The man who plays his music too loud. He wears a gilet and track pants with roughly cut short hair, and he trips over everything. The stairs, the platform, he also gets up way too early for his stop, and he ALWAYS reads other peoples newspapers.
Susannah - early thirties
She does her make up on the tube every morning from Foundation to Eye-liner. She has a set of star tattoos on her right foot. Some coloured in black ink, some not. She reads the metro that Marco also reads over her.
Peter - late thirties
Every morning without fail he sits with his 10 doughnuts and a can of full fat coke, watching 20 minutes worth of some film starring Jude Law and Kate Winslet. He watches this on his full size 15.6 screen laptop and doesn’t seem to care all that much who else watches it as well. The disappointing smell of doughnuts at 7am in the morning is overwhelming and as Peter sits barely looking up from his screen, something peculiar happens.
A small grey Pigeon enters through the train doors, like any other normal passenger. He has no oyster card, nor any luggage for that matter. He chooses not to take a seat and instead decides to just stand there in the centre of the carriage. People come and people go but the pigeon does not move, except to poop at Ladbroke Grove station.
Susannah has been watching this pigeon in fascination ever since he boarded (if indeed it is a ‘he’). She seems to have sparked up a conversation with an old lady as Peter carries on watching Winslet and Law uninterested by this mysterious pigeon. Marco, now reading someone else's Metro with his incredibly loud music blaring out of his headphones, hasn’t seemed to notice the pigeon...yet.
Without warning and all of a sudden the bird catches Marco’s attention as he flaps his wings twice and then once more for effect it would seem. A single feather flies in Marco’s direction, as the doors slam shut and Marco jumps up onto his seat gasping for air.
‘Afraid of pigeons are you’? Susannah says in an almost jokey way. Marco doesn't reply. ‘It’s okay, I too have seen Hitchcocks ‘Birds’ so I understand, it’s a rational fear’. Marco now with headphones round his neck still does not reply. ‘Here, would you like to swap seats? He is getting awfully close to you’. The Pigeon moves towards Marco as Marco nods and quickly ushers Susannah out of her seat. Susannah sighs and sarcastically mutters under her breath ‘You’re welcome’. Marco still on the edge, now sits next to Peter, as a train announcement is heard.
The doors open at Edgware Road Station, and the pigeon as still as anything does not move. Marco starts dramatically clapping as the pigeon who seems to have fallen asleep wakes up. He looks up at Marco, and then turns to look at the opened doors. His small pigeon head seems to tilt slightly as he notices the station sign.
He then quickly moves forward, and hops off of the train carefully minding the gap. The doors close as he makes his way across to the High Street Kensington platform to continue his journey. Marco who is still breathing quite heavily and sweating slightly, sits back in his seat and relaxes.
Peter offers Marco a Doughnut without saying a word, as Marco accepts and the two slump back in their seats, Peter finally mutters something to Marco so quietly that he can hardly hear. ‘All the Kings Men? Its a Winslet and Law classic’ Peter gives Marco his other earphone, as Susannah interrupts the two. ‘Can I?’
She takes a doughnut, and casually munches away as the 3 once strangers slightly exhausted by their experience, enter their final destination. Baker Street.
End
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