The Journey Continues

Where normally all the buses arrive with a practiced synchronicity, suddenly there were none to be found. So who was she talking to? I gagged on the smell and the heat made it hurt. My tongue stuck to the back of my throat. I hate the quiet. Why did everything have to be so damn quiet here. With so much chaos exploding all around me, maybe I've gone deaf. I was wrong earlier when I said I'd never felt so alone. It was here and now, watching them talk beneath all the columns of oily black smoke, in the smell and the tumult that the loneliness found a way to burrow deeper inside.

Part of me, wanted the rest of me to retreat inside. I could feel my mind slipping. It reminded me of a poem I read on a blog once,

"The voices crawl across across my brain

like spiders on a thread.

Pinching nerves that spread their pain

like prophets of the dead."

The only problem was that the only voice crawling across my mind was my own. I hadn't broken that way. But I could feel all the twist ties loosening. I mean, I was listening to that song, you know the one from earlier? That is what started all of this. And now, I'm stuck on a bus hotter than hell, with some sort of riot going on, everything is burning and broken. Rather than retreat, in fact the thought of retreating into myself, letting it all go became a motivator. Fuck that, I'm not going to give up that easily. I got up and walked to the front of the bus. I touched one of the hand rails blistering my hand just below my pinky finger. It hurt like a real bastard. I looked out the window to see what the drivers were doing and to make sure they wouldn't see me. Who knows what they would do. I didn't know what I was looking for exactly. A jacket hanging neatly over the back of the chair had that logo of the silhouetted gondola and the gondolier on it. There was a name tag that read Charon S. Strange way to spell it, I thought. The bus rocked with the rolling roads, which were still rippling with small but powerful waves. I don't know if you've ever seen asphalt or concrete heave, it has some weight to throw around. The bus groaned with the impacts. None of this was helping with my disorientation and nausea.

I caught my breath and managed to quell the penny taste from my mouth, spitting and breathing deeply until it was gone. There was nothing of interest at the front of the bus, nothing to help me get any answers. Feeling a little braver now that my stomach had stopped heaving with the motions of the bus, I made for the bus door. It quickly and forcefully shut just as my hands got near it, nearly knocking me back on my ass. I got up and tried to push on it. It wouldn't budge. Not in the slightest. It felt like a granite wall. I threw my shoulder into it and still nothing but a bruise to show for my effort. I stood there staring at it.

All I wanted to do that night was go to a party. He was going to be there. My angel. My love. Sure he was there with some other friends, but he had to know I was coming. We hadn't seen each other in a few days. I missed him terribly and I know he felt the same. "Drops of Jupiter in her hair." It was going to be a great night!

That damn song is still haunting me! I couldn't get it out of my head if my life depended on it that night. This is where I noticed that the drivers were missing. Missing from the picture, not lost. I mean I had no idea where they had gone and that was very disconcerting. I stood there for a few more minutes, but the heat started worming its way back into my skull and down my airways starting a conflagration in my lungs. It was seriously like a forest fire inside there. I swooned and ended up blistering my palms catching myself from falling over. I went back over to my seat deciding to wait for a bit.

The riot began to move away to the west of us. I sat. The fires began to die down, most just embers now. The sky changed shades slightly. I sat. The sky shifted in shade again. I sat. Nothing moved. Even the fires that were raging stopped their dance, were still and stared back at the watching world. Those things causing all the damage rioting or whatever it was they were doing were almost out of sight now, but boy let me tell you there was real destruction in their wake. Nothing was left untouched except the white bone building. Weird eh? I still sat. The space grew in immensity. How long had I been there waiting for the driver? There is no way to tell but that it must have been long because an ocean of space between myself and any other living thing seems to have grown out from these shores. I get the sense that there was an unravelling all around me. Or from within. Some great revelation is just out of reach, like the clockwork of the cosmos is laid bare, but I cannot recognize the cogs and wheels and so am missing it. Something fundamental was happening.

The nearest door to The Terminal opened like a liquid spurt and out walked the driver. Shambling really. She was dragging something behind her. It looked human. It was weakly kicking and flailing in some attempt to get away. Was it a man, or a woman? I'm still not sure, and honestly, who gives a shit. They were only a few feet from the bus. I leaned over the seats just in front of me to get a better look. I was entranced. It is really hard to look away from crap like this. Standing, she straddled the person. Then she knelt down and seemed to sniff at it as it turned its head away in disgust, teeth clenched and bared. Something was covering its eyes. The bus driver grabbed it by the side of the head to straighten it on the ground and then holding it with one hand pinched one of the small round eye coverings between thumb and forefinger, which were really long and sharp - I hadn't noticed that before - and started pulling at the covering. Its movements made it look like a really thin corvid pecking at carrion. The head twisted, wallowing and let out a frail wail. Were those coins? Yes, some sort of coin covered each eye. Oddly enough it looked like tough work to get them off. She was really working for it. As she scratched, plucked and pulled, the fingers squelched in blood and tissue. Thin layers of viscera splatted the pavement next to them. Some yellowish pus oozed out of the wounds as the coin loosened in the socket. She pulled at the coin and the flesh gave a little. There was some sort of fibrous tissue attached to the coin stretching up out of the socket. The optic nerve or whatever that thick cord was did not let go easily. Finally it snapped like a tendon and the driver reeled a little but held her balance going to work on the next one. I expected to hear ear-piercing, glass shattering screams but the person must have gone into shock, or maybe they were dead now. The driver straightened up, looked at the coins, breathed on them and wiped them on her sleeve. She put them, one in each pocket, then went back to work on the body. Getting down on both knees this time and bending her head down close to the body's face, she seemed to sniff at it again. Savouring the sour smells emanating from the pussy wounds and all the burning metal and plastic. All the things producing the most horrid concoction of noxious fumes one can imagine. Then her lips sealed around an empty eye socket and her body heaved inward with a huge inhale. The cadaver - it must have been a corpse by now - twitched and convulsed. They stayed this way for a another minute and then she released her lips, exhaled a little. Tiny wisps of smoke snaked out of her nose and mouth. She sealed her lips around the other eye socket. After a couple more moments she stood up releasing huge squalls of billowing television-ghost blue smoke from her nostrils and mouth. I told myself to sit down and shut up. Jesus Christ, can you believe it? She just sucked the face of that dead guy like a smoker taking a drag and exhaled smoke. Or, something. I tell you scared doesn't cover it. I was shaking and pissin in my pants as she walked to the doors, they swung open with the usual hiss and she stepped back on. Nodded at me in a slight sort of way, knowingly, got back into her seat and fired up the bus.