Port-a-Pet

A gigantic blonde teenager sits diagonally opposite me. Her pink-blonde hair is clogged with dreadlocks and she is dressed from head to toe in black, including a Marilyn Manson hooded top and a pair of heavy, decorated biker boots. One of her eyes is blind and staring and the skin around it is a frozen slab of scar tissue, fissured with white stars of twisted skin. In her hands she is holding a small cardboard box labelled 'Port-a-Pet' in which sleeps her hamster. Once the train is moving she opens the box and then proceeds to gentle the hamster for the remainder of the journey. She does not think there is anything unusual about this because she long ago accepted that she must take love wherever she can find it.