Because I am cooped up at home and supposed to be studying for exams, and because I miss university so much (ye-es…), I wrote a story set in Melbourne Uni, with a main character that does MY course and takes MY train line! I warn you, this is a rather stupid story and it is purely written for my own personal enjoyment (insert appropriately devilish cackle). And just a note: Callie Halliday is NOT meant to be me. As a general rule, I never base any of my characters on real life people, be they friend or foe. That could get you into a lot of trouble…

DARK STARS

Chapter One
V-necks and Viagra

The first time I saw them was on the train home from the city.

The doors hissed open at Richmond and the two of them stepped into the carriage and everyone sort of shot a sidelong glance in their general direction, because it’s not often you see two grown men standing so close to one another. I swear, for a moment I think they were holding hands.

They came hesitantly up the aisle (they had to let go of one another for that), looming darkly in the corner of my vision. I couldn’t help but watch. They were both very tall, at least a head above anyone else in the carriage—either could have stretched out an arm and touched the ceiling, easily. And they were very long-legged—it lent their movements a certain elegance.

Both of them looked about twenty-one years old.

I peeked sideways through the lens of my sunglasses as they debated softly for a moment, and then shuffled into two seats close to the window. I began to speculate. They were lovers. They were lovers who had just flown back from their elopement and secret marriage in Canada, and they were looking for a cosy little cottage to move into together where they could hang flowered curtains and be hidden from prying eyes.

I looked at the fellow with his cheek pressed to the window (his facial cheek, just to clarify). He was dressed in steel-washed jeans and a green, round-necked t-shirt, and I could see a definite swell of muscle bulging from the contours of his folded arms. I couldn’t tell the colour of his hair, because it was cropped quite close to his scalp, but his eyes were long-lashed and green.

The other man was also reasonably good-looking. He had mournful, dark, puppy-dog eyes of liquid cacao that would have melted a lesser woman’s heart, and a horribly unkempt fringe falling brownly in a diagonal sweep across his forehead. He was skinnier and paler, and wore narrow black slacks and a button-down t-shirt with thin, horizontal stripes.

Fringe Boy seemed restless. He sat well back in his chair, with his arm flung over the top of the empty seat on his other side, but his gaze flickered here and there around the train.

He seemed fixated by the strangest things. He stared at a ‘Do Not Smoke’ sign for a full hundred seconds. He watched a gummy old man take out his dentures and clean them with a hanky. At every station, he cocked his head at the high-pitched beeping and the doors sliding open and shut, open and shut.

We were at East Malvern by the time he grew bored of this exercise. He began to inspect his fellow commuters, one by one. His eyes wandered around the carriage—

--and landed on me.

I snapped into nonchalance, pretended to be gazing through the glass, inspected a lock of hair for split ends.

Until I realised that Fringe Boy wasn’t looking at me. Oh, no.

He was gawking unashamedly at my chest.

Bloody pervert!

Immediately, my cheeks flamed up into two matching storm-clouds of scarlet, and I pointedly buttoned my cardigan up over the front of my white shirt.

Now, don’t get the wrong impression of me. I’m no Pamela Anderson. I’m not even anywhere near Jessica Simpson. I’m usually not one to be caught in disgustingly awkward situations such as this. If Fringe Boy had wanted real fodder for his obviously prepubescent fantasies, well, there were plenty of candidates who were—how do I put it?—far better equipped by Mother Nature. There were a couple of busty young brunettes at the other end of the carriage, for crying out loud.

As I was shooting laser beams at Fringe Boy from my eyes, he suddenly did the most peculiar thing. He swung his gaze from my chest, downwards, to his own thoracic plane (which was considerably more planar than mine). He looked from one pectoralis major to the other. And then he put his hand over his left nipple and squeezed his own breast.

I stopped shooting laser beams and instead focused on not choking on my chewing gum.

Maybe he was considering surgical enhancement. Implants, anyone? Maybe his new Canadian lover (I decided to make one of them a foreigner in my story; it was more romantic) was not satisfied with anything below a C-cup.

Fringe Boy frowned and turned to his short-haired lower, and muttered something. Short Hair rolled his eyes at the roof—and then reached across, put his hand on Fringe Boy’s chest and gave it an appreciative squeeze. Like he was shopping for mangoes.

I had to press my face to the wall and feign a coughing fit to disguise the sound of my laughter. Oh, what a priceless train ride this was turning out to be! Who would have thought that, alongside my physiology lectures and anatomy practicals, I would have this to entertain me?

Oh, for Pete’s sake—now he was looking at the girl across the aisle (or, to be more precise, at her voluminous bosom in a v-neck). I was starting to worry that this guy was under the effects of a delayed puberty and an onslaught of raging hormones. That, or he had taken Viagra.

The train slid into Syndal station, and Mr. Pervert and his bored friend rose from their seats. They passed me on their way out. Short Hair was guiding Fringe Boy along with one hand pressed in the small of his back. They both slid sunnies on before heading outside.

I hopped from one foot to the other. Syndal was only one station away from the end of the line—my stop. And I did disembark here sometimes, when I felt like a good walk. Ah, dammit.

I slipped out of the carriage just as the doors banged shut behind me. Slightly flustered, I adjusted my headband and the folds of my skirt and glanced around.

Now. Where had they got to?

I trailed them through the tunnel and onto the street, and fell back a good eighty metres or so. Short Hair was no longer guiding Perverted Fringe Boy with an affectionate hand, but they were walking very closely together.

I don’t normally do this. I’ve never actually stalked people before. All right, fine—maybe once or twice. Hey, I’m a naturally curious person. It’s what has got me this far in life.

They turned right at a roundabout, after stopping to apply sunscreen very thoroughly on one another’s faces (it was the middle of autumn) and then wandered down a residential street. I was feeling more and more bewildered by the minute. At last, they went up a pathway lined with acacias, to the doorstep of a modest brown bungalow with painted shutters. Short Hair produced a key, and they went inside, and shut the front door. The house was quiet.

I stood behind a pine tree, looking at the house with indecision. Then I pulled out my diary and scrawled the address in a spare bit of space: 17 Roget Drive.

I walked home.

And thus ends Chapter One. The chapters are all like this, very short and sweet I suppose it’s sort of different from my usual style—much more casual, for one. Let me know what you think. Review!

Ice cream bunnies, chocolate monkeys and sweet, sweet love

charliedon'tdie