The affair started on a train to the city for work; my gaze falling off the morning newspaper and into gleaming blue eyes. He smiled at me. If it had been a 19th century romantic novel I would have been smitten instantly and been taken breathlessly in the train station bathroom before we got to our destination. In reality though, through the magic of Altera motives, facebook, and a few bad fights with our respective spouses we arranged at last to meet for more than coffee after about three weeks and several former meet ups. My potential suitor had been coming from a friend he’d gone to seeking refuge from his loving spouse that time we met and usually took a completely different train from a complete opposite end of the city to work. As such we would both go to our day jobs and meet for lunch.
It is only fitting the affair would end on that train also. I had always considered myself tamed by marriage- trodden down by responsibilities and children. I was convinced in those days just how much I was sticking it to my spouse carrying out the affair; how much it would absolutely destroy the fathomless cretin I was convinced I had married. So I took the train on a Saturday under the pretence of overtime and was gonna have all day to have my brains shagged out by a near stranger.
The train picked up speed from an empty platform usually bustling with other commuters and whizzed faster and faster through the running blur of countryside. Birds, slower than I was inexorably zipping by, flew backwards; blind to the world ahead and reaching blindly with their legs for whatever they might fly into. I stared out into the distance and became suddenly and powerfully aware of just how fast I was going. It disturbed me how little control I had over my own existence; how completely thrown into this world I was and how I was hurtling along at a breakneck speed not just on this train. I realised how very little about the world I understood and just how confused and scared I was. I shook with horror and despair at the incomprehensible randomness and speed and anarchy. Tears swept me and I began to feel all my conviction sink from the bottom of my soul. I thought of the last time my spouse cried; how pitiful they’d looked. Then I felt small and pitiful to and just had a terrible and skin crawling urge to grab them very tightly and bawl into their shoulder. I wanted so badly now to be shot of the coffee dates and late night facebook chats. I wanted so badly my small downtrodden life back. At any moment the train could go flying off the rails: killing me instantly.
I got off on the next station and headed straight home.
Anything was better than that speed and terrible tumble of independence.
Daily Weird Shorts 