TCP 26 - The midnight train home

He cradles a dumbek, carefully blanketed in a soft, protecting blue blanket, its base resting in his lap, its head held closely against his chest.

A pair of headphones fastened to his ears produce an electronic percussive rhythm -

Beep
Chirp
Chirp
Chirp
Beep

- that sneaks it's way through the cold, silent, and exhausted atmosphere of this last train of the night.

He shakes his, a involuntary reflex, an impulse, an instinct, to the rhythm.

Beep
Chirp
Chirp
Chirp
Beep

His right foot follows with the down beat.

Thump

Thump. Thump
Thump
Thump

His head continues to shake.
In a trance, in a spell, his fingers follow with tabla poly-rhythms on the clothed rim of his treasured dumbek.

Tap tiddle taptap
Tiddle tap tiddletiddle tap
Tap taptap tiddletap

The surrounding drones, dazed in the wake of the capitalist machine,
sit
and
listen
Perhaps ignoring it.
Perhaps pretending not to be lured into it. His percussive symphony remains the only sound within the train, accompanied only there by the hollow howls of the sleeping night rushing beyond the train's windows.

Beeptiddle tap
Taptaptap
Chirp
Thumptiddle
Chirp
Thump thump
Tiddletaptiddle tiddle tap
Beep
Chirp