(Prompt Photo: Jon-Tyson on Unsplash.com)

The man's name used to be Jacob.

Before, he had often wondered how it would be to view the world in black and white instead of colour. This must be as close as he would get, sitting on a platform at Baker Street Station, the shades muted and hidden by fog - thick and milky, pooling heavily down onto the tracks.

The platform was familiar. He once lived nearby and took the Jubilee Line to work each morning. It never looked like this. It never smelled like this, faintly of sage, instead of sweat and of pollution. It never was this quiet. A faint buzzing came from a neon sign to his right, but that too was dulled. The lit-up letters flickered, not by design but due to some problem with the wiring. WALK-IN SPECIAL. The "L" in SPECIAL kept going out, then back on with a struggle, as if by sheer force of will to do its job. The rest of the word barely held up, too.

The sign was unusual not by its existence, but by its placement. The man who used to be Jacob had seen many just like it in his years: outside barber shops on busy high streets, hidden in dimly lit alleyways, tucked away in corners of the city - but never on train platforms. The Tube came too often to enjoy a shave interim, it was not a place of leisure or self-care but of hurry, of last-minute coffee cups, folded Metro newspapers staining one's fingers with ink, avoiding the eyes of strangers who sat across from you. The man who used to be Jacob wondered at this now – he had never sat on one of the metal benches lining the platform for this long before, in relative ease and no intricate plan ahead. He did not know where he was going, so there was no need to walk to the front of the platform, or to the back, to be as close as possible to the exit at the end of his journey.

There was nothing else to do, so he stood up and walked towards the sign. Just by it - an opening in the brick wall, a door of glass and metal, covered in years of grime. He tried it and it opened, soundlessly and without resistance.

The hues returned to normal here, but compared to the outside they hit his senses like technicolour, like covers of the Beatles' later albums he used to listen to in his youth. The walls were the yellow of daffodils, inexplicably.

The person with questionable taste stood beside a red barber's chair. He found it hard to focus on her. Was it a her? His eyes couldn't quite adjust. The person seemed blurred around the edges, fuzzy like TV static. The man who used to be Jacob tried to look, but his gaze would skim over her, miss him altogether, focus on things behind and beside, but not quite on the person.

"You here for the walk-in?"

"Yeah. Saw the sign. How much is it? Do you take cards?"

She laughed. "You need to think in different terms here. How about the memory of your first lie?"

The man who used to be Jacob found that he could not remember it anyway, so agreed without much hesitance.

The person stood above him as he sat in the red chair, turned him around so he could see out of the glass door, to the platform. The "L" in the sign had given up. The "CIA" would go soon after, he thought. "Your sign is broken," the man who used to be Jacob said, or maybe he didn't. He could not be sure.

"What brings you here, boy?" He walked away to sharpen a straight razor on a piece of leather, her movements strong and decisive. The man who used to be Jacob thought his throat would sound the same when cut, his skin leathery and hard from years of hard work and harder drinking. He found no fear in the thought.

"I'm not sure."

There was little truth in the words as he spoke them, although he was certain they were not a lie.

"That right, is it?"

She had a strong, Cockney accent, intertwined with the hollowed swish of the stropping motion. Up and down, over and over. She blew onto the blade, inspected it under the yellow light of the room. The last four letters in the word went out.

WALK-IN SPE

"You ready, yeah?" he said.

He was ready, the man who used to be Jacob said, and not long after his face, the underside of his chin and his throat were covered in heavy white foam. It intensified the smell of sage he'd noticed earlier, but mixed with something else – poppies, maybe. He felt a little dizzy.

"What's your name?"

The man who used to be Jacob wasn't sure why he asked, only that the words came out slack and stagnant, and without the involvement of reason. She ignored it, instead forcing his face away, hand strong and fingers calloused. Before he knew it the knife, warm from the leather, was gliding across his skin.

"Ooh, your skin's not liking this, not a bit," he whistled, not stopping a moment, "can see some blood spots here already. Not good at all."

The man wondered if he should leave now, before whatever was to happen next happened, but the chair was comfortable, and the foam smelled strong and nice, and he found he couldn't really move his legs. The sign, just in his view, flickered heavier, with longer moments of darkness. The "SP" seemed to be going the way of the other letters.

"Tough skin you've got there mate. Could think you worked at the docks. But you didn't, did you? You worked in the City. Office job all the way. Can tell by your fingers – dainty things, could snap 'em off of your hands like twigs. And by your lie." There was no malice in the barber's voice, although the man who used to be Jacob thought there should be, by his words, by her fingers digging into the flesh over his cheekbone.

The "SP" flickered quickly, like a spasm, then gave away just as he felt the nick on his skin, the cold trickle making its way down his face. "Oops. My bad." she laughed. It was a nice laugh. He'd have bought her a drink, with a laugh like that, if he met her in a bar. They would have done the usual - whiskey for him, vodka cranberry for her, then another, and then a quick text to his wife, from the bathroom, I'm working late, don't wait up, love you, and some lies about just how much a city banker made. Actually, no, that wasn't the lie. The lie was the part about being a banker, rather than the accountant. He knew exactly how much bankers made, and how much accountants didn't. He could see it now – the bar, the woman across from him, smiling that smile that spelled the night ahead. He couldn't quite remember how he got there, then realised all at once the bar was only a veil over reality.

The man who used to be called Jacob forced his eyes to stay on the person, as she walked off to clean the soap and blood of the cut-throat. She was willowy and young, and ancient and strong at the same time, with skin just like the caramel deserts his mum used to make, too sweet for his teeth and too dense to swallow without milk. She walked not in steps but in the spaces between moments, missing from the plane he could perceive, instead appearing to him in tandem with seconds counted by the flickering of the sign, the humming of the static electricity. Then she was a man, but he was a woman, and his brain swam around his skull untethered to reality, eyes burning and sore – he'd kept them open too long, not blinking, and now he could no longer remember how to. She turned back to face the man who used to be Jacob, eyes closed for a heartbeat – when she opened them, they were black and empty.

"Are you God?"

She laughed and the man who used be Jacob felt teeth within it, sharp. The fear was still absent. He wondered if it would come, or if the very parts of him capable of feeling it – the amygdala, the neurons, the nerves snaking underneath his muscles – had been removed.

"I suppose I am, boy. Although that is such an ugly word. You humans, you just twist things until they aren't what they are, then complain about it," He leaned against the table, the mirror behind reflecting only a colourful array of noise, a test pattern like the old television set would at his parents' home at night, when tv was still analogue and channels turned off after 2am.

"But yes, if that helps your little brain, call me God. Or call me Gaia, or Zeus, or Jesus – or don't call me at all, and we will both be happier for it."

The cockney accent was gone, turned instead into something he couldn't place or easily understand.

Her eyes turned blacker. The first two letters of the sign fizzled out violently. His own burned anew and he had to look away or go blind, so he looked away, focused on the floor, concrete, grey, dirty. He heard more of the sign crackle and turn black, letter by letter, and looked to it, although he could not tell why if asked.

L – I E

The man wondered what would happen next. He wondered if he'd have someone to tell. The god in front of him looked to be enjoying himself, so the man who used to be Jacob doubted it. And if he had no-one to tell – did it happen? It didn't, he decided. And so he waited for it to happen.