The Ride

The bus glided through the streets like a boat on a smooth as glass lake; fluid and agile. It preambled so far off the expected path into deeper darkness that I no longer recognized or could describe anything outside the windows. As you can imagine, this caused me great consternation. I felt completely lost. I never been to my destination before, but I knew the city well. I cupped my hands around my face to see better through the glass, but all I could see was vegetation. Thick brush and tall, barren, skeletal trees. What happened to the city? I wondered to myself. Alone. This was the beginning of my loneliness and I had no idea where I was headed. I began to work up the courage to ask the driver where we were heading, but when I stood up the sign that registered a stop flashed a bright orange X. The driver's arm with the sleeve rolled up to reveal a thin, grey forearm, extended out from the partition with a thumbs down. What the hell?

I was jolted back into my seat suddenly as the bus picked up speed. It was so quick to reach places I did recognize. Large structures of granite and onyx that stood tall, monolithic and horned deep into the sky. Then buildings and houses but the colours were wrong. Glass buildings were tinted green, and brick was bone dust white that had turned yellow with time. Then there was more forests of brambles and thorny vines that consisted of very little leaves. The trees seemed to reach for the bus, the tips of their branches screamed across the metal sides and roof like a fork scraped across a dinner plate. Each section of this city was so vastly different from the last.

My mind found something to latch onto, a snippet of a song I'd heard once or twice, "and tell me, did Venus blow your mind? Was it everything you wanted to find?" What was I asking myself? I haven't found anything. The bus accelerated again, swerving this way and that down winding roads that went around buildings and then mountains, into tunnels - I don't remember this city, my city, having any tunnels - everything whipped by so fast that it was as if the driver not only steered the colossal bus so much as folded space in half, ploughing over the fold and arriving at great distances in no time. It was actually jarring. It warped my perception and tension headaches stretched across my skull blurring my vision. It made me nauseas, especially when the bus came to a stop. What was incredible was how smooth and eerily quiet it was.

A stop would approach as if the sign on the street were in a sling shot that was released at us in slow motion. It was at so many points it seemed like it had carved itself through the aether. The bus would stop at regular intervals in spite of the fact that no one was waiting at them. The driver stopped the bus near an industrial park where there was wide shoulders to the road and immensely deep ditches on either side. It was almost as if the road was set between large levees like a river. It did still look wet. Why did the driver get off the bus? Smoke maybe. I couldn't see her. What time was it? See, been a while since time was brought up eh? Strange to have travelled so far across great distances and not one time think about, well time. It must be getting so late. I feel like I am back on that bus now, telling you about it. Truth be told it was much later than I had anticipated, but it was really hard to tell. Everything was happening so fast. And yet, it wasn't at all.

I thought about him. I was missing him at the party. No, that isn't quite right. I was missing him. It wasn't about time and place. It was about the inner space of longing for something comforting. I wished he was with me then. We were still going strong, setting fires everywhere. We were literally two halves of a divine spark. We belonged together. The longer we stayed in place the worse that angst got. It was a lead weight buoyed in my midsection, holding me to the seat with my eyes glued to the large pane of glass beside me.

What the hell was the driver doing?

Then suddenly the doors exhaled and swooshed open. The dull grey material of the uniform ball cap rose up above the railings and plexiglass followed by the bus company's logo, a white rectangle with what looked a little like a gondola and gondolier in the middle. Some blue wavy lines underneath to symbolize water. It didn't look municipal. I stood to ask what had happened and if we were headed to the stop I needed. The driver turned to me. As she did she raised an outstretched finger to her mouth, which was suddenly lipless and said, "shh" noisily, spittle fanned out from her mouth in front of her. I gasped and sat right back down.

Out of fear I turned toward the window again stared as hard as I could trying to get any kind of glimpse of the outside world. How long had I actually been on this bus? A moment later I was able to see shadows writhing all about the ditch. How could there have been shadows if it was dark out you ask? How the hell should I know? Except, the one thing I do know is that they were thin and ethereal like proper shadows. They had form and their skin was the colour of a charcoal briquette. It looked like cooling lava, cracked and radiating thin lines of orange light from between the cracks. I pressed my face against the glass and cupped my hands around my eyes. I watched as some lay stretched out in the gravel shoulder writhing while others struck them with blunt instruments repeatedly. Some crawled on feet and hands like spiders, crooked and contorted, while others were simply limbless and lay about screaming. A different group leapt straight up folding at the apex of the leap and like a dolphin descended face first into the asphalt and gravel with audible crunches that made me clench really hard. There was a halo of blood around each of their flattened noses and burst lips. I had to be dreaming these nearly faceless beings were the stuff of nightmares, not city streets. I shook my head squeezing my eyes shut as tight as I possibly could to try and reset myself, telling myself they'd be gone once I opened my eyes again. I rubbed them and then opened them. It was all some sort of mistake, some great misunderstanding. All at once they turned toward me jerkily. Suddenly they had eyes as red as newly stoked embers. In complete shock I scrambled away from the glass kicking at the wall of the bus and the chair armrest for leverage.

The bus shifted into gear and sped off. Holy hell, what is happening to me. I am definitely losing my mind, I thought. What was worse, was that now I was hungry. Time that old huckster was trading up on me now for sure. I knew it. Where the hell was I? Was I ever going to get to the party?

The bus glided along,

"your best friend always sticking up for you even when I know you're wrong."

There it is again. Wait, am I doing this now? Is this me here and now singing this song subconsciously to you? Or, was it haunting me that fateful night? I know something now that never occurred to me before. It isn't sung from my perspective. I'm not the narrator of that song am I? Was I? No, it was him, all along it was him. My angel. Is he singing it to me now in his own loneliness? Am I receiving his mental radio? Oh, I do hope so. Then this nightmare might soon be over.