The Scrawny Sushi Eater

 

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The Scrawny Sushi Eater

 

Overactive imagination

The bus stopped suddenly - jerking forward as the air brakes kicked in, lurching my stomach over the invisible hurdle in front of me and snapping my head back slightly. 

It's times like these I wish they had seatbelts on busses - but then I think it would just be something else to have vandalised or to be used as a weapon to trap someone in their seat to be subjected to robbery or assault or to be strangled with the seatbelt.

It's times like these I hate my overactive imagination!

 

Cold

The doors opened and a blast of freezing cold air rushed in and around my ankles and kneecaps, reminding me how cold it was that evening.

I shifted slightly in my seat, pulling my gloves on tighter and my collar up as high as it would go.

 

Mr Muscles

A young couple got on the bus. 

She was of a slight build, unruly bottle blond hair wearing a faux fur waist length coat, jeans and spike heeled boots. How she walked on the icy pavement in them I do not know. They must have some sort of gimble in them to keep her upright.

He was tall, dark and would have been handsome if his face wasn't in a permanent scowl. For some reason he didn't think the arctic weather required a coat, or even a jumper as he had a muscle hugging plain black tshirt, black jeans and Timberland boots.

 

The man was moaning at the bus driver using a multitude of expletives that they had been waiting over 20 minutes and asking him what had happened to the bus that hadn’t turned up fifteen minutes earlier. The driver advised him he didn’t know as he had been driving this bus for the last hour.

 

The guy just stared at him, clenching his fists by his side - his jaw set firmly in place, grinding his teeth for a few of seconds - weighing up whether it was worth starting an argument over or punching the drivers ‘lights’ out. But in the end he just shrugged and decided it was too cold to wait for another bus if he sparked out the driver.

 

He nudged his girlfriend in the arm and gesticulated with some agitation, for her to move down the bus. He muttered under his breath that the driver was ‘a fuck-wit’. His girlfriend rolled her eyes as they passed my seat and went to sit at the back of the bus where the big heaters were situated, all the time, having an animated whispered argument about whether the driver really was a ‘fuck-wit or not and her trying to calm him down and persuading him not to go back and ‘have it out’ with the driver. 

 

The Sushi Eater

Creeping onto the bus, practically invisible behind this scene, was what looked like a small bundle of clothes with legs and one of those ‘Peruvian’ woolly hats with bobbles on the end of the chinstraps popping out of the top of this bundle where I assumed the head would be.

 

It walked towards were I was sitting and as it walked, the hat got pulled off and shoved in a pocket.

 

She was what we used to call a ‘slip of a girl’. I guessed she was all of five feet three inches standing on tip toes.

 

I sensed she looked a lot older than she actually was. Her face was gaunt and pallid. No makeup to cover the small patches of dried reddened skin around her nostrils. Her eyes were a muddy brown, no light or sparkle to be seen. Older looking, but still with the fluid movements of a younger person.

 

Her straggly, dyed black hair flopped out of the top of a chunky hair bobble which held her scraped back ponytail tightly, as if to stop it from making a desperate escape for freedom and crawling away into a dark hiding place.

 

Scrawny and pinch-faced, her voluminous parka coat was wrapped around her like a blanket. 

If it had ever fitted her, it was another lifetime ago.

 

Grey shapeless leggings listlessly hung from her skinny pipe-cleaner legs, fitting where they touched. From her feet, dangled a pair of bedraggled well-worn grey and white trainers. They looked as if they were on their last legs - or should I say last feet. Battered and unkempt, sadly matching their owner.

 

She clutched a plastic carrier bag close to her right hip as she sat down, scrunching herself up like a discarded chip wrapper, feet up on the seat facing opposite me. 

 

Placing the plastic bag down on the vacant seat next to her, she first peered in as if not knowing what she would find there, or as if half expecting a fire cracker to go off in her face. Then, on deciding it looked safe enough to put her hand in, she proceeded to empty the contents, one by one, on to the vacant seat.

 

The contents

Out came an assortment of items - a small vacuum sealed pack of sushi - marked across the front with a big orange ‘reduced’ sticker - a small can of fizzy energy drink, (I don’t know how people can drink that stuff – It smells like a chemical factory) a small packet of loose tobacco and cigarette papers (colloquially known as ‘skins’ - I think) and a packet of mint ‘TicTacs’ made up the rest of the contents. 

 

The plastic bag she lets fall to the floor of the bus without a second’s hesitation or care.

She scoffed the sushi down as if someone was about to grab it from her or she hadn't eaten for a couple of days. A vision of Gollum (LOTR) eating his raw fish in the Elves pond came to my mind as I watched her greedily licking her fingers and palm, where the wasabi sauce had leaked out and trickled down her hands. 

 

At that moment she realised she had no napkins or even a tissue. She gave out an exasperated ‘Urrgghh’ noise along with a few choice Anglo Saxon words, then shrugged and wiped her hands on the lining of her coat.

 

After this feline – like cleanse, she shoved the tobacco and skins in one pocket of the parka and the mints in another. Then she sat sipping the energy drink slowly – I assumed this was because she had eaten the sushi too fast and was worried about the sushi ‘reappearing’ if she drank a fizzy drink too fast on top of it.

 

More discarded wrappers

She allowed the empty packet from her meal to also fall to the floor alongside the plastic bag without a flicker of acknowledgement or any intention of picking it up again. 

 

Shuffling herself across the seat to the condensation-covered window – (practically rolling herself up into a ball), she pulled a clunky looking mobile phone from her voluminous coat pocket and presses a ‘fast dial’ number.

 

The Deal

She proceeded to negotiate in an animated manner an order for drugs as if she was ordering a pizza. Part way through the conversation, her voice changed to a wheedling whiney tone trying to persuade whoever was on the other end for a bit extra ‘on account’ and she will ‘sort something out’ for payment ‘You know me, I’m good for it’ she said a few times. Not caring in the slightest whether the rest of the people on the bus could hear her or not, or what they would think. She was totally caught up in the conversation she was having, oblivious to anything outside of her phone.

 

Persuasion

She then leans forward in the seat, covering her eyes with one hand while calling someone else, her voice changing to a crying, desperate toned voice - begging them to lend her some money ‘until next week’. Telling them she needed it for her electricity bill - a ‘red reminder’, needs to pay it tomorrow or she'll get cut-off. They must have agreed as she tells them that she will meet them now to collect it, but no, she can’t stay, no she can't,  and no, she's already eaten.

 

Deals made - she shoved her phone back into her pocket. Not a tear drop showing on her face. Her hands reach up and pull her hair bobble to make her ’facelift’ ponytail even tighter than before. How the skin on her face didn’t split with the tension I don’t know.

 

She sits back in her seat again, wiping a hole in the window condensation with her sleeve. 

 

Impatience

She thrust her hands into back into her pockets, both knees jiggling, oblivious to the rest of the passengers disapproving looks and ‘tuts’ and some pitying glances with shakes of the head. 

 

She pressed her forehead against the window for a moment to cool down, collecting her thoughts and then looked out into the foggy gloom, watching for her stop.

 

As I watched her, I was amazed at the transformation from quiet dishevelled bundle of clothes to animated and fractious broken doll, to the person I saw now.

 

She sniffed continuously and wriggled in the seat with impatience as if a family of fleas had taken up residence in her coat, occasionally darting up to a standing position like a startled Meercat, thinking she had missed her stop. 

 

Vulnerable to viciousness

I wondered how she had arrived at this juncture in her life. What set of circumstances had occurred and what decisions were made along the way to get her to this point. 

 

She seemed so wretched, but as hard as granite at the same time. A stark vulnerability coupled with a street wise cunning and maybe even a sly viciousness creeping into her personality.

 

Out into the fog

All of a sudden she jumped to a standing position, yanked her phone from her pocket and leaving the food wrapper detritus in a wake behind her - stumbled towards the front of the bus, talking urgently into her phone ‘I’m here! I’m here! Two minutes!’ she shouts. She hopped off the bus and sped off into the freezing dark fog leaving behind the street lights illuminating the bus stop.

 

Because of the thickness of the fog, I couldn’t see which way she had gone, so I faced forward again on the bus, shaking my head slowly at the thought of a life lost in that vicious repeat performance she seemed to be in either by choice or by a set of circumstances that got her there. 

 

Her, continuously focused on obtaining the next ‘trip to oblivion’ with no regard for self or others she pulled into her slipstream. Who knows what she would do when the money finally ran out - and how far would she be willing to fall down the rabbit hole of desperation and denigration before she would seek help - would there be any help if she asked?

 

Or would she just go on until she reached a final sharp, cold end of a filthy needle in some squalid damp squat or under a bridge somewhere?

 

Would she be a forgotten soul, lost and alone? - Or would someone still be out there wondering where she was? If she was safe? Wanting her to get in touch? 

 

Would she burn all of her bridges on the way, flinging the lit matches behind her without a care as to the damage done? To march on into oblivion knowingly.     

 

The doors closed and the bus pulled away from the stop. I silently hoped she would find her way back from the void, sighed and then stopped thinking about her.

 

Isn’t that what we all do?  

 

 

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