Destination

"I couldn't believe my luck..."

"So I told her to ditch the jock..."

"Just love your new haircut..."

"I never believed she was that kind of girl, if you know what I mean...."

He stirred. Weird what one could overhear at the metro these days. He shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and glanced at the young couple sitting near him. Their heads bent close together. The girl was smiling while the boy was blushing furiously.

He smiled and cast back his thoughts to the days when he sat with girls and blushed like that. He couldn't remember. Probably there had never been any such days.

A bum sat opposite them, snoring loudly. An old woman sat nearby was knitting, eyes intent on her work, fingers never stopping. Knitting furiously, as if lives depended on it.

A couple of teenage girls gossiped in a corner, completely aware of the teenage boys checking them out from another corner, while pretending they weren't.

They were now going through a tunnel. The darkness enveloped everyone.

He couldn't remember the last time darkness had been so welcome. No, scratch that. He could.

Maybe a hundred years ago, he could see the light of one star gleaming alone through the bars of his window. The only window in his prison, a tiny opening looking out on the world from the cramped space he had been living in for so long, he couldn't remember a time when he was free. Times when he was tired of being strong, when he ached so badly to see a really friendly face or see a genuine smile. Then the tears would come unbidden, trickling down his cheeks making his pillow wet. His whole body would writhe with misery and he'd screw his eyes shut as tight as possible.

He sighed as the tunnel ended and the unwelcome light trickled through, such as it was.

He folded his hands in his lap and slumped lower in his seat. He would be arriving soon. Unconsciously he traced the multiple scars criss-crossing his right hand with the fingers of his left hand. He really couldn't remember where they had come from. He didn't want to either. The blurry images of soldiers laughing and the smell of blood that haunted his nightmares made him sure of that.

A girl sitting opposite him was staring at his hand in fascination. He shoved his hands back in his pockets and scowled at her. She smiled hesitantly at him. It was an embarrassed smile, the kind of smile he used to smile when caught stealing sweets as a boy. It made him scowl more deeply and glare at her. She grinned at him in response. Disconcerted, he looked away. It had been a genuine smile, devoid of ulterior motives.

Destination reached, the doors opened and passengers began to trickle outside. A Voice informed them where they had arrived and where the metro would now be going.

The man walked away slowly with a small bag holding all his belongings.

The first thing that hit him was the immense quantity of people. People everywhere, families, loners, kids with their skateboards, all going about their lives confidently, knowing exactly where they were going and what they were doing. They were going to spend Christmas with they're families.

Well, so was he. He smiled. He hadn't told his wife he was going to be home for Christmas. It would be a nice surprise for Claire.

Boy, would she panic when she saw him. Claire was a born worrier. She'd complain that she had no time for preparing anything and how he was always thinking of himself.

He kept walking, smiling as he remembered Christmases passed, before he had been taken.

People stared at him as he walked along smiling vacantly.

Eventually he reached his destination. The place looked deserted.

"Oy," a wrinkled old man, bundled up protectively from the cold, came up to him with a shovel, "and what do you think you're up to?"

The man didn't answer, what business was it of his if he was going to spend Christmas with his wife?

It was twilight now. Claire would be setting the table, her golden hair gleaming.

He remembered how her soft hazel eyes used to meet his over the dinner table. And how devastated those eyes were when he was taken away. Grief and fury battling against each other, a frenzied appeal for help screaming at him through her eyes, though she stood mute.

It had been twenty, thirty years since he had seen her, but he was sure her beauty would have remained unwithered.

The snow crunched beneath his feet as his pace quickened. At last, he would now be with Claire.

The wrinkled old man leant against his shovel and watched as the man opened the gate.

As the gate creaked open, he gazed in compassion at the man.

The man entered the cemetery and made his way to a long neglected tombstone.

"Claire," he murmured, and a tear trickled down his cheek unnoticed.

And the light of one lone star gleamed alone in the dusk.