The screamer

Trains can be romantic, but not when the tit across from you is eating an egg sandwich. It’s part of an unwritten set of rules, you don’t talk, you don’t move, you certainly don’t bring fish or egg onboard for crying out loud. It’s like a church you know, if you wouldn’t do it in the Vatican you shouldn’t do it on a train. Think of it like a big metal confessional, trundling along the tracks of conformity to keep us all in our place.

You know on average carriages have 66 seats? That’s 66 individuals who always seem to represent the careful microcosm of our fair society. It’s like a terrarium of balance; everyone needs to get from A to B. Whether you’re a laptop wielding briefcase wanker or a teenager trying to tiktok in a space no bigger than a shoebox, they’re all packed together, all exist in the same time space continuum, where all ideas have to conform for the sake of everyone’s sanity. 

On this specific Tuesday evening, somewhere between Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent, my microcosm was filled with it’s usual end-of-day tension. After all, it is a universally known fact that Tuesdays are the worst day of the week, on account of it not being the beginning, middle or even close to the universally desired weekend. It is a nothing day where all bad things congregate and no one can prove otherwise.

I’d managed to bag a table seat with no one to sidle up next to me, the recognised gold standard of commuting. Nevertheless, the Tuesday curse took it’s hold as i soon realised my golden seat irrevocably backed onto the train anomaly. The cell in the microcosm that the organism needed to flush out, the unwanted, the painful, the aptly coined train nutter.

Now, for those of you who don’t know this universal fact, it is widely acknowledged that every train has a nutter riding inside it. Someone who is just a bit strange, someone who is purposely put in the matrix to make others feels queasy, itchy, make them feel off kilter, make you constantly feel on the edge of wanting to say something but never quite knowing if you should because in theory they are being harmless, just bloody annoying.

This was my guy, parked two feet behind in an anorak, full of a very specific type of weird that involved a great deal of swearing. Now, I like swearing, it’s characterful, so actually this guy was a strangely comical character as he fucked and pissed and twatted his way along with the rest of us as we trundled across the darkening British countryside.

As his first motherfucker carried musically across the quiet carriage like an out of tune piano, I couldn’t help but smile. I admired his inability to care. Of course, this man may have been swearing for any number of reasons but why should we deny him? Fairly quickly you could see the tension rising within the carriage. With every word it climbed, like heat off a Tenerife pavement, rapid and uncomfortable as it burnt its way through the train.

We were all part of this unspoken notion; everyone thinking the same thing that no one would actually say out loud, our universal evolutionary instincts kicking in to essentially segregate this unusual man. We needed him out, we needed to make sure he wouldn’t fraternise with our first-class females and pass along his weird sweary genes.

Why did we do this? Why did we feel the need to ostracise people, to fear the different. The train was like a pack of wolves and this man was, without knowing it, being cast out of the herd. The ultimate evolutionary shun, and he didn’t even realise.

We were cruel.

I’d seen it over and over again but never really thought about it enough to give it a name. Like that lady from last week. I heard her before I saw her, my first instincts as I watched the rush hour traffic outside Victoria station was that someone was being murdered, but literally no one seemed to give a shit. She then emerged from around the corner of a Pret A Manger, a tiny dot of a woman, dressed head to toe in what can only be described as fluff. Boots with the fur, topped with a wide brimmed bucket hat turned up at the front all made from fluff. In fact, I’m pretty sure she was wearing slippers and in hindsight I hoped she was, I was annoyed I wasn’t wearing slippers just thinking about it.

She walked purposely up to the edge of the road, pointing and engaging with the traffic rolling round the side of the train station and every few seconds she would let out a fairly high-pitched scream. Now, it wasn’t a scared scream, it was more like something you’d hear on a David Attenborough program, almost like a bird, like she was proudly announcing herself to the awakening commuters rushing about their day.

The more she chirped, the more people ignored her. I wondered whether that was one of the reasons she did it, like a litmus test to just see what people would do, would they even care? The more she screamed the more people ignored her; a fluffy bird scared of going extinct.

We were bad people.

I couldn’t let these people go extinct, be ostracised for not being exactly what society wanted them to be. I was sick of it.

So, I let out a scream.

A really short and sharp one, the way someone would expel air when they’re annoyed except I let a proper noise get released. No one turned around, no one looked at me, not even the egg man opposite me looked up, the sweary man behind even stopped.

It felt good.

Life was shit. The concept of going back to work tomorrow and living for the miniscule pleasure of a Saturday without the kids just wasn’t cutting it. There had to be more than this. The scream wasn’t just an experiment it was a cry out into the abyss.

I let out another scream.

Louder this time, just to test the water in the tin can microcosm, just to see what people would do, just for my pain to be heard. No one replied. The sound reverberated around the silence of the train, cutting through the 66 seats and quickly being replaced by this foul weight, like when you accidently stand in dog poo and the smell lingers even when you clean your shoes with military precision. The turd is always there.

I’d gone from an upstanding member of the train population to one of the outcasts, one of the ones who wouldn’t be allowed to mate with the good looking gene pool in case my screaming spread.

The train quietly pulled into Stoke station and as people shuffled on and off the carriage seemed to reset slightly, my screaming semi forgotten. The guy with the egg sandwich caught my eye sheepishly and I smiled.

‘You should try it you know, it’s quite liberating’

He smiled back, the kind of smile that is meant to pacify a lunatic.

‘Just give it a go, just shout TITS as loud as you can, you’ll feel better’

‘You’re mad,’ he said, ‘you just can’t do stuff like that’

‘Why not?’

‘Well it’s just not the done thing’

‘It might not be, but if it gives you something to laugh about, something to go home and talk to the wife about, something to release the monotony of how shit life truly can be, surely it’s worth a go?’ We both paused.

‘I can’t say it’

‘Go on’

‘I can’t say it’

‘Just do it’

‘I can’t say it’

‘Just do it’

'I really can't...'

‘Just do it..'

Then out of nowhere, the egg man raised his head to the heavens and let out a triumphant TITS as loud as I think his voice could naturally reach.

I looked at him with appreciation and gave him a nod of respect. He smiled back at me, an acknowledgement that it did in fact feel pretty good. The sweary man behind laughed.

A kid in the back of the carriage then joined in and the whole carriage diffused, the tension slowly releasing as we all universally acknowledged how funny tits really are. From church to comedy club; it felt good.

My mind cast back to the fluffy bird lady. Did she have anyone to scream with her, to let her know she wasn’t alone in the world? I hoped so.

The train continued along it’s dark track. The sweary man behind me only said the word tits for the remainder of the way home. His recognition that he had been heard, and was not alone.