd your own sheep.’
Takes one step back, listens to the voice low and husky.
‘Something to wire the blood?’ he says, wondering if an innocent knows the speak.
‘On mountain top lightening buzzes – thunder rumbles, things wake from sleeping.’
He grabs her hand and runs lightly, there’s a den in the subway, he needs another hit.
‘Want some?’ he asks.

Speeding through the night, the simile is not lost on her heightened senses. Home again, the shifting of space falls back into place. Laughing at the rain and the night. Passes Dai, the postman, ‘fancy a bite to eat?’ he asks as always and thrills at the sound of her voice, the gaze of coal-black eyes. ‘No thanks, caught the milk train, didn’t I?’

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