I recognised the knife from when we were kids building hideouts in the park. It was a simple penknife, the type a dad might give his twelve-year-old son: sharp enough to whittle a twig, but not sharp enough to chop a finger off. This one had seen better days. Its blade was rusty and what had once been the sharper edge had nasty little divots.
Their eyes glazed across the mostly empty seats. They were poor and outcast, and I owed them my empathy, not my fear. When one of them meandered down the aisle to the other end of the carriage, his coat brushed my shoulder as the train lurched. A stench of dirt, sweat, urine, alcohol and marijuana lingered in his wake. On his way back, he reached behind my shoulder, grabbed the right side of my face, and pulled my other cheek hard against his hip.
With my head trapped in this vice, his free hand swung the point of the penknife towards my left eye. Beyond the blade, his fingernails were filthy and his smell filled my head. The knife was too close to bring into focus, but it was clear it would make a mess of my eye.
Trumping rational thought, my subconscious swung into inaction. Every muscle in my body went limp. His stinking, mittened hand began to cradle my chin as I slumped gently to the right.
But the point of the penknife stayed wedded to my eye, gently swaying with each bump in the tracks. Through my mental haze, from somewhere behind me, I heard someone shouting. As the African twisted toward the voice, the train burst from the dark tunnel into the surgical lights of a station. Blurred people-shapes flew by the windows as we slowed. The African let go of my cheek and began to shuffle unsteadily back to his seat. I grabbed my bag, lurched to the carriage exit behind me, and escaped onto the platform.
