Steve from Research

Nothing remained of him, there was only what was expected of him. The mask worn in the office each day was the mould surrounding the jelly he felt inside. But he couldn't remove it. The show must go on. It had gone on so long now he found it just as upsetting whenever the truth oozed to the surface. To avoid this, every thought first had to go through corporate quality control, where a nagging post-it note would be stuck to it before he could continue passing on the acceptable message. He felt the changes inside almost immediately as his brave face showed the first signs of cracking.

The deceit had deformed him into the bag of nerves that made him regularly flinch. The way he stood, looking over his shoulder expecting to find a crowd rushing to tell him they'd found out it was all worthless lies. He was in market research. Those facts and figures that aid the sale of lies when the temporary blindness of profit and gain slipped to allow reality into focus.

Steve was on the train when he first felt it. Like a softening that lowered him further into the seat on the long, sapping journey. It wasn't a worry at first. He thought he was just melting into the usual dozing off slump, tonight it simply felt a little more comfortable on the worn unyielding seats. The train and its rhythm were carrying him towards the pined for blank screen, so he quit resisting.

At first his thoughts were invaded by his wife. Older, bored at home with the precocious only child they'd managed while he was busy running just to keep up. It was this neglect that had pushed her to the spare room where she now suffocated in a single bed from regret and the bitterness of realising she was simply a replacement mother figure. A cheap and crude copy.

Her last act before realising this was to insist they move beyond the edges of London, where the trees he never saw in daylight outlined the cleaner streets. It would impress her family. He wished he actually got to see his family. The times he did were so rare he felt like a stranger - the child had become so unused and ungrateful to him it was a burden to devote what drips of weekend he could salvage on him.

Here was the only place he could take off the mask. Lying down together when first married and she actually bothered to ask, he had painfully learned never to tell his dreams. He had to safeguard them to keep them coming back. He could rely on a wide choice of films playing on his eyelids, but all had badly played piano in the background. The frightening ones looped his mother cursing his playing of the piano that was too big for their house. Please not this type tonight. They always ended abruptly with him crying out apologies. Blame was usually put on work pressures if anyone came to ask him what was wrong at home. Never once was it suggested he might need to step back and enjoy his life rather than miss it as he crushed himself trying to maintain someone elses idea of it.

He was lucky tonight, he was drifting into the whirlpool. Trailing colours and a carousel of all his despised colleagues. Round and round they span, focus slowly shifting to whoever spoke. Whenever he spoke, it would echo and he'd see his face from before, freckles magnified, grinning, with his baby teeth showing. Always at the top of the screen would be his longed-for quiff, just like mummy would do when he, the youngest child, was the only man remaining in the house. He loved the attention and feel of the comb being softly dragged through his hair while she hummed some tune remembered from her happier youth. Back then was the last time he'd felt safe, content, covered.

The crackly voice from near the ceiling, announcing another station in the endless list before his own, tore him back into the carriage. Something was different. He couldn't see out of the window. No worn out face stared back from the dark outside. He looked at his arms which were hanging floppily off the edge of the seat. The alarm grew as he tried to sit up, compose himself. But nothing happened. He tried to move his feet, which he could see sticking out by peering down over the edge of the seat where he began to understand he was trapped, but could only watch them refuse to move. A door slammed and the train continued on its journey, its rhythm making slowly understand what had happened. His spine had evaporated. There was no backbone to hold him upright. Instead of panicking he wondered where it had gone and why. He started to think of it as another burden that would eat into the precious weekend hours, especially as he didn't know where to go and buy another one. Maybe there was a shop on the retail park. He'd only been to the bland clothing ideal for the office shop and the make your home look like a magazine article outlet.

Hearing the voice announcing the approach to his station he realised when trying to gather up his bag how serious the problem really was. He was on the train and even though he wanted to, couldn't get off.