just looking

He was a very large man. His palms were of incredible proportions. His shoulders enormous. His skin looked as if he spilled a bag of marbles underneath it. There were round bubbles everywhere. I have the sad feeling they might have been tumors. He had a huge black bag with him. On top of this large bag was a slim laptop which he clumsily held with his left hand. He looked up as I entered the train car. His attention was distracted from his task for just a tiny moment. Once the train left the station, he began to seek out keys on the keyboard and to pick at them as if he almost intended to crush them. The laptop made animal sounds. The large finger would hit a key and there would be a loud animal sound. Most of the animals he was squishing seemed to be frogs. After a while the frog sounds became less and less and there was more and more of this strangely canned laughter, a bit like the giggles on sitcoms. This laughter had an odd twist to it. I had the impression as if it were for a little puppet theater in which the audience was made to breathe helium. The man looked out the train window as we entered the next station. He adjusted his eyes and moved his neck in a way that exposed more of the bubbles under his skin. His entire body must have been covered in them. I noticed many more now. On his neck, his hands, and very many on his face.
He opened the large black bag, bulled out the original packaging for his RadioShack Accelerator Vision. It was amazing in how many ways he tried to jam the device into its original packaging. He seemed to have real trouble understanding the concept of dimensions. His eyes looked puzzled as he tried to close the box again and again. There would be a side of the laptop sticking out, or just a portion of the internal packaging. He eventually forced the box into a new shape. It was just in time for him to stuff it into the bag and get out of the train. He walked in the strangest way. The other passengers did not block his way as usual. He seemed untouchable.
His seat was occupied by a young couple just seconds later. The girl was staring at me with an odd curiosity, while her boyfriend was shooting down little color blocks on his silver cellphone. I tried not to look back, but there, the boy won a level and the girl kissed him with exaggerated passion. Her eyes still oddly attached to me, for a moment too long.