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

drenched red in blood. But he had the silencer on the gun and still the kid cried. This time the man didn’t even say anything, he just reached back into the case and pulled a clip from the its place in the foam and slotted it into the base of the gun. For this operation he had to use both hands and I think that for the first time the fat woman may have began to guess exactly the predicament she was in. She caught a glimpse of the man’s hand that up until now had been hidden from view, clutching the wound to his side. I saw her face change from one of smugness to one of almost fear, fear mixed with defiance when she saw the red blood on his hand. I’m not sure how I would have reacted if I had seen a sick looking man with a bloodied hand reach to take something dark from a briefcase but I’m almost sure that I wouldn’t have laughed. Still the woman stayed in place, shifting the kid closer to her bosom and freeing up her right arm. Like some boxer moving to the side to allow the stronger arm to come more into use. Still to stand to the woman, for good or for bad she didn’t back down. Things had come too far I think for either of them to back down. At this stage there were going the whole way. The bus was now travelling at a fair pace, the traffic had long since dispersed and it was free running all the way. The bus hit a sudden bump and perhaps because the of the speed of the bus, or perhaps because the man was using both hands on the gun or perhaps because he was loosing a lot of blood and was having trouble staying upright or perhaps because of the bus itself I don’t know, but the briefcase fell and fell right at the feet of the woman.
One look at her face now and you could tell NOW she knew, NOW she knew exactly what type of shit she and her screaming kid had gotten into. The man looked down at the case and then traced the path of her legs, up her waist and chest and eventually to her face. The woman, who for the last few moments had been concentrating on the case were moving slowly up the man’s body and the two reached each others stare at precisely the same time. It was the time that the kid chose to scream again.
The man gritted his teeth and gave the most inhuman grin that I’ve ever seen. His teeth were bunched down and his gums were drawn back, blood stained his teeth and some dribbled over his bottom lip and down his chin. His eyes were wild and vacant and some time when I was looking at the woman he had run his hand through his hair which now was standing up and I could see traces of blood in his hair. He looked like a man possessed, a man that knew that his end was near and that he just didn’t give a fuck. For the face on the woman she was thinking more or less the same thing. He held her gaze for what must have been half a minute during which neither of them spoke, even the child had stopped crying. Eventually he spoke:
“Lady, I don’t have much time left, and what time I have I don’t want to have a child crying in my ears. So I’ll tell you now and for the last time, shut the kid up or I will.”
He put both hands on his pistol and pulled hard on the top or the gun, part of it clicked back and there was an audible ‘click-click’, a sound that I recognised as the lock-and-load sound from the movies. He pointed the gun at the kids head which the mother was now trying hard to cover with her arms and body. His whole body was shaking but the gun remained perfectly still.
And that’s my tale.”

Silence descended on the bus and then shouting.
“What the hell do you mean that’s your bloody story, what the fuck happened -next?” the old man shouted. The bus driver was laughing to himself, the middle-aged man was looking at me with his mouth wide open, the good looking guy hadn’t changed the expression on his face it was still dead calm and quietly confident.
“That’s my story,” I said, “my stop was next and I had to get off, Jesus it’s not as if I don’t have a life or anything!”


TALES FROM THE BUS
III
MOTHERS OF THE DISSAPPEARED


Telling my story was hard. You see I’m not the most confident of people, never have been. I used to stutter quite bad as a kid and for most of my young adult life. All that ridicule and name calling does lead to a little bit of an under confidence complex. The stammering has long since departed, thank God and while most people seemed to grow in confidence with the return of their full flowing voice I didn’t. I was just glad to be capable of carrying out a conversation with those few people I hold close enough that I call my friends. So when I was on that bus and first spoke up it was the bravest thing that I think that I ever did. Those first six words will stay with my forever;

“Excuse me........I have a story.”
They all looked around, even the driver and without exception they all looked surprised. It shocked me to be all of a sudden the centre of attention but I turned my head slightly to the side (never face a problem head on) and then spoke some more.

“This all happened a year or two ago. I take the bus a lot to and from work, it makes more sense you see, more economical and it’s easier for Pat and the kids. And any way I dislike driving in traffic and it gives me indigestion and headaches. When your a migraine sufferer you will not risk anything that may bring on a headache.”
I said this in the hope that it might rise a laugh, but it failed. While I had won my fellow passengers attention I had yet to win over their sense of humour. I swallowed loudly, perhaps blushed a little (perhaps blushed a lot) and carried on with the story.
“This day I had put in a rather hard nine hours at the office and could feel the beginnings of a migraine building at the top of my neck- lower back of my head region. I was walking down to the bus stop not paying much attention to what was going on around me trying to practice the breathing techniques that Doctor Wilson had given me. It was a breathing technique that I was particularly fond of as it normally managed to clear my head and ease the pressure. It must have been six or six-thirty in the evening and it was a mild enough day. My jacket was slung over one shoulder and I was feeling good with myself (or at least as good as myself as God has permitted me to feel). Things in town seemed to be busy but moving well and as I approached the bus I was glad to see that the queue was hardly there at all. I reached into my shirt pocket (where I already knew my weekly bus pass to be) and stepped onto the bus slotting my card onto the machine then moving up the stairs towards the front of the bus. I was delighted to see that my favourite seat (three from the front on the right) was still free and moved into it quickly before anyone else took a seat in such a prime location.
I’m far from what you would call a betting man but most days on the bus home I did wager a bet with my own fantasy bookie shop. You see there was this girl that ran for the bus every day. I mean every day you’d see her come running down the street just as the bus was about to or even in the process of pulling off. And more for my own foolish amusement than any other reason when I’d see her coming I’d give her odds on making or missing the bus. I’d even give a silly little commentary to go along with it. I know this all sounds fairly stupid to you but it wasn’t doing any harm so I saw nothing really wrong with it.
This day just as the bus pulled away the girl walked around the corner and started to run. She always looked the same; buttons half undone, bag falling off one shoulder while a briefcase (nearly always open) was stuck under the other arm. I saw her and straight away put her odds at about five to one against. The bus was already on the move and she was at least twenty yards off the pace. Then, (against the run of play) the traffic lights changed to red and the bus was stopped in it’s tracks. My bookie shop was facing a serious hit, five to one against and now this. But the thing was that the lady didn’t make the bus. She ran down to the side of it and then ran right past it on into the terminal. Now I suppose that maybe she was going some place else that day, or that she had agreed to meet someone in the terminal and was late and at the time I guess that’s what I figured. Looking back on it now I’m not so sure. I think that jus perhaps that lady ran past the bus because she wasn’t meant to get on it, someone somewhere told her that that wasn’t the bus for her. After that the bookie shop folded, a little stung from the last hit but in profit none the less. Quit while your ahead is the best advice I can give any of you thinking of taking up a career in the betting industry.
I sat into in and pulled the sports section from my briefcase and caught up on the weekend’s football results. I read the paper on my lunch break but never the sports section, I keep it sort of as a treat for myself when I’ve finished the hard days work. I was disappointed to see that Forest, that’s the team I support, only got a four line mention in the weekend roundup but as they had won I was quite content to read these four lines a couple of times over in the hope that yet again this would be ‘our year’. Forest had gotten relegated from the Premier division about seven years back and ever since had been trying to get back up. They were usually there or there about until just after Christmas and then fell by the wayside but this season they were still there and it was nearing the end of March. Promotion looked a real prospect. When I finished rereading the Forest report I moved on to the big boys ManU, Arsenal and Leeds and spent a while dreaming of the season when Forest would be back up there challenging for the league alongside with them.
When this distraction ended I folded the paper carefully away and placed in back into my briefcase, between the lunch box and my sales report folder when it always seems to fit just right. I then, as I always did, spent a few minutes looking out the window at the people and cars moving away the city towards the suburbs. This is also something that helps relax me. Dr. Wilson