Checking his watch as he sat down on the train had Kyle frowning. He knew it wouldn't mean much to anybody else, but he always felt annoyed when things weren't quite as they should be. If they went wrong, the least they could do is go badly, so that one didn't feel uncertain.
The the train was a minute late to leave, making it nine minutes to eight o'clock.
If it had been on time, of course, he wouldn't have made it at all. This morning he was running late, because just about everything had gone wrong, since before he had even been awake.
The clock arms had spun around and exploded off as the spring unwound. When he'd slept by when it should have alarmed, his cat had taken it upon themself to lay a fart directly into his nose in revenge for a late breakfast.
His belt had broken, dropping his pants. Thankfully he had a pair of braces. He did pop a button on his shirt getting them on, but it was below the waist of his pants.
His toaster caught fire, so he'd had no breakfast, but the power had gone out which extinguished that.
He had slipped on the ice outside his house, which is where most of the one minute delay had come from. That was a real list of disasters - not like the train's sixty second moment before it groaned and heaved, before beginning to slip fluidly along the rails.
Kyle leaned back and turned his head to the window, intending to try and relax. A minute late was nothing. He really shouldn't read into it, no matter how badly wrong the rest of his day was going.
The train gave a jerk as it crossed from Victorian wide gauge to standard, and Kyle's attention was jerked back along with it, as a woman fell into him, delivering her shoulder to his mouth.
"Are you okay dear? Are you okay?"
She fell into the seat beside him.
'Never fear, sir. Just let me sit upon my rear, it is as the seer declared it!'
Kyle blinked, looking at the woman with surprise.
"You speak of the future, wisdom in your eyes,"
