Everyone on This Train is a Suspect (Ernest Cunningham, #2)

by Benjamin Stevenson

Everything was three-quarter size in keeping with the train’s space-saving design—the seat edge sat beneath my thighs instead of my knees, which wasn’t to say it was uncomfortable, but it did make me feel like I was visiting a hobbit.

His blocky frame did not sit comfortably in the little table booth. His bulbous ears had more hair than his head, protruding antennae of such length that I decided he could hardly be unaware of them and likely they served some function similar to a cat’s whiskers, considering his peripheral vision was reduced by his tiny teddy-bear eyes.

He was the type of person who picked up and carried a suitcase with wheels, just so he could complain about how heavy it was.

the scruffiness of a hangover still blurred his edges, and he dropped into a seat like he’d been shot in the knee.

We had a huge blow-out, screaming-the-grout-from-the-kitchen-tiles type stuff.

A fleeting glimpse that triggers a random memory. That’s all we hunt for, Hatch, if you don’t understand. Writing is merely piling up the sticks and the grass and then hoping a tiny flicker sets it all aflame. Like all the best ideas, it just snapped into focus as a story.