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Three.*Two.I took the wrong bus and now I'm lost. Please help.
I’m not sure how this is even possible. I mean, at least it shouldn’t be. The chances of this happening are honestly astronomical.
But here I am, writing this batshit story, hoping that someone can help me out. Probably can’t. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.
Three days ago – at least I think it was three days ago – I took a bus to get to a friend’s place. A party, actually. It was at his new house, somewhere between bumfuck and nowhere. Well, it wasn’t *that* far off, just an hour’s ride away. I’d checked the route and the timetables beforehand so I knew what bus to take, and when the last one to take me back home would leave.
I wasn’t very keen on the idea of going so far out of the city for a party, but I’ve learned that that’s just something you gotta do when your friends become middle-aged. First comes the dog, then the kids, then they need more room and a bigger yard for the dog to play in and alas, they’ve moved to the middle of the woods, to live happily ever after in their little nest, or at least until divorce and/or a midlife crisis involving motorcycles and cocaine.
Sorry, I don’t want to sound bitter. It’s just that if I hadn’t taken that bus I wouldn’t be where I am now.
But also, *yikes*.
Anyway, I loaded up my bag with two bottles of wine – the more expensive one knighted as a gift via a cute little bow – and headed off. I’ve been trying to rack my brain if the bus looked *different* somehow. If there was something off about it, y’know? But I can’t come up with anything, or perhaps my memory is just a lousy servant.
Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about that, because if it was just like any regular bus… well, that scares me more than if it hadn’t been.
Now, I’d never taken that route before. Never really been further out in that direction than for the first ten minutes of the trip. This is to say that I couldn’t tell you where I was going, not really. I knew the stop I would be getting off on, and I knew where to walk from the stop to get to my friend’s house.
This is also to say that I didn’t think it odd when the city was left behind, and the bus began to move through wooded areas with little housing. In hindsight there was something off about how quickly we came to be in such an unpopulated area. Usually there’s a curve, y’know: the city slowly dwindling to suburbs which stretch further and further apart until the minimum distance between two houses is greater than a stone’s throw, then a catapult, then a scream.
But as I sat there, the rickety hum of the bus rolling beneath me, it was like a switch. The city was gone, left behind, and there was just forest and a few houses here and there. But it was a legitimate bus running a legitimate route, so I didn’t really pay attention. I thought you could trust those things, like anyone does. The worst that could happen is the driver fucks up the route and then you need to take a detour or something. And even then it’d be the driver’s fault, and he’d probably be driving the route back at some point.
A thing I did find peculiar was that the bus was empty for the whole way. I was the only passenger, and judging by the driver’s speed when we crossed the other stops, he didn’t seem to be counting on anyone else getting on. But maybe the route was unpopular; maybe it was a waste of taxpayer dollars; maybe no one took this route *out* of the city on a Friday night.
I dunno. I don’t fucking know.
Anyway, as there wasn’t much of genuine interest happening beyond the windows, and the bus being empty, I decided to get a headstart on the wine. I must’ve drank half a bottle by the time we came to my stop.
And that’s the thing, *it was my stop*. And it was almost as if the driver knew this, seeing as he started to really drag along as we approached it, making sure I had time to read the stop’s name and listen to the robotic voice on the speakers: “*Woodscotch Road. Woodscotch Road.*”
I pressed the stop button and got out, realizing during the first few steps that I was quite buzzed by that point.
My mind felt fuzzy and warm, but the air was cold. It had gotten dark already, the autumn really rolling in when night fell. Even though the wine had lifted my spirits, readied me for the foreseeably middling party I was about to attend, something felt off.
The stop looked nothing like it had on the map, and the road was supposed to fork right around the stop. But there were no other roads, not even a driveway hidden by foliage. The only light out there were streetlights placed so far apart from each other that they left a good fifty yards of shadowy muck in between them.
As I looked around, the first pangs of panic began to settle inside me. I fucking *hate* being somewhere I don’t know - especially in the countryside. That’s why I live in the city. There’s always people, always lights on in the windows, always some familiar sound. Yeah, statistically it might be more dangerous, but those constant reminders of familiarity, of other people, they really help me. Even if I’m walking alone at night through a place I haven’t been before, I have a sense of cardinal direction, something I’d never been able to reproduce in any other place.
The first thing I did was check my phone. *Maybe it was the wrong stop. I could just call my friend and someone could drive out to get me. I couldn’t be that far out.*
Those little stairs portraying the signal’s strength at the top right corner of the screen were replaced by an x. No connection. A lump began to form in my throat. I then called my friend, and a robotic voice politely told me that the call couldn’t go through. No reception.
*FuckfuckFUCK*.
The buzz turned into a detriment as I tried to reason my next step. Should I stay there and wait for another bus? I could ask the driver where I was, and maybe ride with them to the last stop and take the route back. Seeing as I was in the middle of nowhere, it was a gamble as to how long that could take.
I could just walk around, hoping to find my friend’s house. I must’ve been at least somewhat close. Or if not his house, then someone else’s. I could ask them for directions.
Or I could find a bus stop on the other side of the road and get back home. No, *no, nonono*. I was getting overwhelmed as I tried to repress the panic and anxiety. People had lived for a fuckton of time without phones, without maps, without anything but the fucking sun. And I had a party to get to. I was just overreacting, a silly city-girl out of her element.
And the stop was the right one, I knew that. So the house had to be somewhere nearby, and seeing as I hadn’t seen much in the last stretch of the ride, I decided to walk up the road.
Detriment aside, I took a huge swig of my wine. I decided that if by the time the bottle was empty I hadn’t found anything, I’d give myself permission to panic.
I counted how far I walked by the amount of streetlights, which I estimated to be about a hundred yards from each other as I walked to the first one after the bus stop. Whenever I passed through the darkness in between their halos, my legs took on a faster stride. I couldn’t help it. But I kept myself busy by counting.
Around the third light the road curved to the right. I saw no houses or driveways on either side of the curve.
By the seventh light, the wine was starting to run out. I couldn’t help but get worried, but I persisted on. I checked my phone constantly, and not even a faint little bar came to give me good news. I was somewhat drunk by then, which I know wasn’t the smartest thing, but at least it kept tamped the fear down. The unending forest was really starting to creep me out.
And right as I was saving the last swig of the wine, the near empty bottle a portent of doom that I held with gripping fingers, something came up. Another bus stop, on the other side of the road.
It wasn’t my friend’s house, but it was *something*, and I could feel the onset of panic drifting a bit further away, tucking itself somewhere deeper, ready to perk its head up if the moment called for it.
The bus stop looked exactly like the one I’d been on, except it was on the other side of the road. Presumably for the returning route, then. My legs were killing me, so I sat down and finished off the bottle.
*Fuck the party,* I thought. I was getting the hell out of there, and I’d wait for the bus until morning if I had to. *I’m never leaving the city again*.
Funnily enough, the bus took only five minutes to come. I still held onto some hesitation as I flagged it down, fearing that the driver couldn’t or wouldn’t see me and would just drive past me. But when the bus swerved next to me and opened its door, I asked the driver if this route would get me back to the city. He nodded without looking at me, which I took as a sign of annoyance on his behalf and relief on mine. I showed him the two-way ticket (which I’d thankfully screenshotted), but I’m pretty sure he didn’t even look at it.
The bus was as empty as the last one, but I didn’t care. I was tired of thinking, of planning, of being so unsure. I was supposed to go to a party, get drunk and come back home, and now I was just drunk and panicky. *Whatever*. I could text my friend once I had a signal and maybe after the wine-hangover wore off I could start thinking of it as a fun little story.
The swerving of the bus was nauseating as it swung me from side to side, the bus seemingly driven as if the driver was *literally* going between the trees. Not that I could dispute the claim, seeing as it was now pitch black outside, the lights inside the bus only casting a faint reflection on the windows.
Soon enough the road seemed to straighten itself out, which felt like a signal that I was on my way back home. Back to the city. The buzz was turning into the first signs of a hangover, and I closed my eyes with my head uncomfortably resting on the window.
Now, I’m sure I didn’t fall asleep. I’ve never been able to sleep in anything that moves, whether that be cars, buses, trains or planes. In spite of not dreaming, not feeling like I was even really resting, the driver was suddenly next to me, shaking me with a tight grip on my shoulder.
“Last stop,” he said.
I stammered something at him, and I could see that he was not happy. I realized he probably thought I was drunk, passed out, and was holding him off from getting home. I mean, he wasn’t wrong.
I got up and stumbled out of the bus, my eyes adjusting to being open again. Then to the fact that the sun was rising, giving a mean glare from somewhere I couldn’t quite bring my focus to. My heart pumped loudly, alerting me to something being wrong. What was wrong came in the form of something I smelled, or more accurately *didn’t* smell – the dank odor of the bus terminal.
I tried to rub my eyes to see better, but the blurry, bright vista before me was all wrong. I could see green around me, and a dirt road beneath me. Where the fuck was I? What bus did I even take? I turned to ask the driver just as he sped off, the bus spitting hot dust into the air.
I guess I could’ve screamed at the bus or ran after it like Peter-fucking-Parker, but something told me it would have been to no avail. Common sense, probably. As I focused my eyes on the bus slowly turning smaller and smaller in the distance, my eyes finally adjusted to the light, and my mind to the reality of where I was.
When I turned to look around, I instinctively pinched myself, hoping it was all a dream, or even delirium or a fucking psychotic break.
All around me were green fields of indeterminate crop, frightening in their mass of green lush. A lazy wind swept them around in waves, but the wind didn’t feel like wind at all. The air was still for me, yet the world around me existed in a different reality.
I was standing on a dirt road with a sign that said “BUS STOP.” No other markers were present, no name for the road, nothing. With nothing else, I made note of the rising sun, marking the general direction as east. Not that it would be of much help, but I needed something to calm down the panic that was starting to whisper inside me again.
The panic then reminded me of last night, of everything that had happened. I guess in my hungover and sleepy state I hadn’t connected the dots yet. But that’s the thing – in my mind I was sure the bus would take me back to the city. Back home. That’s how they work. And I guess I just couldn’t believe it, couldn’t attach what had happened to my sense of reality, to even really give it thought.
But the fear was a great reminder, and a storm began to brew in my mind.
I made a mental note of the state of things:
1. I was thirsty, probably well into dehydration, thanks to the wine (great fucking idea, Abby!)
2. I’d slept through most of the trip, which meant I had no idea what roads and areas we’d gone through, which in turn meant that I could basically be anywhere.
3. I checked my phone. No signal, low battery. No surprises there, said the fear.
4. I stood on the only road within eyesight, which means that…
5. I should pick a direction and start walking ASAP.
I decided to walk into the direction where the bus came from. Logically speaking, that would be closer to where I was going.
The morning sun was cool enough, but it didn’t take long for it to turn into a sour heat. If I didn’t find something soon, I knew I’d be in trouble. I still had the bottle of wine I was going to bring as a gift, but I wasn’t stupid enough to start drinking it. Not yet, at least.
The panic tried to take over, but as my tongue dried up and my legs began to ache, it had to take a backseat. It’s weird how panic can *feel* like the be-all-end-all of survival, the governor of the last stand, the final shout that will decide if it’s do-or-die. And I guess sometimes it’s given that title – under the right circumstances – but it’s not the one giving the orders. There’s something deeper underneath, something that doesn’t have a discernible feeling, because it’s perhaps not a feeling at all, that gives the orders.
I could feel it inside me as I walked, thinking in a calm fury about what feeling would constitute survival. I wondered what that voice inside me was; if anyone had thought about it before; categorized it; perhaps given it a name. Maybe someone had, in some book I would never learn the name of, much less actually read.
The road before me was a boring line of shit and the fields a child’s shitty painting, so there wasn’t much else for my mind to chew on besides the naming conventions of this element inside of me. I thought about the paradox of perhaps it giving my conscious mind the task of thinking about the unconscious parts of itself, perhaps just to keep the inevitable firing squads of neurons from thinking about the wrong things.
I thought about *Sergeant*, but It didn’t feel exactly like a military guy – they seemed to be too literal for such abstract thoughts.
Maybe a villain, then. Like a mastermind-type with a wicked sense of fashion. Blacks and purples, maybe some demure gold jewelry.
But it wasn’t so *in-your-face.* The voice kept to the shadows, controlling what it could, trying to make the right moves with an unflinching belief in a particular sense of morality.
And it seemed like a loner, even though it did work with other feelings.
And it had all these resources at its disposal, a way to force the body and mind toward something with the sheer control it had.
You know who else was like that?
*Batman*.
The chuckle that came out was unexpected, and it reminded me of how dry my mouth was. But it was undeniable: I had fucking *Batman* inside of me, keeping me alive.
The ridiculousness wore off a little as I continued walking, but I quite enjoyed the idea of knowing that the dark knight was looking out for me.
My mind drifted some more, my legs feeling acidic. I tried not to think about how thirsty I was, which was proving to be significantly harder with each step. But then something changed. At first the road was empty, just a swivel connecting to a stiff horizon. I’d been looking out at the fields or at my shoes, but when I turned my head back to its forward position, there was a building next to the road.
It was far off, but not too far. It’d take a while to walk there, but I knew I’d make it. No questions about it.
I thanked Batman.
Once I got closer, I could see the building’s surroundings better. Beyond it, the road I’d been walking on for god knows how long continued just as it had been. But right behind the building there was an intersection, another road leading left.
I was quite close to the building when I began to hear sounds. People. There were kids playing, or perhaps fighting, it was hard to tell. A few adult voices as well. But I couldn’t see them until I came right up to the building and turned its corner.
The building was definitely a store of some kind. It had a big, old wooden sign that had once said something in lettering that was now faded to indistinct lines. Its doors flew open as a pack of kids ran out, their parents screaming at them to calm down.
They didn’t seem to notice me until I came right up to the couple and said something to get their attention. They spun to look at me, and held onto a stare that took a bit longer than was comfortable. But I didn’t care, not really. I just needed help, I just wanted to go home.
“Well, uh, hello,” said the man. The woman kept quiet.
The words came out of my mouth as an embarrassing drivel. “Hi! Umm, hi. My name’s Mary, and I, uhh… I got lost, sort of. Or I took the wrong bus or something, and I’m not sure at all how to get back home. I’ve been walking on this road since morning, and my phone has no signal, and, uhh, yeah. Can you, like, tell me where I am? I guess I just need some help.”
Once I’d finished, they both just stared at me. There was something in the way they did it, though, that gave me an uneasy feeling. Like I was an alien or something. But they were obviously farm people, judging by the denim coveralls the man was wearing and the raggedy shawl draped over the woman. Maybe they were just weirded out how someone like *me* had ended up there.
Finally, the man answered. “There’s a bus stop on this here road,” he said, pointing towards the eerily similar dirt road veering to the left, “that’ll take you where you need to go.”
One of the kids screamed, and another one began to sob. The woman yelled at one of them – the perpetrator of some childish crime – to stop what they were doing, and lunged at them with a stern stride.
The man kept his feet planted for a moment longer, barely noticing the hubbub. He just stared at me, and Batman wasn’t telling me what to do. I think even he was out of ideas, so bizarre was the whole situation. Then the man nodded and walked off, and on the exact spot his body had covered of the view, some few hundred yards out, I could see the bus stop.
I still had some questions, but I didn’t want to bother the couple any more, or perhaps I just really didn’t want to converse with them longer. I’d rather figure it out on my own.
*Okay*, I thought, letting out a sigh that made my mouth feel like a sauna, *what’s next?*
Water.
Leaving the couple and their pack of kids behind, I walked into the building, which proved to be a convenience store of sorts. It was small, and it was very hot inside, a lazy cream-colored fan barely moving the air in its desperate and almost performative act of trying to cool the store down.
Between the few shelves of dried goods and diapers I spotted a glowing cabinet with a misty glass door. In the corner of my eye I could feel the single clerk eyeing me as I made my way to the fridge and quickly filled my lap with as many bottles of water as I could carry. I made my way to the register, fighting the urge to drink them all on the spot, and threw the bottles on the counter. I felt like a rude customer, and the clerk’s face seemed to prove me right.
He was an older man, with a face that had seemingly wrinkled its way to having an eternal, grumpy sort of look. Pretty much exactly what I thought a clerk in a convenience store in the middle of nowhere would look like.
He rang up the four bottles of water, making a point of carefully standing them upright in an orderly fashion as he beeped them.
“Twenty four fifty,” he said, finally.
I had somehow forgotten I’d need to pay, so I began to rummage through my purse even though I could’ve done that while he was ringing me up. I found my wallet tucked under the gift-wine and gave the man a fifty-dollar bill.
It took him way too long to put the bill in the register and count the change and finally hand it to me. Annoyed and more thirsty than I thought was possible, I took the bottles outside the building and sat down on the little stepping porch in front of the doors and began to drink.
It felt *wonderful,* but after the first bottle I had to stop myself from drinking more. It began to feel nauseating in my empty stomach, turning the bile into popping blisters. I decided to give my stomach a few moments to digest until I continued drinking, and perhaps give Batman some time to adjust to the situation as well.
I looked around me and noticed that the couple and their kids were gone. But the weird thing was, there hadn’t been a car - or a fucking carriage, or anything. I guess they must have lived close by and walked, but I was sure I should’ve still seen them walking down either road. Eh, whatever. They probably took a shortcut.
I could feel my mind clearing up even as my stomach still battled with the onslaught of water after having been poisoned with wine. And as it cleared up, another thought struck me. What had the guy said about the bus stop? *It’ll take you where you need to go.* What the fuck did that mean? Maybe he was just rude; maybe he wanted to fuck with me. But I hadn’t even told him where I needed to go, I don’t think.
I really wanted to get back to the city. At least there the people were rude in ways I could predict.
My stomach grumbled, but the feeling was different. It told me that the water situation had been dealt with, and it was time for the other thing. *Food*.
So, like a prick, I barged back into the shop. The old man stared at me, and perhaps it was just my preconception or he really had upped the aura of grumpiness that surrounded him. I scoured the shelves, which on closer inspection were mostly bare, for something to eat. The best I could find was a can of beans and a loaf of bread.
As I brought them to the register, laying the products down with more care this time, I asked the clerk “Do you have any ready-made food here, or is there like a restaurant or something nearby?”
The clerk made a sound that was something between *egh* and *no* as he shrugged and turned his head from side to side.
Then the other thing. “Does the bus stop on the road take me back to the city?”
The clerk’s posture changed, like the slope of his back was put on an invisible stretcher. His eyes widened, then returned to normal as he looked up at me.
“The city?” he asked.
“Yeah, the city. That’s where I live. I need to get there. Or is there a phone I could use to ring a cab? Mine’s probably dead by now, not that I got a signal anyway.”
His back slumped back into its degrading slope as I gave him a ten dollar bill. He shifted to look at the cash register.
“It’ll take you where you need to go,” he said.
What the fuck? Again that same shit. I wasn’t having it.
“Where exactly is that?” I asked, the sarcasm evident in my voice even as I tried to hide it.
“The city,” he said. “That’s where you need to go, right?”
He gave me my change and I nodded without a thank you. I took the beans and bread outside and parked myself on the porch. I took my time dipping the beans into the bread and sending the room temperature lunch down my gullet, giving my stomach the time to adjust.
*I could take the bus*, I thought. *Or I could…*Nothing. Fuck. These weirdos had been weird as all hell, and I had no other option. And just to make it clear, I was fucking done by this point. I just wanted to get back home, crawl into bed and sleep this whole nightmare-adventure off. And as much as I’d developed an aversion to buses, I still felt like I could trust a bus. I just needed to be awake and clear-headed, needed to ask the bus driver specific questions – even if they were being an asshole – and make my way back home. But one thing was still bugging me, so for the third time I marched back into the store to annoy the clerk.
I was going to ask him: “Where are we?” but the guy was gone. *Poof*. Disappeared. Maybe he went to take a shit, I don’t know. I wasn’t going to wait for him, though. The bus stop was close enough, so if a bus never came, I could just come back and bugger him until he’d help me. Or shoot me - don’t all podunk stores have a shotgun under the register?
I finished off the beans and half of a loaf and listened to my stomach grumble as I made my way to the bus stop.
I waited for maybe ten minutes until I saw a bus. This time I took note of what it looked like. It was old and gray where yellow paint had chipped off. Almost like a school bus, except that its shape was more industrial, like a greyhound.
I flagged it down and took a good look at the driver. Older man with a scruffy beard. Barely even looked at me. My earlier ticket was obviously not going to work, which gave me a good excuse to bother him.
“Hi!” I said, trying my best to put on a smile that was polite without being annoying, “where is this bus going?”
The man grunted, and I said “Excuse me?”
“The city. All the buses from here go to the city.”
“Which city?” I asked.
“Do you need a ticket?” the man said, finally turning to face me. I didn’t want to board the bus yet, but the scowl on his face moved my body inside as a polite gesture. Immediately he closed the doors behind me, which gave me a flash of claustrophobia, the memories of last night striking loud warning bells in my mind.
“Yes, I mean–” I stammered, “I need a ticket to the city. Will this bus take me there?”
“Lady,” he said as he turned the bus into gear, “I already told you where we’re going to the city. All the buses from here go to the city.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll take one ticket, please.”
The man printed out the ticket as the bus was already kicking dust into the rearview. I didn’t give him any money, I think, but in the moment I just took the ticket and walked all the way to the back of the bus, as far away from him as I could.
The bus was empty, as suspected. But maybe, *just maybe*, it would take me back home.
From my seat I could see well enough to try and piece together where I was. I decided to do my best to keep an eye out, because if all went to shit, at least I would be ready.
The plan worked for the first thirty minutes or so, but as what seemed to be the same exact roads and fields dragged on, I couldn’t help but feel my eyes unfocus, the lack of stimuli forcing my mind to drift to other places.
I didn’t much care for those other places.
The journey dragged on and on, and every once in a while I’d snack on the rest of the beans and bread. They started to taste like nothing as my body began to crave something with spices. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, but there was nothing of note. No landmarks, no differences in foliage. No houses. Nobody else getting on.
As night began to fall, the whole thing was starting to get really eerie. My mind had been digging its way down, and my legs felt restless. How long had I been on the bus? I needed to do something.
So, after hyping myself up for a minute or fifteen, I jumped up and made my way back to the driver.
He didn’t seem to notice me even as I politely coughed. Finally, I said “Excuse me.”
The man turned for a split-second, then reinstated his eyes back on the road. “What?” he said.
“Uhmm, I was just wondering whereabouts we are, and how long is it until we get to the city?”
“The city’s the next stop,” he said. “Not long.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Are you *sure?*”
The driver either groaned or chuckled, and then nodded. I took that as the end of our conversation and began to walk back to my seat.
Just as I was plonking my ass down, the bus slowed down. *Another passenger?* I thought.
“Last stop!” the driver yelled. Apparently not, then.
But we sure as fuck weren’t in the city.
I grabbed my bag and made my way back to the driver. “This isn’t the city!” I said, the words harsher than I would’ve liked, even though they didn’t hit me with a pang of regret.
“Lady, this is the last stop, Now you either get out, or you’ll drive the route back with me in a few hours. Your call.”
“Where the fuck are we?” I said, an anger rising inside me to mask the growing despair.
“We're in the city. Just take a look outside.”
*Sure. I’ll look outside and tell him it’s the exact same dirt-road-outback as we’d come from.*
But as I looked out the window, the scenery had changed. Don’t get me wrong, it was a city, just not any city I’d ever seen.
The trust that I’d had that I’d find my way home one way or another fell away completely. Perhaps it had done so earlier, and only now did it come to fruition. I felt myself fall down an endless, dark well that connected to a series of underground tunnels and caverns of which I knew nothing of, a well so hidden and kept sacred that I’d never find my way out. Well, that’s what it felt like, anyway.
What I saw was even worse.
The buildings were high like skyscrapers, towering over the dark, wide streets. But they didn’t look like buildings in the traditional sense. Instead they were like the stems of mushrooms, the walls grotesque and porous and bumpy in all the wrong ways.
I couldn’t feel even the faintest wind, but the towers swayed. And they swayed in all different directions.
I couldn’t see anyone, and the thought that I’d fallen asleep and found myself in a curious nightmare passed by my mind. I took a hold of it, tasted it, and made the decision to do everything in my power to *wake up*.
First thing I did was turn around. The bus was gone. Not just from behind me but I saw it nowhere on the long road that stretched all the way to the horizon. That felt dreamlike, giving some credence to the thought.
I pinched myself. I squeezed my eyes shut until I saw swirls of light behind my eyelids. I tried to fly, yet gravity pulled me down just the same. None of the old tricks seemed to work, but then again nightmares often trumped any control, any leeway the frightened wanderer of the dream might have inside it.
But then I remembered this trick I used to do when I was a kid. I don’t remember where I’d gotten it, but whenever I became aware of being in a nightmare (which was plenty often when I was growing up), I could always count my fingers to make sure. Something about dream-logic made it nearly impossible to count your fingers correctly - there’d always be one or two more or less than there should.
I place my right palm to face me, realizing then how sweaty it was. *Okay, just count it
*Four.*
*Five.*
This wasn’t a dream.
I felt lightheaded. I honestly wished I’d passed out, because when you pass out, people clamor over you. Someone calls an ambulance. Some muscular EMT’s take you to the hospital, carrying you all the way to the bed. Someone looks after you.
But there was no one there. No one to help. I couldn’t pass out, so I just bent down and squeezed my knees, taking a few deep breaths in the hopes of finding some clarity. The next step.
Something echoed in the distance. A deep, bellowing rumble. I’m not sure if I heard it as much as I felt it. And it was getting closer. And somehow I knew it was bad.
The next step was literal. I had to find somewhere to hide.
I ran towards the nearest tower’s faint shadow. I realized then that there was no sun anymore, just a gray glow that seemed imprinted upon the air. Approaching the tower it became clear that it was not a building at all. It was alive, somehow. In some stupid way that made it not have eyes or a mouth or an asshole. But I could feel it – sense it in the micro-movements of its skin. The smell it had, like mold and soil.
The rumble came once more, a tremor in the ground that seemed to originate from a different place this time. I didn’t like being near the towers, but I had to keep going. And so, deeper in between them I went.
Behind the larger towers were smaller ones, like two-storey houses, thick and unmoving. And in one of them I saw something different, something that looked manmade, if that was even possible.
Maybe it was a trap. If these things were alive, then they must feed on something. Maybe that’s how they did it. Cheese for the rat.
Something grunted beneath and behind me, and I ran as fast as I could.
It looked like a house, carved into one of those fungi-looking things. It had a door and windows and a sign. The sign had really poor lettering, jagged in its edges, the letters too long in places. Once I got near enough, I could see that it was in english, though. It said:
**the FUNky e-Café**
“What,” I said as I put my hand on the door.
“The,” I said as something roared behind me, shaking the ground.
“Fuck,” I yelled as I plunged myself inside, closing the door behind me.
I looked out the window as something black and wet flew across. I didn’t stay to see if it came back.
Inside was, a… well, it was a regular internet cafe. You know, with a little counter to pay and get snacks from and then rows and rows of computers side by side with dividers between each other. Above, faint bulbs flickered as they hummed in and out of existence, as if powered by a dying generator. It was all very 90s, except upon closer inspection, the computers themselves were quite modern.
I sat down on one, pressed the dusty on-button, and it booted. It felt weird and wrong in the setting, but also strangely comforting. It was something familiar in an unfamiliar world, and although it had no reason to be there, it was.
The operating system wasn’t familiar, though. It was barebones, with green highlights and gray backgrounds, either textured by design or the scrappy monitor to give it a scratched sort of look. My first thought was that it felt military in some way, but there’s no sign pointing to that direction.
What I could actually do on the thing was limited to three options:
1. Communicate
2. I’m feeling lucky
3. Broadcast
The first two immediately felt like a bad idea. Communicate with what exactly, those things outside? Whoever was, I don’t know, running the show? And I definitely wasn’t feeling lucky, no sirree.
Broadcast it was. It let me choose between a text, audio, or video recording, but the webcam wasn’t connecting properly so my options were between the first two. I tried recording the audio but it kept coming out sounding like the ravings of some lady who’d taken xanax in Berghain at 3 AM - thankfully I could delete or re-record before sending it. After a couple tries I decided to write instead.
I don’t think this came out much better than the audio recording.
Oh well, I’m going to press send. I need to do something. I’m not sure where this will end up, if anywhere, but hopefully someone can reach out and help me. I unfortunately don’t know how. Take the wrong bus, I guess?
It’s quiet outside. A night of sorts - thinly dark and slightly cool - seems to be falling. I think I need some sleep. Hopefully when I wake up things won’t be worse again.
#entertainment out.O ne.
source
I’m not sure how this is even possible. I mean, at least it shouldn’t be. The chances of this happening are honestly astronomical.
But here I am, writing this batshit story, hoping that someone can help me out. Probably can’t. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.
Three days ago – at least I think it was three days ago – I took a bus to get to a friend’s place. A party, actually. It was at his new house, somewhere between bumfuck and nowhere. Well, it wasn’t *that* far off, just an hour’s ride away. I’d checked the route and the timetables beforehand so I knew what bus to take, and when the last one to take me back home would leave.
I wasn’t very keen on the idea of going so far out of the city for a party, but I’ve learned that that’s just something you gotta do when your friends become middle-aged. First comes the dog, then the kids, then they need more room and a bigger yard for the dog to play in and alas, they’ve moved to the middle of the woods, to live happily ever after in their little nest, or at least until divorce and/or a midlife crisis involving motorcycles and cocaine.
Sorry, I don’t want to sound bitter. It’s just that if I hadn’t taken that bus I wouldn’t be where I am now.
But also, *yikes*.
Anyway, I loaded up my bag with two bottles of wine – the more expensive one knighted as a gift via a cute little bow – and headed off. I’ve been trying to rack my brain if the bus looked *different* somehow. If there was something off about it, y’know? But I can’t come up with anything, or perhaps my memory is just a lousy servant.
Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about that, because if it was just like any regular bus… well, that scares me more than if it hadn’t been.
Now, I’d never taken that route before. Never really been further out in that direction than for the first ten minutes of the trip. This is to say that I couldn’t tell you where I was going, not really. I knew the stop I would be getting off on, and I knew where to walk from the stop to get to my friend’s house.
This is also to say that I didn’t think it odd when the city was left behind, and the bus began to move through wooded areas with little housing. In hindsight there was something off about how quickly we came to be in such an unpopulated area. Usually there’s a curve, y’know: the city slowly dwindling to suburbs which stretch further and further apart until the minimum distance between two houses is greater than a stone’s throw, then a catapult, then a scream.
But as I sat there, the rickety hum of the bus rolling beneath me, it was like a switch. The city was gone, left behind, and there was just forest and a few houses here and there. But it was a legitimate bus running a legitimate route, so I didn’t really pay attention. I thought you could trust those things, like anyone does. The worst that could happen is the driver fucks up the route and then you need to take a detour or something. And even then it’d be the driver’s fault, and he’d probably be driving the route back at some point.
A thing I did find peculiar was that the bus was empty for the whole way. I was the only passenger, and judging by the driver’s speed when we crossed the other stops, he didn’t seem to be counting on anyone else getting on. But maybe the route was unpopular; maybe it was a waste of taxpayer dollars; maybe no one took this route *out* of the city on a Friday night.
I dunno. I don’t fucking know.
Anyway, as there wasn’t much of genuine interest happening beyond the windows, and the bus being empty, I decided to get a headstart on the wine. I must’ve drank half a bottle by the time we came to my stop.
And that’s the thing, *it was my stop*. And it was almost as if the driver knew this, seeing as he started to really drag along as we approached it, making sure I had time to read the stop’s name and listen to the robotic voice on the speakers: “*Woodscotch Road. Woodscotch Road.*”
I pressed the stop button and got out, realizing during the first few steps that I was quite buzzed by that point.
My mind felt fuzzy and warm, but the air was cold. It had gotten dark already, the autumn really rolling in when night fell. Even though the wine had lifted my spirits, readied me for the foreseeably middling party I was about to attend, something felt off.
The stop looked nothing like it had on the map, and the road was supposed to fork right around the stop. But there were no other roads, not even a driveway hidden by foliage. The only light out there were streetlights placed so far apart from each other that they left a good fifty yards of shadowy muck in between them.
As I looked around, the first pangs of panic began to settle inside me. I fucking *hate* being somewhere I don’t know - especially in the countryside. That’s why I live in the city. There’s always people, always lights on in the windows, always some familiar sound. Yeah, statistically it might be more dangerous, but those constant reminders of familiarity, of other people, they really help me. Even if I’m walking alone at night through a place I haven’t been before, I have a sense of cardinal direction, something I’d never been able to reproduce in any other place.
The first thing I did was check my phone. *Maybe it was the wrong stop. I could just call my friend and someone could drive out to get me. I couldn’t be that far out.*
Those little stairs portraying the signal’s strength at the top right corner of the screen were replaced by an x. No connection. A lump began to form in my throat. I then called my friend, and a robotic voice politely told me that the call couldn’t go through. No reception.
*FuckfuckFUCK*.
The buzz turned into a detriment as I tried to reason my next step. Should I stay there and wait for another bus? I could ask the driver where I was, and maybe ride with them to the last stop and take the route back. Seeing as I was in the middle of nowhere, it was a gamble as to how long that could take.
I could just walk around, hoping to find my friend’s house. I must’ve been at least somewhat close. Or if not his house, then someone else’s. I could ask them for directions.
Or I could find a bus stop on the other side of the road and get back home. No, *no, nonono*. I was getting overwhelmed as I tried to repress the panic and anxiety. People had lived for a fuckton of time without phones, without maps, without anything but the fucking sun. And I had a party to get to. I was just overreacting, a silly city-girl out of her element.
And the stop was the right one, I knew that. So the house had to be somewhere nearby, and seeing as I hadn’t seen much in the last stretch of the ride, I decided to walk up the road.
Detriment aside, I took a huge swig of my wine. I decided that if by the time the bottle was empty I hadn’t found anything, I’d give myself permission to panic.
I counted how far I walked by the amount of streetlights, which I estimated to be about a hundred yards from each other as I walked to the first one after the bus stop. Whenever I passed through the darkness in between their halos, my legs took on a faster stride. I couldn’t help it. But I kept myself busy by counting.
Around the third light the road curved to the right. I saw no houses or driveways on either side of the curve.
By the seventh light, the wine was starting to run out. I couldn’t help but get worried, but I persisted on. I checked my phone constantly, and not even a faint little bar came to give me good news. I was somewhat drunk by then, which I know wasn’t the smartest thing, but at least it kept tamped the fear down. The unending forest was really starting to creep me out.
And right as I was saving the last swig of the wine, the near empty bottle a portent of doom that I held with gripping fingers, something came up. Another bus stop, on the other side of the road.
It wasn’t my friend’s house, but it was *something*, and I could feel the onset of panic drifting a bit further away, tucking itself somewhere deeper, ready to perk its head up if the moment called for it.
The bus stop looked exactly like the one I’d been on, except it was on the other side of the road. Presumably for the returning route, then. My legs were killing me, so I sat down and finished off the bottle.
*Fuck the party,* I thought. I was getting the hell out of there, and I’d wait for the bus until morning if I had to. *I’m never leaving the city again*.
Funnily enough, the bus took only five minutes to come. I still held onto some hesitation as I flagged it down, fearing that the driver couldn’t or wouldn’t see me and would just drive past me. But when the bus swerved next to me and opened its door, I asked the driver if this route would get me back to the city. He nodded without looking at me, which I took as a sign of annoyance on his behalf and relief on mine. I showed him the two-way ticket (which I’d thankfully screenshotted), but I’m pretty sure he didn’t even look at it.
The bus was as empty as the last one, but I didn’t care. I was tired of thinking, of planning, of being so unsure. I was supposed to go to a party, get drunk and come back home, and now I was just drunk and panicky. *Whatever*. I could text my friend once I had a signal and maybe after the wine-hangover wore off I could start thinking of it as a fun little story.
The swerving of the bus was nauseating as it swung me from side to side, the bus seemingly driven as if the driver was *literally* going between the trees. Not that I could dispute the claim, seeing as it was now pitch black outside, the lights inside the bus only casting a faint reflection on the windows.
Soon enough the road seemed to straighten itself out, which felt like a signal that I was on my way back home. Back to the city. The buzz was turning into the first signs of a hangover, and I closed my eyes with my head uncomfortably resting on the window.
Now, I’m sure I didn’t fall asleep. I’ve never been able to sleep in anything that moves, whether that be cars, buses, trains or planes. In spite of not dreaming, not feeling like I was even really resting, the driver was suddenly next to me, shaking me with a tight grip on my shoulder.
“Last stop,” he said.
I stammered something at him, and I could see that he was not happy. I realized he probably thought I was drunk, passed out, and was holding him off from getting home. I mean, he wasn’t wrong.
I got up and stumbled out of the bus, my eyes adjusting to being open again. Then to the fact that the sun was rising, giving a mean glare from somewhere I couldn’t quite bring my focus to. My heart pumped loudly, alerting me to something being wrong. What was wrong came in the form of something I smelled, or more accurately *didn’t* smell – the dank odor of the bus terminal.
I tried to rub my eyes to see better, but the blurry, bright vista before me was all wrong. I could see green around me, and a dirt road beneath me. Where the fuck was I? What bus did I even take? I turned to ask the driver just as he sped off, the bus spitting hot dust into the air.
I guess I could’ve screamed at the bus or ran after it like Peter-fucking-Parker, but something told me it would have been to no avail. Common sense, probably. As I focused my eyes on the bus slowly turning smaller and smaller in the distance, my eyes finally adjusted to the light, and my mind to the reality of where I was.
When I turned to look around, I instinctively pinched myself, hoping it was all a dream, or even delirium or a fucking psychotic break.
All around me were green fields of indeterminate crop, frightening in their mass of green lush. A lazy wind swept them around in waves, but the wind didn’t feel like wind at all. The air was still for me, yet the world around me existed in a different reality.
I was standing on a dirt road with a sign that said “BUS STOP.” No other markers were present, no name for the road, nothing. With nothing else, I made note of the rising sun, marking the general direction as east. Not that it would be of much help, but I needed something to calm down the panic that was starting to whisper inside me again.
The panic then reminded me of last night, of everything that had happened. I guess in my hungover and sleepy state I hadn’t connected the dots yet. But that’s the thing – in my mind I was sure the bus would take me back to the city. Back home. That’s how they work. And I guess I just couldn’t believe it, couldn’t attach what had happened to my sense of reality, to even really give it thought.
But the fear was a great reminder, and a storm began to brew in my mind.
I made a mental note of the state of things:
1. I was thirsty, probably well into dehydration, thanks to the wine (great fucking idea, Abby!)
2. I’d slept through most of the trip, which meant I had no idea what roads and areas we’d gone through, which in turn meant that I could basically be anywhere.
3. I checked my phone. No signal, low battery. No surprises there, said the fear.
4. I stood on the only road within eyesight, which means that…
5. I should pick a direction and start walking ASAP.
I decided to walk into the direction where the bus came from. Logically speaking, that would be closer to where I was going.
The morning sun was cool enough, but it didn’t take long for it to turn into a sour heat. If I didn’t find something soon, I knew I’d be in trouble. I still had the bottle of wine I was going to bring as a gift, but I wasn’t stupid enough to start drinking it. Not yet, at least.
The panic tried to take over, but as my tongue dried up and my legs began to ache, it had to take a backseat. It’s weird how panic can *feel* like the be-all-end-all of survival, the governor of the last stand, the final shout that will decide if it’s do-or-die. And I guess sometimes it’s given that title – under the right circumstances – but it’s not the one giving the orders. There’s something deeper underneath, something that doesn’t have a discernible feeling, because it’s perhaps not a feeling at all, that gives the orders.
I could feel it inside me as I walked, thinking in a calm fury about what feeling would constitute survival. I wondered what that voice inside me was; if anyone had thought about it before; categorized it; perhaps given it a name. Maybe someone had, in some book I would never learn the name of, much less actually read.
The road before me was a boring line of shit and the fields a child’s shitty painting, so there wasn’t much else for my mind to chew on besides the naming conventions of this element inside of me. I thought about the paradox of perhaps it giving my conscious mind the task of thinking about the unconscious parts of itself, perhaps just to keep the inevitable firing squads of neurons from thinking about the wrong things.
I thought about *Sergeant*, but It didn’t feel exactly like a military guy – they seemed to be too literal for such abstract thoughts.
Maybe a villain, then. Like a mastermind-type with a wicked sense of fashion. Blacks and purples, maybe some demure gold jewelry.
But it wasn’t so *in-your-face.* The voice kept to the shadows, controlling what it could, trying to make the right moves with an unflinching belief in a particular sense of morality.
And it seemed like a loner, even though it did work with other feelings.
And it had all these resources at its disposal, a way to force the body and mind toward something with the sheer control it had.
You know who else was like that?
*Batman*.
The chuckle that came out was unexpected, and it reminded me of how dry my mouth was. But it was undeniable: I had fucking *Batman* inside of me, keeping me alive.
The ridiculousness wore off a little as I continued walking, but I quite enjoyed the idea of knowing that the dark knight was looking out for me.
My mind drifted some more, my legs feeling acidic. I tried not to think about how thirsty I was, which was proving to be significantly harder with each step. But then something changed. At first the road was empty, just a swivel connecting to a stiff horizon. I’d been looking out at the fields or at my shoes, but when I turned my head back to its forward position, there was a building next to the road.
It was far off, but not too far. It’d take a while to walk there, but I knew I’d make it. No questions about it.
I thanked Batman.
Once I got closer, I could see the building’s surroundings better. Beyond it, the road I’d been walking on for god knows how long continued just as it had been. But right behind the building there was an intersection, another road leading left.
I was quite close to the building when I began to hear sounds. People. There were kids playing, or perhaps fighting, it was hard to tell. A few adult voices as well. But I couldn’t see them until I came right up to the building and turned its corner.
The building was definitely a store of some kind. It had a big, old wooden sign that had once said something in lettering that was now faded to indistinct lines. Its doors flew open as a pack of kids ran out, their parents screaming at them to calm down.
They didn’t seem to notice me until I came right up to the couple and said something to get their attention. They spun to look at me, and held onto a stare that took a bit longer than was comfortable. But I didn’t care, not really. I just needed help, I just wanted to go home.
“Well, uh, hello,” said the man. The woman kept quiet.
The words came out of my mouth as an embarrassing drivel. “Hi! Umm, hi. My name’s Mary, and I, uhh… I got lost, sort of. Or I took the wrong bus or something, and I’m not sure at all how to get back home. I’ve been walking on this road since morning, and my phone has no signal, and, uhh, yeah. Can you, like, tell me where I am? I guess I just need some help.”
Once I’d finished, they both just stared at me. There was something in the way they did it, though, that gave me an uneasy feeling. Like I was an alien or something. But they were obviously farm people, judging by the denim coveralls the man was wearing and the raggedy shawl draped over the woman. Maybe they were just weirded out how someone like *me* had ended up there.
Finally, the man answered. “There’s a bus stop on this here road,” he said, pointing towards the eerily similar dirt road veering to the left, “that’ll take you where you need to go.”
One of the kids screamed, and another one began to sob. The woman yelled at one of them – the perpetrator of some childish crime – to stop what they were doing, and lunged at them with a stern stride.
The man kept his feet planted for a moment longer, barely noticing the hubbub. He just stared at me, and Batman wasn’t telling me what to do. I think even he was out of ideas, so bizarre was the whole situation. Then the man nodded and walked off, and on the exact spot his body had covered of the view, some few hundred yards out, I could see the bus stop.
I still had some questions, but I didn’t want to bother the couple any more, or perhaps I just really didn’t want to converse with them longer. I’d rather figure it out on my own.
*Okay*, I thought, letting out a sigh that made my mouth feel like a sauna, *what’s next?*
Water.
Leaving the couple and their pack of kids behind, I walked into the building, which proved to be a convenience store of sorts. It was small, and it was very hot inside, a lazy cream-colored fan barely moving the air in its desperate and almost performative act of trying to cool the store down.
Between the few shelves of dried goods and diapers I spotted a glowing cabinet with a misty glass door. In the corner of my eye I could feel the single clerk eyeing me as I made my way to the fridge and quickly filled my lap with as many bottles of water as I could carry. I made my way to the register, fighting the urge to drink them all on the spot, and threw the bottles on the counter. I felt like a rude customer, and the clerk’s face seemed to prove me right.
He was an older man, with a face that had seemingly wrinkled its way to having an eternal, grumpy sort of look. Pretty much exactly what I thought a clerk in a convenience store in the middle of nowhere would look like.
He rang up the four bottles of water, making a point of carefully standing them upright in an orderly fashion as he beeped them.
“Twenty four fifty,” he said, finally.
I had somehow forgotten I’d need to pay, so I began to rummage through my purse even though I could’ve done that while he was ringing me up. I found my wallet tucked under the gift-wine and gave the man a fifty-dollar bill.
It took him way too long to put the bill in the register and count the change and finally hand it to me. Annoyed and more thirsty than I thought was possible, I took the bottles outside the building and sat down on the little stepping porch in front of the doors and began to drink.
It felt *wonderful,* but after the first bottle I had to stop myself from drinking more. It began to feel nauseating in my empty stomach, turning the bile into popping blisters. I decided to give my stomach a few moments to digest until I continued drinking, and perhaps give Batman some time to adjust to the situation as well.
I looked around me and noticed that the couple and their kids were gone. But the weird thing was, there hadn’t been a car - or a fucking carriage, or anything. I guess they must have lived close by and walked, but I was sure I should’ve still seen them walking down either road. Eh, whatever. They probably took a shortcut.
I could feel my mind clearing up even as my stomach still battled with the onslaught of water after having been poisoned with wine. And as it cleared up, another thought struck me. What had the guy said about the bus stop? *It’ll take you where you need to go.* What the fuck did that mean? Maybe he was just rude; maybe he wanted to fuck with me. But I hadn’t even told him where I needed to go, I don’t think.
I really wanted to get back to the city. At least there the people were rude in ways I could predict.
My stomach grumbled, but the feeling was different. It told me that the water situation had been dealt with, and it was time for the other thing. *Food*.
So, like a prick, I barged back into the shop. The old man stared at me, and perhaps it was just my preconception or he really had upped the aura of grumpiness that surrounded him. I scoured the shelves, which on closer inspection were mostly bare, for something to eat. The best I could find was a can of beans and a loaf of bread.
As I brought them to the register, laying the products down with more care this time, I asked the clerk “Do you have any ready-made food here, or is there like a restaurant or something nearby?”
The clerk made a sound that was something between *egh* and *no* as he shrugged and turned his head from side to side.
Then the other thing. “Does the bus stop on the road take me back to the city?”
The clerk’s posture changed, like the slope of his back was put on an invisible stretcher. His eyes widened, then returned to normal as he looked up at me.
“The city?” he asked.
“Yeah, the city. That’s where I live. I need to get there. Or is there a phone I could use to ring a cab? Mine’s probably dead by now, not that I got a signal anyway.”
His back slumped back into its degrading slope as I gave him a ten dollar bill. He shifted to look at the cash register.
“It’ll take you where you need to go,” he said.
What the fuck? Again that same shit. I wasn’t having it.
“Where exactly is that?” I asked, the sarcasm evident in my voice even as I tried to hide it.
“The city,” he said. “That’s where you need to go, right?”
He gave me my change and I nodded without a thank you. I took the beans and bread outside and parked myself on the porch. I took my time dipping the beans into the bread and sending the room temperature lunch down my gullet, giving my stomach the time to adjust.
*I could take the bus*, I thought. *Or I could…*Nothing. Fuck. These weirdos had been weird as all hell, and I had no other option. And just to make it clear, I was fucking done by this point. I just wanted to get back home, crawl into bed and sleep this whole nightmare-adventure off. And as much as I’d developed an aversion to buses, I still felt like I could trust a bus. I just needed to be awake and clear-headed, needed to ask the bus driver specific questions – even if they were being an asshole – and make my way back home. But one thing was still bugging me, so for the third time I marched back into the store to annoy the clerk.
I was going to ask him: “Where are we?” but the guy was gone. *Poof*. Disappeared. Maybe he went to take a shit, I don’t know. I wasn’t going to wait for him, though. The bus stop was close enough, so if a bus never came, I could just come back and bugger him until he’d help me. Or shoot me - don’t all podunk stores have a shotgun under the register?
I finished off the beans and half of a loaf and listened to my stomach grumble as I made my way to the bus stop.
I waited for maybe ten minutes until I saw a bus. This time I took note of what it looked like. It was old and gray where yellow paint had chipped off. Almost like a school bus, except that its shape was more industrial, like a greyhound.
I flagged it down and took a good look at the driver. Older man with a scruffy beard. Barely even looked at me. My earlier ticket was obviously not going to work, which gave me a good excuse to bother him.
“Hi!” I said, trying my best to put on a smile that was polite without being annoying, “where is this bus going?”
The man grunted, and I said “Excuse me?”
“The city. All the buses from here go to the city.”
“Which city?” I asked.
“Do you need a ticket?” the man said, finally turning to face me. I didn’t want to board the bus yet, but the scowl on his face moved my body inside as a polite gesture. Immediately he closed the doors behind me, which gave me a flash of claustrophobia, the memories of last night striking loud warning bells in my mind.
“Yes, I mean–” I stammered, “I need a ticket to the city. Will this bus take me there?”
“Lady,” he said as he turned the bus into gear, “I already told you where we’re going to the city. All the buses from here go to the city.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll take one ticket, please.”
The man printed out the ticket as the bus was already kicking dust into the rearview. I didn’t give him any money, I think, but in the moment I just took the ticket and walked all the way to the back of the bus, as far away from him as I could.
The bus was empty, as suspected. But maybe, *just maybe*, it would take me back home.
From my seat I could see well enough to try and piece together where I was. I decided to do my best to keep an eye out, because if all went to shit, at least I would be ready.
The plan worked for the first thirty minutes or so, but as what seemed to be the same exact roads and fields dragged on, I couldn’t help but feel my eyes unfocus, the lack of stimuli forcing my mind to drift to other places.
I didn’t much care for those other places.
The journey dragged on and on, and every once in a while I’d snack on the rest of the beans and bread. They started to taste like nothing as my body began to crave something with spices. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, but there was nothing of note. No landmarks, no differences in foliage. No houses. Nobody else getting on.
As night began to fall, the whole thing was starting to get really eerie. My mind had been digging its way down, and my legs felt restless. How long had I been on the bus? I needed to do something.
So, after hyping myself up for a minute or fifteen, I jumped up and made my way back to the driver.
He didn’t seem to notice me even as I politely coughed. Finally, I said “Excuse me.”
The man turned for a split-second, then reinstated his eyes back on the road. “What?” he said.
“Uhmm, I was just wondering whereabouts we are, and how long is it until we get to the city?”
“The city’s the next stop,” he said. “Not long.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Are you *sure?*”
The driver either groaned or chuckled, and then nodded. I took that as the end of our conversation and began to walk back to my seat.
Just as I was plonking my ass down, the bus slowed down. *Another passenger?* I thought.
“Last stop!” the driver yelled. Apparently not, then.
But we sure as fuck weren’t in the city.
I grabbed my bag and made my way back to the driver. “This isn’t the city!” I said, the words harsher than I would’ve liked, even though they didn’t hit me with a pang of regret.
“Lady, this is the last stop, Now you either get out, or you’ll drive the route back with me in a few hours. Your call.”
“Where the fuck are we?” I said, an anger rising inside me to mask the growing despair.
“We're in the city. Just take a look outside.”
*Sure. I’ll look outside and tell him it’s the exact same dirt-road-outback as we’d come from.*
But as I looked out the window, the scenery had changed. Don’t get me wrong, it was a city, just not any city I’d ever seen.
The trust that I’d had that I’d find my way home one way or another fell away completely. Perhaps it had done so earlier, and only now did it come to fruition. I felt myself fall down an endless, dark well that connected to a series of underground tunnels and caverns of which I knew nothing of, a well so hidden and kept sacred that I’d never find my way out. Well, that’s what it felt like, anyway.
What I saw was even worse.
The buildings were high like skyscrapers, towering over the dark, wide streets. But they didn’t look like buildings in the traditional sense. Instead they were like the stems of mushrooms, the walls grotesque and porous and bumpy in all the wrong ways.
I couldn’t feel even the faintest wind, but the towers swayed. And they swayed in all different directions.
I couldn’t see anyone, and the thought that I’d fallen asleep and found myself in a curious nightmare passed by my mind. I took a hold of it, tasted it, and made the decision to do everything in my power to *wake up*.
First thing I did was turn around. The bus was gone. Not just from behind me but I saw it nowhere on the long road that stretched all the way to the horizon. That felt dreamlike, giving some credence to the thought.
I pinched myself. I squeezed my eyes shut until I saw swirls of light behind my eyelids. I tried to fly, yet gravity pulled me down just the same. None of the old tricks seemed to work, but then again nightmares often trumped any control, any leeway the frightened wanderer of the dream might have inside it.
But then I remembered this trick I used to do when I was a kid. I don’t remember where I’d gotten it, but whenever I became aware of being in a nightmare (which was plenty often when I was growing up), I could always count my fingers to make sure. Something about dream-logic made it nearly impossible to count your fingers correctly - there’d always be one or two more or less than there should.
I place my right palm to face me, realizing then how sweaty it was. *Okay, just count it
*Four.*
*Five.*
This wasn’t a dream.
I felt lightheaded. I honestly wished I’d passed out, because when you pass out, people clamor over you. Someone calls an ambulance. Some muscular EMT’s take you to the hospital, carrying you all the way to the bed. Someone looks after you.
But there was no one there. No one to help. I couldn’t pass out, so I just bent down and squeezed my knees, taking a few deep breaths in the hopes of finding some clarity. The next step.
Something echoed in the distance. A deep, bellowing rumble. I’m not sure if I heard it as much as I felt it. And it was getting closer. And somehow I knew it was bad.
The next step was literal. I had to find somewhere to hide.
I ran towards the nearest tower’s faint shadow. I realized then that there was no sun anymore, just a gray glow that seemed imprinted upon the air. Approaching the tower it became clear that it was not a building at all. It was alive, somehow. In some stupid way that made it not have eyes or a mouth or an asshole. But I could feel it – sense it in the micro-movements of its skin. The smell it had, like mold and soil.
The rumble came once more, a tremor in the ground that seemed to originate from a different place this time. I didn’t like being near the towers, but I had to keep going. And so, deeper in between them I went.
Behind the larger towers were smaller ones, like two-storey houses, thick and unmoving. And in one of them I saw something different, something that looked manmade, if that was even possible.
Maybe it was a trap. If these things were alive, then they must feed on something. Maybe that’s how they did it. Cheese for the rat.
Something grunted beneath and behind me, and I ran as fast as I could.
It looked like a house, carved into one of those fungi-looking things. It had a door and windows and a sign. The sign had really poor lettering, jagged in its edges, the letters too long in places. Once I got near enough, I could see that it was in english, though. It said:
**the FUNky e-Café**
“What,” I said as I put my hand on the door.
“The,” I said as something roared behind me, shaking the ground.
“Fuck,” I yelled as I plunged myself inside, closing the door behind me.
I looked out the window as something black and wet flew across. I didn’t stay to see if it came back.
Inside was, a… well, it was a regular internet cafe. You know, with a little counter to pay and get snacks from and then rows and rows of computers side by side with dividers between each other. Above, faint bulbs flickered as they hummed in and out of existence, as if powered by a dying generator. It was all very 90s, except upon closer inspection, the computers themselves were quite modern.
I sat down on one, pressed the dusty on-button, and it booted. It felt weird and wrong in the setting, but also strangely comforting. It was something familiar in an unfamiliar world, and although it had no reason to be there, it was.
The operating system wasn’t familiar, though. It was barebones, with green highlights and gray backgrounds, either textured by design or the scrappy monitor to give it a scratched sort of look. My first thought was that it felt military in some way, but there’s no sign pointing to that direction.
What I could actually do on the thing was limited to three options:
1. Communicate
2. I’m feeling lucky
3. Broadcast
The first two immediately felt like a bad idea. Communicate with what exactly, those things outside? Whoever was, I don’t know, running the show? And I definitely wasn’t feeling lucky, no sirree.
Broadcast it was. It let me choose between a text, audio, or video recording, but the webcam wasn’t connecting properly so my options were between the first two. I tried recording the audio but it kept coming out sounding like the ravings of some lady who’d taken xanax in Berghain at 3 AM - thankfully I could delete or re-record before sending it. After a couple tries I decided to write instead.
I don’t think this came out much better than the audio recording.
Oh well, I’m going to press send. I need to do something. I’m not sure where this will end up, if anywhere, but hopefully someone can reach out and help me. I unfortunately don’t know how. Take the wrong bus, I guess?
It’s quiet outside. A night of sorts - thinly dark and slightly cool - seems to be falling. I think I need some sleep. Hopefully when I wake up things won’t be worse again.
#entertainment out.O ne.
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