Tales From A Bus by jwilson136 (finding audrey TXT) 📕

not have supported any weight. It took everything I had to keep my lunch down. And even if I had asked I know from the faces of all the others on the bus that they had not seen what I had. The bus began to move again and it was a buzz with the sound of conversation and people who had sat beside each other for months on end and had never once said a word before began talking as if they were the best of friends. There’s nothing quite like a bit of death, a bit of suffering or even just a bit of gossip to get the worst of enemies talking again now is there ? Me, well needless to say I said nothing. I was still trying to come to grips with what I had seen and my stomach was still trying to come to grips with my lunch. I took the air in through my nose and out through my mouth in big slow lung full. I thought that I was just about to regain control when two things happened. The first thing was that the boy coughed that sickening, wet and raspy cough and the second thing was that the bus stopped and the doors opened either to let someone off or to let somebody on.
When I heard the footsteps on the stairs I knew who it was. Now I know that there was no way that I could have heard the footsteps of someone coming up the stairs on a moving bus full of people but I’m telling you now that I did. I wish, Jesus I’ve wished so many times that I didn’t, that the normal laws of physics had applied on that bus ride but they didn’t and the sound of those footfalls coming up the stairs was the worst and most frightening sound I’ve ever heard. I broke out into a sweat and started to look around the bus in a panic, nobody else seemed to care but me. The boy was still coughing but that now seemed of secondary importance to me now all I was concerned about was getting off the bus anyway I could. The man sitting beside me looked visibly concerned at my behaviour and I’m sure that I looked weird, pale faced and more that likely mumbling to myself about getting off the bus but I froze when I saw the figure at the top of the stairs.
For the first time I got a clear look at his face. I think that many would have considered the man good looking but to me there was something that I wasn’t sure about, something that I would always consider, well I don’t know how to explain it. Like the man, as I’ve said was immaculately dressed, clean shaven, his hair was perfectly in place and even his hands were manicured to the point of perfection. Every aspect of his face was perfect but for some reason when you put it all together it didn’t look right. All he did for me was make my stomach do another loop-the-loop. He looked around the bus at all the passengers, passing over me as if I wasn’t there and then walked purposely towards the front of the bus, towards where I was sitting. He reached my seat, paused and then very slowly turned his head. I know that it sounds almost foolish for you to hear this now but the look that he gave me, with those ice blue cold eyes, and the perfect hair that sat like a work of art on his head and the way that the corner of those thin lips of his almost curled up into the trace of a smile stopped my heart and took my very soul away to a place where I never ever want to go again. His eyes held mine for what seemed like an age and then he moved on to sit beside the boy with the bad cough.
The boy, who now looked younger and more vulnerable than he had at the beginning of this almost endless journey seemed to see the stranger in a totally different light than I did. The stranger and the sick boy exchanged smiles and while I saw the whole spectacle of one of complete horror those two seemed to be enjoying each others company. I very nearly screamed there and then and I think if I’d been able to I would have screamed, a scream that maybe would never have ended but I didn’t scream or maybe I couldn’t scream. Either way I remained silent and those two in the seat in front of mine, the odd couple continued to smile at each other and their own private little joke. I looked across at the boy’s mother but she seemed to be almost in a trance staring out the window of the bus, so did her husband. The two of them oblivious to the man that was sitting next to there son. The man, who as I was looking around for help, was reaching ever so slowly for the boy with the same hand that touched the car crash victim what seemed like hours ago.
From there on in everything seemed to go in slow motion. I saw the man’s hand reach very slowly reach towards the boy’s chest. I tried desperately hard to cry out but all I manage was a strangled cry. The man on the seat beside me turned in my direction, I heard him mumble “Are you are right buddy?” His voice seemed distant and somehow muffled so I stood up. People on the bus turned my direction and were giving me strange glances but still I couldn’t get through to them what was happening and still the stranger’s hand reached towards the boy’s chest. Now it was only inches away and I could make out the faint blue glow starting to grow from the stranger’s palm. The man beside me stood up too and put a restraining hand my shoulder.
“Pal are you sure your OK?”
I laughed out loud and then began to cry. I felt stranger than I’d ever felt in my left and stranger than I’ve ever felt since. My emotions ran riot, I was laughing one moment and then crying the next. I raised my hand and somehow managed to point to a finger in the direction of the stranger. But instead of drawing attention to him my arm was grabbed from behind and pinned by my side.
“Somebody give a hand here!” I heard the man beside me shout and “Somebody phone an ambulance, I think he’s having a fit.” called another.
The glow from the strangers hand was painfully visible and just before I got pulled down to the floor I saw the hand make contact. There was a brief flash of light and then I clearly heard the boy sigh. It was a sound that reminded me of the way a woman will sigh smugly to herself just after having some great sex. It was that type of sigh. Then the boys head lolled to the side and for perhaps the first time I could clearly make out his face. And then, then I saw him smile and that smile was the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing that I have every seen. It was the smile of a sincere old man on the face of a young boy full of innocence. The stranger continued to hold his hand against the boy’s chest and I could make out a black shadow type form moving across from the chest and down the hand and then the arm of the stranger. This continued for God knows how long but when the blackness stopped coming then a red mist replaced it.
By now I could feel the pressure of my fellow passengers trying to hold me down and I knew that I was shaking uncontrollably, moaning, crying and laughing all at the one time but I had to stay on my feet to the end. The boy was looking pail now and the redness was moving at a much slower pace. Suddenly it stopped and the stranger withdrew his had. The boys head fell back against the railing and he stared at me with lifeless eyes. Then the screams did come.
I must have caused some amount of noise because the other people on the bus probably figuring that I had gone mad gripped me tighter and began to draw me to the floor. I heard them ask and then tell me to calm down but I wasn’t listening. Just before their combined strength managed to draw me down I saw that the stranger had risen from the seat and was turning to walk towards me. I screamed some more, and then some more again. Then I blacked out.

“Is he gonna be OK?”
I awoke to the sound of people all around me and opened my eyes slowly.
“Hold on he’s awake !”
“Give him room there, back off a little. Come on people let him breath.”
“Pal, are you OK ?” I recognised my companion from the seat next to me.
I tried to speak but before I could the head of the stranger appeared from the back of the group.
“Oh yes.” he said, “He’s gonna be just fine for a long while yet.”
And then he was gone. Before I had time to ask if anybody else had seen him the bus was once again disturbed by the sound of someone screaming. This time it was the screams of a woman. I was discarded quite quickly as my would be rescuers turned their attention to something of a little more interest. I knew without looking that the screams were those of the woman, who had just discovered that her son was dead.
And that’s my tale. The boy was dead and I haven’t seen the man since but I’ll tell you, every time that I see a man, of above average height but below average weight, who is wearing an immaculately turned out suit and had hair to match; I always avoid eye contact because I know that the next time I see those steel blue eyes looking back at my brown ones that my time on this earth will be at an end.


TALES FROM A BUS
V
THE PURPLE BUS

I was tired when I got on the bus. And less than two minutes after that I was bored. But they kept me well awake and credit to them all had surprised me with their stories and I’m not easily surprised.
The five of us on the bus represented a great cross section of society; the old man who’d seen it all, the good looking bitch (and boy did she know it) with the attitude, the boring bald guy in the very centre of his mid-life crisis and not even knowing it and the thirty-something guy who’d be a yuppie only he was ten years too late. And then there was me.
Me, the drug taking, long haired, welfare living, drop out student. I (and people like me), where the reason that ‘their’ taxes were so high. I was the second half of the hated unmarried mothers/waster students combination that they had all spent long hours in the canteen complaining about. They despised me for that and they let me know. Never verbally, but with every half glance that they could get off they let me know.
I didn’t have much money on me at