Down in the Mines
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 495

Jason hopped on the last train leaving the Roma Street station for the evening. He has a good night out with the lads from the office and was well and truly tanked up. Te thought of driving home in his BMW, did cross his mind, but he must have left his car keys in the office desk.

“Evening, Sir,” a voice behind Jason said.

Jason turned around quickly, his head felt as though it continued spinning after he stopped. He did not see anyone in the car when he chose it, just in case he had to hurl before he reached his station at Milton, so nobody would see him.

“Who’s there?”

“Got any change, Mister?”

Jason looked down to the floor where the voice emanated from. I must be drunker than I thought; he thought when he saw a thickly bearded dwarf standing just over three feet tall.

“Look mister, I ain’ got all night you know. I start work in ‘alf and hour and need change to pay for me ticket.”

Jason rubbed his eyes, then looked back at the dwarf, who was still there despite Jason believing that he should not be. Some things just shouldn’t be standing on a suburban train, and a dwarf was one of them.

“You’re a dwarf.” He said.

“Very observant, governor,” said the dwarf. “Now can you spare me some change or not?”

Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of one and two dollar coins.

“That ain’ real gold,” said the dwarf.

“It’s real currency, sir,”

“Not at the station, it ain’,” said the dwarf, turning his nose up at the handful of change. “Look, I ain’ got time for this.”

The dwarf pulled out his heavy war hammer and smacked Jason on the forehead. Jason thought he felt the train pull to a halt a hundred yards before his station. He thought he saw a new station, or one that he had never seen before, a bustle with hundreds of dwarves madly scurrying about, then fell unconscious from the blow to the head.

When he came to, he felt cold, heavy chains around his ankles and wrists. He was laying inside a primitive wooden cage on a rickety train track.
Queensland Rail didn’t make that one, he thought to himself.

The dwarf he saw on the train received a handful of gold coins, real gold coins, from an older looking dwarf.

“Right,” the elderly dwarf said to Jason. “You’ll be working for me now, son.”

The cage began to roll forward on the track, heading towards the opening of an underground mine. Jason recognized the general surroundings, like the suburb of Milton where he lived. But the mine was sitting where the real train station was.

“Should have given young, Reggie his train fare, Mister,” said the old dwarf. “He has a habit of selling you humans to pay for his ride to work.”