After a long evening, Judy Peach was pleased to be on the last leg of her fiddly journey home. She heaved her bag across, put away her walkman, and leant gratefully against the shabby upholstery of the suburban train. A robust heat radiated from the seating under her. Good. The clothes she felt compelled to wear for work - for presenting herself to her discerning clients - did not make for comfort, and certainly did not make for protection against the cold. The frigid late autumn air chilled her unprotected ankles, cruelly insulated as they were only by her strap high-heeled shoes and tights.

Those tights! The dry, crepey sensation of them drove her to distraction on some days, And that stupid woollen suit, the skin always pinning her as she walked, always sliding up past her waist, despite her best efforts to remain tidy-looking, professional and groomed in appearance. But work was work, and looks, as she was always told, mattered in her profession: the difference between keeping a firm as a client, or losing them. Judy was a conscientious employee; she wanted to do her best. She wanted to look the part.

Opposite her by the window sat a middle-aged woman with thick glasses, hair pulled back in a rigorous bun, frown deepening as she remained engrossed in a paperback. Judy took care not to move too close to her. Things were not too bad though, it was by no means rush hour at this time of the evening. Judy did not have to fight for a seat against the seething mass of other commuters. It was not like the grisly morning exodus to the city centre either, where slow-moving crowds herded like sheep into the over-used tube trains, too crammed together to move with any freedom at all: gross.

Unfortunately, even now the train was filling up. A large woman with a copiously large bag took an entire seat, not far from where Judy sat, then a young man oozed over to sit opposite Elizabeth, despite the fact that he could still hove chosen a totally unoccupied space. Shit. Judy however, could have taken on instant dislike to the young man, even if he hadn't started to impinge on her personal space, as most commuters were wont to do. He hod a furtive look about him, and the zip to his trousers was undone. Surreptitiously, Judith watched him adjust his trousers via his reflection in the window.

The lights above the door beeped, and the train began to ease its way out of the terminus. Soon she would hear the comforting litany of the names of all the stations she must pass before her stop, and soon she would be home, getting ready her last meal of the day before bed.

Somehow however, she could not feel comfortable. The young man sitting opposite her was proving to be a highly selfish commuter. He was leaning forward as though sleeping, his eyes almost, but not totally shut: Judith could sense this, as there was still an almost feral gleam to them, reflected in the mirror. He sat with his legs apart, reminding Judy, with considerable distaste, of those dogs which tended to sprawl on their backs in front of their owners, displaying the whole of their genitals. His legs were also splayed in such a way that somehow his right foot managed to pin both of her ankles. In fact the tip of his foot was pressing against the inner part of her calf quite snugly, as though seeking out her aching discomfort from having stood for so long, for so much of the day. It was so uncomfortable for her to have to bear the weight of this stranger encroaching against her. Surely, it could not be deliberate.

Or could it? Could she be she was being paranoid, she asked herself as she studied her unwelcome companion through the corner of her eyes, at his reflection again. Something about commuting each and every day at such antisocial hours did sometimes play tricks with her mind, or so it seemed to her. What about the time she was on the tube last week? When she became convinced two of the men in the car were staring of her? Of course, it had to be paranoia. She surely did not stand out that much from the crowds, after all.

Her study of the young man told her that he was older than he first seemed. He was so short and wiry in build that at first, Judith would have taken him for someone not even fully-grown, fifteen at most. However, the very well established six o'clock shadow discernible on his profile and the excessive proliferation of thick, almost furry hairs springing from his exposed wrists, had to make him at least ten years older than that. His head with its thick and shaggy dark hair seemed a little large in proportion to the rest of his body, his sloping brow almost Neanderthal. Possibly, he was a midget: he looked as though he could even hove been a jockey. Whatever the case, something almost menacing seemed to emanate from him, an almost solid core of malignity.

Oh come on Judy, get a grip. Imagining things again.

It had to be her imagination that when she tried to shift her legs way from him, his almost immediately followed, pinning her still further against the comer. There was not a great deal of room: Judy had quite long, slim legs. She would have been hard pressed to be able to move much further back, at all. Not without disturbing that nice, respectable woman who was sitting opposite her, so engrossed in her reading. What would she think of her if she suddenly stood up, or make a fuss? Why, she would think she was mad, of course. Making it all up.

Now the stranger opposite had the full weight at his leg, leaning against her calf. He shifted as though to adjust himself a little: stroked the hollows of her ankles, the inside of her calf, with a lingering sensitivity, gentle and softly soothing. In its way, it did feel very pleasant. Once again, It reminded Judy of lust how cramped and achy her limbs did feel from standing all day. She recognised in fact, that a good part of her did not want this massage, however uninvited, to finish. She asked herself, how this almost subhuman looking specimen with such an aura of unregenerate evil, could understand this deep need within her for intimate touch, from which she had not known she was so starved.

It could not be allowed to go on, though. Judy sat bolt upright, noisily and emphatically shitting her bag. She was rewarded. The man's leg withdrew a little.

Judy allowed herself to look at him directly. Hooded eyes appeared blandly unseeing. Maybe he did not know he was doing it, she told herself. She did not want to falsely accuse him. She was not sure she really wanted to call the attention of the guard, either. Everyone in the car would then not only recognise by her voice that she was a foreigner, which would be absolutely terrible, they would all know she was a trouble-maker too, falsely accusing one of their own of filthy, unspeakable acts against her innocent person.

She certainly found him quite repulsive. In the mirror again, she could now see the tip of his tongue, protruding from somewhat over-sized teeth. It seemed to be on unusually ruddy tongue, moving restlessly over his lips like a fat, though unusually agile, worm. The reflection appeared to distort the image, so that at times it appeared to be forked: of course, Judy knew that this could not be.

Now the young man's fingers appeared to begin to wander. These too, she noticed with fascination borne of revulsion, seemed to possess an almost bestial quality. His fingers, like the rest of him, were abnormally hirsute, and unusually squat. They jigged against his own thigh as another station came and went, as though he was impatient to see the end of his destination. Funny then, how his fingers, somehow managed to accidentally stray against Judy's knee, as the train swayed over a particularly bad stretch of rail. Funny again, how the tip of his finger, purely by chance of course, managed to locate the most sensitive hollow of her knee, pressing gently against it, withdrawing, then returning. It just felt so good; yet again, Judy found herself, against her better nature, which knew she was being abused, if indeed abuse it was, and still not a figment of her overwrought commuter's imagination, craving the stranger's sly, insidious groping. She knew that it would be in her best interests to move to an unoccupied seat now, as she had already given the young man the benefit of the doubt for too long. She just had to get herself out of this!

Then something happened, which totally removed all possible doubt that all this could be a figment of her imagination. Suddenly and without warning the man moved his hand, with lightning speed, to the upper part of her thigh. With his other hand he pulled her head towards him and, swinging her leg apart, leant forward from his seat as if in supplication, then thrust the full front of his body against her. She felt her skirt snag and tear, as it gave to accommodate his iron grasp. Judy could feel her heart begin to thud painfully and her hands to tremble. She stared wildly at the middle-aged woman who was sitting opposite here, terrified of what she might think at her. Her companion however, seemed to be oblivious. She was determinedly focussed on her book, to the exclusion of anything external at all, as for as Judy could judge.

The young man did not let her thigh go, though it seemed at this precise point that restraint was the only thing he had in mind. He pulled her head closer to his, snout and lips seeking out the hollow of her throat. She bit back a hysterical laugh, as the rough stubble of his face tickled her unbearably, She could now hear the beat of his heart the rasp of excited breath, and the smell of him...which was quite something else. Rank, goatish, making her want to retch. Next, the hair was carefully parted from the nape of her neck: wet tongue and putrescent breath grazed her ear, found the sensitive tip of her vertebrae. Then he began to lick gently, until the agonising sensation of needle-sharp teeth, without warning, sliced into the back of her skull in an excruciating, yet delicious wave of agony.

It was over almost as quickly as it started. Somehow the teeth were just as quickly disengaged, something warm and viscous licked away, then Judy was pulled to her feet and in a whirled daze, led to the door and pushed out at just the right stop for the short walk to her flat.

Many weeks later, Judy was travelling late home from work again. She had spent some time away from work, because of an unfortunate virus she had contracted. Violent vomiting, a vertiginous fever and terrible cramps in her neck and joints accompanied by a great intolerance to bright light, had seemed to leave her floating between life and death for at least a week although her landlady had assured her that it was only a bad case of flu. She had not entirely bought this. It was something about the sly looks exchanged between her landlady and the doctor, when she had weakly and inexpertly in what little she know at their secretive, enigmatic tongue, had tried to question them about what was really wrong with her.

She was a lot more cautious in sizing up whoever sat near her whenever she commuted now, especially late at night, and she now carried a personal alarm in her bag. She also, no longer wore high-heeled shoes with insubstantial tights: now she wore sensible shoes with thick soles and well-made trousers that kept her legs hidden from view: she no longer cared about what her employers thought of her image at work.

She was still not totally sure that she had not somehow totally imagined what had happened to her, although there wore certain signs, that she had not. She played her Walkman everywhere she travelled, sometimes at full blast. Judy knew that the sense that the music somehow insulated her against the full onslaught of the rest of the world was an illusion, but that did not stop her from playing it whenever she could. Besides the music often seemed to stir deep sensations and longings within her innermost being, feelings which, it seemed to her, had been submerged for many years. They made her want to discard, not just some, but all the trappings of her old job and lifestyle, to simply run into the night, greeting the brightness of the stars and the moon.

She suspected that she now frightened her clients. This was a quite new experience for Judy, who had never particularly perceived herself as possessing any real strength or power. Hadn't she always been considered to be something of a mouse at work, for example? Now, however, her clients seemed to be unwilling to meet the intensity of her eyes, as though they knew she could see beyond whatever corporate surface they wished to project, but to something deep and precious within. Something, which they somehow divined she coveted, with a speculative and greedy stare.