Family

Joe toyed with the plain silver ring on his forefinger, turning it
round as though unscrewing a bolt. He stared at his sister in the seat
across from him.

"What's that in your hair, Anna?"

She kept on reading; she was four pages from the end of her book.

"It looks a bit like a slug has made a nest on top of your head," he
observed.

The train carriage jolted slightly; a man carrying a cup of tea and a
sandwich stumbled towards the seat in which Anna sat. She did not look
up.

"Excuse me," the man said as he regained his balance. He was carrying a
coronation chicken sandwich. The filling was the colour of a sunset, or
diarrhoea.

"Anna," Joe tapped the ring on his forefinger on the table, "you've
some gloop in your hair."

She turned a page. Joe leant over to look at how many pages were left;
the text finished halfway down the right-hand side page. He looked at
the last word: 'family.'

Anna frowned slightly as her gaze moved from the left-hand page to the
right.

"I don't know how you haven't noticed it." He opened his eyes wide and
spoke as if narrating a horror film voice-over. "Nobody knew how long
it had been growing there -- weeks, months, years spent burrowing deep
within Anna's skull and gradually taking over her brain."

A mobile started to ring somewhere in the carriage. The pink panther
theme tune. Anna closed her book and placed it face down on the
table.

"Family. The last word is family," Joe said.

She turned to look out the window. Her gaze started to jolt back and
forth like a typewriter reaching the end of a line.

They were passing through Newcastle. The Tyne was the colour of
dishwater.

"The fog on the Tyne, s'all mine, s'all mine," Joe sang.

Anna's lips thinned.

"How was your book, Nan?"

"Wonderful."

"I don't fancy reading a book that ends with the word 'family'"

The train began to slow as they approached Newcastle station. A woman
opposite them was struggling with a large Burberry suitcase in the
overhead storage. She held the bag above her head; she looked like a
holidaying Atlas.

"I was trying to tell you that an evil weevil has burrowed a whole into
your head."

"What?"

The train slowed to a stop. A man was asleep, standing up next to a
chocolate dispenser on the platform. He had a shaving rash.

"Right on top of your head. It looks minging."

Anna frowned and raised her hands to the crown of her head.

"Maybe a bird that had eaten a slug shat on top of your head."

Her mouth opened slightly as she worried at the slimy patch in her
hair. The gunk had the consistency of saliva.

"Minging," Joe said as he moved in for a closer look.

"Can you see what it is?"

Joe reached towards the grey-brown substance. He extended his
right-hand index finger.

A man in a suit who had boarded at Newcastle ignored the empty seats at
Anna and Joe's table.

"Ow," Anna said as the tip of Joe's finger sank into the goo.

"Shit," Joe said.

"What?"

There was a sound like someone chewing bubble gum.

"My finger..."

Joe's finger had disappeared up to the point where you could no longer
see his silver ring. The train started to move.

"Fuck," he said.

"Ouch, Joe, watch it." Anna jerked her head back suddenly and there was
a sound like someone taking a step in a water-logged shoe.

Joe pulled his forefinger into his chest and held it in the clenched
fist of his left hand.

"What's wrong?" Anna asked. "Did you get rid of it?"

She dabbed at the top of her head with a Central Trains napkin.

"It feels better. Is it all gone?" she said.

Anna examined the napkin. It was dry.

"Joe? Is it all gone?"

Slowly Joe opened his hand. There was a faint band of indented pale
skin where the ring had been.

"Joe, what happened?"

Then, like the answer to a question, Joe raised his finger to the
air.