Ian Johnson

I re-stalked the pulsing crimson corridors, the silk of a paisley cravat tickling my sculpted silver goatee. I hadn’t slept again, the rolling room a restless tomb as the Orient Express hurtled beyond Vienna and Budapest, breathlessly penetrating the Simplon Pass, on a promise of slapping peaks and throbbing ravines.

My fantasies stayed the sandman. 

That surreptitious frisson. 

A bored debutante, gormless and cornered. A young widow (forty max), grief-stricken and rudderless. My gilded experience (and well-taken tummy tuck) elicits an opening. My bar tab heaves with squirreled winter fuel allowance, suggesting a life of indolent comfort, après coitus. 

Instead, a procession of Ednas, and Noras, and Jeans asked after grandkids over Gin Rummy, flashing their brown compression socks. 

My ebbing erection went unattended, fighting slumber’s submission. These days, any self-inflicted pop meant a lengthy reloading – less Walther PPK, more flintlock musket. 

I ensconced in the dining cart, slurring “soup and steak,” at some white-gloved skivvy and biting down on a seeded dinner roll. 

The concentric minestrone ripples lulled. My head lolled. 

A judder roused me. A sultry femme, poured into a strappy black dress, devoured me from a table by the vestibule. She swept back a raven strand from her flawless forehead, her clammed red lips parting – curling –  her pearly teeth unleashed.

I was shaken. Stirred. I smiled back, the premium Turkey bridgework dazzling, the Botox stomping down any crow’s feet crinkles. 

Her sleek eyebrows flickered. A glossy finger pressed at her tuliped pout. 

I continued to rouse, giving more grin, miming ‘come’ with the steely bravado of a storied bomber commander. 

Those delicious lips dilated. She mouthed a retort. Something-something-something-stuck-something-something-something. A wet pink tongue probed and flicked east to west. 

My pacemaker thundered, clickety-clack. 

I composed, conjuring Moore, Connery (to a lesser extent, Craig), patting the velvet cushion next to me, where I desired her arse to be – what the French call dénouement. 

She rolled her smoky eyes, slurping her dirty martini, lithe shoulders turned towards the cresting Alps. 

My tepid steak winked up at me. How long had it been there? I blinked with leaden lids, one at a time, at my cast-away catch, the peacock feathers on this rusty hook no longer enticing beyond flipped glances. 

I examined myself. A beige splodge stained my crisp white shirt (Lazenby! Dalton!), but a flesh wound at this distance…

I raised a serrated knife, inspecting my sharp reflection – the sympathetically tousled toupee. The suctioned jowls. I grimaced at her lack of taste… 

…black seeds! From the damn bread! 

They’d stuck between my veneers, stark as plague flies on bleached tombstones. 

I faced the blade’s tip to pick them loose. The train convulsed over rickety track. My cheek and screams pierced. Hot blood spurted. The shock, the slump, and, finally, flaccid sleep. 

“Help,” my unconscious ear heard her merge with thundering brogues. “This old man has done himself a mischief! The way he was acting, I think he was having a stroke!”

Ian’s prompts were: On a Sleeper Train, an Insomniac, Seeds

Ian Johnson is an emerging writer from North East England, hung up on generational trauma, malaises of the heart, and crises of triviality. He is currently working with Trash Cat Lit, Black Glass Pages, and Apricot Press, and will soon be querying his debut novel – a ‘town and gown’ crime thriller. His words appear in Trash Cat Lit, Product, Blood + Honey, and Free Flash Fiction. He is a 2026 ‘Best of the Net’ nominee.
@10kandalatte (X) @youcanandyouwill (Bluesky)