Issue #93

Foxed

by B. B. Fitton

The train stopped three stations earlier than I'd expected. This is the terminus. All passengers must leave the train. Wait for a connection to reach your destination. I'd thought getting to NotcIiff required no connection. I shut my book and limped onto the platform. I'd twisted my ankle more badly than I thought.

The station was dank, airless; a livid platform bisected by a slate-blue brick building. Electronic countdown boards hung in the non-air on either side.

A red bench faced the rails, already occupied by a person. I say he was a person, but he was specifically a man dressed in a navy-blue uniform. A navy-blue coat with a synthetic fur-rimmed hood was wrapped around his midriff. He beamed as I sat down, as if he were a moon. But he wasn't a moon. He was a tubby, middle-aged man with a round face framed by dark grey hair.

"I'm the stationmaster," he said.

His coat was grubby. His uniform bore no insignia. I imagined he must be a railway-worker of rather lesser rank.

"I'm not familiar with the transport system," I said. "I just moved to this city."

"Why are you telling me this?" he said. "I did not ask for your life story."

"This station feels like a stagnant void," I said. "A place for faceless, transient souls."

"I did not ask for your opinion either," he replied. "If you don't mind me saying, talking to strangers like that is, at best, odd, and, at worst, vulgar."

I looked awkwardly at my book.

"Perhaps I should steer the conversation," he said, "so that you don't say any more unsettling things."

I don't remember any of what he said because it was substanceless and inconsequential. He kept nudging me in the ribs as he talked. I kept peeking over his head at the boards.

At last, NotcIiff flashed up. Three minutes. A disembodied voice asked me not to smoke for my own safety. To pass the time, I imagined the sorts of jeopardy that smoking in a station could cause me. I thought better of telling the stationmaster about them. My convoluted fantasies all ended in hideous burning.

***

"Could you help me with this?" A girl with a greasy face and a straggle of dirty-blonde hair stood in front of me. She was holding a small fox. "Can you just hold it for a minute while I put on my coat?"

The board flashed. One minute until my connection.

"I'm terribly sorry. I couldn't. I can't. I couldn't help you. I can't hold it. You should have dressed before leaving the house."

"But it will take no time at all."

"If it won't take any time at all, perhaps we could make it work."

I laid my book on the bench and took the fox.

Her jacket was black, puffy, synthetic. She struggled to wriggle her arm, which was twisted backwards, into the left-hand sleeve. I could tell she wasn't really struggling, but pretending to struggle, mangling the whole business for show.

My train pulled up.

"Here, take your fox," I urged.

"It won't take a second now."

"If it really won't take a second."

But she was twisting her arm even more now. She had made the simple act of putting on a coat into a monumental task.

My gaze flitted between the train and the girl.

Mind the closing doors.

"I'm missing my train."

The doors were sliding shut.

The girl ran to the train and tried to prise the closing doors apart. But I could tell she wasn't really trying, just pretending to try. It was so obviously too late. She slammed her hand against the window in mock-exasperation as the train pulled away. Then she disappeared behind the slate-blue block.

I needed to sit down. My ankle was burning. A hideous bruise was blossoming from the top of my sock. I plopped myself down upon the red bench.

"Oh, you're back." The faux-stationmaster said, his eyes twinkling like stars. But they weren't stars. They were visual organs which were expressing his amusement at seeing me with my arms full of fox. "You left your book here," he said.

"Can't you see my hands are full?"

"If you don't mind me saying," he said, "someone in your position should probably be grateful for helpful reminders."

I waited for the girl to return. A disembodied voice warned me that unattended luggage might be destroyed by security services. To pass the time, I imagined government agents swooping down on abandoned portmanteaux, riddling them with bullets.

The girl showed no signs of reappearing.

"Let's go and find your owner," I said to the fox.

The fox looked at me as if it didn't understand.

***

I found the girl slouched against the wall of the blue building. "My connection's in three minutes," she said, smugly folding her arms.

"Good for you," I said, angrily. "Now take your stupid fox."

"It's not stupid. I have taught it to cry. And it's not mine anyway. I found it in my new apartment. Someone left it there."

The fox had bright eyes and a sleek coat. It seemed timid enough. Why would anyone abandon it? "Do you expect me to believe that?" I said.

"Of course I do. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said it."

I couldn't pry her arms open to force the fox back on her. Physically, I could. She was weedy, waifish. But emotionally, I couldn't. She might have tried to palm the fox off on some other fool. And that wasn't fair on the fox. I resigned myself to keeping it, hoping that the boyfriend I had just moved in with wouldn't mind. Perhaps I could convince him it was a normal thing couples did when moving in together. Get a fox.

The girl's face irritated me. It was oily, self-satisfied.

"Why did you pick on me?" I demanded. "You knew you'd make me miss my train. Why didn't you ask someone else?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Because I hate you." She turned and walked away.

I limped after her. "How can you hate me when you don't know me?"

"Oh, but I do know you," she sneered. She ran around the other side of the blue building and was gone.

***

The stationmaster was still on the bench. I sat down gloomily to wait for the next connection.

"Oh, you're back." He beamed at me like the sun. But he wasn't the sun. He was a man who was fat, over-friendly, and couldn't read moods.

"Do you know what just happened?" I said.

"How could I?" he asked.

"I've missed my train. A girl who barely knows me hates my guts. And now I own a fox."

"You left your book here as well," he said. "You do seem to find life challenging."

"Yeah, thanks," I muttered bitterly.

I watched the electronic board impatiently. A disembodied voice reminded me that stations could be dangerous places and to supervise my children. To pass the time, I imagined things I can't reveal. As I waited longer and longer for NotcIiff to appear, connections flashed up that were not supposed to transit this station. Even more astonishingly, the trains were arriving, departing, and people were filtering on and off.

Would I ever catch my train? It felt hopeless.

I flung my book across the platform in annoyance. But I'd forgotten I wasn't holding the book anymore. The fox skimmed the platform, bounced onto the train tracks, and settled in the gravel.

"Oopsy-daisy," the stationmaster said.

"Is it safe to go on the rails?"

"Of course it isn't," he said. "It is dangerous – perilous, even – and sure to be full of hardship."

"Then I must go," I said.

***

I swung down onto the tracks, landing with a crunch.

The fox was lying in the gravel, sobbing.

"There, there." I brushed the dust off its tail and wiped its soggy eyes.

I heard a hum, an engine. A train was heading down the tracks towards me.

The train was moving in slow motion, but the platform was higher than I'd anticipated. My ankle throbbed so horribly, I couldn't jump. A bone poked out of my sock. To make it worse, the fox was weighing me down emotionally. It wouldn't stop crying. I took the fox's tail in my teeth and scaled up the side of the platform using only my hands.

***

I hoisted myself to safety, breathing heavily. The girl was there. Her eyes darkened as she saw me.

"Perhaps we can clear things up," I said. "This hatred thing, it's a case of mistaken identity. I've never met you before."

"Then how did you get that fox?"

"I meant, before today. How do you know me?"

"Through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend."

"You're making it up," I said. "And, even if you had heard rumours about me, which I think unlikely," I said, "you have no proof that I am loathsome."

"You just threw a fox onto a traintrack. How much more horrible could you be?"

"It was an accident. And it would never have happened if you hadn't deceived me into taking it."

She brushed past me, spurning me with her shoulder, and stalked off down the platform.

"I'm looking after an abandoned fox," I shouted after her. "If that doesn't tell you I'm a caring sort of person, I don't know what does."

***

I slumped down next to the stationmaster. He was staring straight ahead, mouth agape, as if he was made of clockwork and had wound down.

I lifted his coat from around his midriff. A giant golden key stuck out of his back. I twisted it. The stationmaster clunked sickeningly.

"You left your book here," he said, brightly.

I wished I hadn't wound him up. His perkiness only worsened my mood. "I can't read it now. I'm watching for my connection."

"Where are you trying to get to?"

"NotcIiff Hospital. I've injured my ankle. I think it's broken."

"Deary-me. How did you do that?"

"Running for the train."

I placed the fox into the furry hood of his jacket, where it snuggled up and went to sleep.

"I really thought you were a man," I said. "I was sure of it."

"Yes, so did I," he said. "Would you like to pretend I am?"

"No."

"If you don't mind me saying, your stubbornness does you no favours. And nor does your pedantry."

"I do mind," I said.

"Then, it seems I can't help you any further. There is nothing more to be said." He turned from me and sat perfectly still, not even faking breathing.

***

I waited and waited. Strange destinations flashed up on the boards. But now they changed with no train ever arriving or leaving. The names switched, over and over, but there was no sign of my connection.

I knew the only solution to the stalemate was to get caught up in something else, to turn my back, to make the train think I was absorbed. Surely, when there was only a slim chance of catching it, then it would arrive and I could dash onboard at the last second. I turned to the station-master, but he was simply a lump of plastic now. I tried to get up, but howled with pain. My foot was hanging from my ankle.

I eyed the fox, which still slept soundly. The only possible way to trick the train into coming was to throw the fox onto the rails again. But my injury was such that I could neither manoeuvre myself onto the tracks nor onto any train that might arrive. It was maddening. All hope dashed, I flung the fox across the platform for the hell of it. It spun, neverendingly, a looping orange spiral in the mid-non-air.