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He was practically having to drag his heavy limbs up the old staircase that led from the station platform to the high street.
Lucas’ body didn’t seem to work anymore. Occasionally, he fantasised about returning it. He would demand to see the manager in order to request an explanation as to why he’d been given faulty goods.
Sometimes the poor shop assistant would shrug and shake her head, confusedly asking how she could possibly help him with the problem of his failing limbs. Other times she would grow angry and threaten to call the police or, worse, extract an axe from behind the counter and offer to remove the offending extremities herself.
This last fantasy would always bring him out of his bitterness with a wry grin. “Lucas,” he’d say to himself, “it’s high time you got over yourself and learnt to be happy again.” After such reflection, he might smack his shin with his cane and continue the difficult walk to wherever it is life had dictated he needed to be going.
The staircase at the station was always a struggle. Of course there was a ramp to the side, for women with pushchairs and cripples in wheelchairs. But Lucas would always forego the leisurely stroll that took one under the high street and then slowly up a sheltered ramp to reach the town’s bus terminal.
His friend, Elizabeth, told him that he was just a stubborn man, a stubborn man who wouldn’t accept the help that society was prepared to offer him. But, to Lucas, the prospect of the long walk up the gloomy concrete ramp was a pointless exercise - a waste of his valuable time. Why should he go out of his way like that only to have to double back, practically right back to the station entrance, so that he could then begin his journey home in earnest?
No, better to take the shortest route, the route any other clear-minded individual would surely opt for. Expert use of his cane, the hand rail, and his legs would soon see him to street level.
All this week, the road outside the station’s ticket office was being resurfaced. For this reason, orange plastic fencing had been set up along the edge of the road, beyond the head of the stairs, where Lucas usually crossed the road.
He usually crossed the road where it was safe to do so - at a designated pedestrian crossing - the only one on the long high street. Without this aid, crossing the road had become more of a climb for Lucas than the old staircase.
Lucas was a man, a grown man, with 35 years’ experience on this planet. Surely he could cross a road, without the assistance of lights that stopped the traffic for him.
The station entrance had an ornate shelter extending out from it that might have dated to before the Second World War. Lucas hovered at the edge of this awning and allowed the many shoppers and commuters to brush and bump him. He regarded the plain grey sky. He regarded the dark tarmac road. He watched the puddles still drying from yesterday.
This man, Lucas, then strolled out into the late afternoon and followed the flow of life as best he could, wending its way down the street.
He stopped, every now and again, to examine the traffic and the chances offered to cross the tarmac river before him. Here a young boy darted between the stop-start cars, there a lone woman stepped out into the street and put her hand up against the movement of the wheels and metal, parting them Moses-like. Lucas shook his head and coughed into his cupped hand.
A bald man shunted by Lucas with two young girls on his arms, dragging behind him. He was eager to cross, and they were dallying, fearful of the road and the bald man’s need to reach the other side. Lucas saw that these children knew this just wasn’t the way to cross a road.
So he sat down. Sat down on the kerb and waited. He picked up a twig and drew patterns across his reflection in the puddle he found there in the road.
A homeless man tapped Lucas on the shoulder and asked if he was okay. He said that he was. That he was just waiting.
So that’s what he did. He waited, and he thought damn hard about how he might go about the difficult process of one day returning his body.

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