The bus jerks me awake.
Or that is what I tell myself. I harbor a tendril of hope that I am still sleeping, that this is only a dream.
Awake. Asleep. Is there a difference? Or some method for knowing which is which?
This bus is a train. Or is this train a bus?
The sky outside is a gradient of blues, blacks, and grays. There’s no way to tell the time.
I peer over my seat and see some new faces and some missing faces. They come, and they go. How that happens is a mystery that my mind refuses to examine.
People get on and off buses all the time. But my memory of the last stop this bus made is vague. That or I’m always sleeping when it stops.
I have to pee. Occasionally, I will venture to the back of the bus. I want to use the toilet. A handwritten sign stuck to the molded plastic door with a piece of duct tape informs riders the facility is out-of-service.
But I desperately need to urinate. I cannot remember the last time I relieved myself, nor the last time I didn’t feel the pressing need to do so.
I peek inside the door—it’s unlocked; it seems fine to me, so I enter the cubicle. I reach for the commode lid and try to open it, but then I see and remember. I’ve done these same actions thousands of times. The commode is a single piece of plastic, a prop. Same with the washbasin and faucet; the knobs don’t turn, and the spigot is made of foam. I push it to the left, and it bends ninety degrees. I release it, and it straightens back to its original shape.
Out of service? That’s a laugh. This facility has never been “in service.”
I look in the mirror.
The face looking back at me isn’t one I recognize. It never is. I jerk my eyes from the image. A bottomless disgust fills me. I’ve lost my mind, or this is all a dream.
Oh yeah, the bathroom is how the new riders arrive.
This memory always jolts me out of there. I don’t want to be in there when someone shows up. I hurry back to seat 2C.
When one memory returns, the others are not far behind. I take two steps to the driver, a hooded figure of indeterminate height, weight, and gender. Then I remember. The driver never responds to my pleas to stop so that we might use a restroom.
I settle into my seat, refasten the seatbelt, raise the sunshade, and study the dimly lit world on the other side of the window.
The terrain is a Lovecraftian landscape; bruise-colored clouds stretch from horizon to horizon. I can’t tell if it’s day or night; fields of dead or dying gray wheat stretch from the road as far as I can see. We pass a strand of trees, but they look alien. The branches twisted toward the dark gray skies as if the trees were cursing the heavens.
I pull the shade. I always lower the shade; I shut my eyes and try to sleep.
The train jostles, and I’m awake again. The conductor is walking down the aisle, waving at someone behind me. I hate him. The sight of him fills me with dread. I hate everything about him: his red, bushy beard, his stupid wire-rimmed glasses.
But wait a minute. I was on a bus, wasn’t I? I need help. Something is wrong.
From the corner of my eye, I sense a bright red light on the right ahead of the train, a few yards from the rusted tracks.
I raise the shade.
Memories flood in, and I try not to read the sign. It’s always the same. Huge, red neon letters shout their warning.
Highway to Hell. Abandon all Hope.
But we are on a train. I look back to the aisle. The conductor is gone. The train is now a bus.
I hate the conductor; I’m glad to be back on the bus.
Remembered incidents flood back, thousands of them.
Each one is a variant of the other.
The conductor waves at a rider and then engages them in conversation.
CONDUCTOR: “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re on the wrong train. There was an error. You’re supposed to be on your way to the other place.”
RIDER: “Oh, thank goodness. This was feeling like a bad dream.”
They always respond the same way. Their face becomes an image of relief, then the waterworks. They break down crying. Their wailing wakes everyone trying to sleep on the bus-train.
The conductor consoles them with a comforting grandfatherly arm draped over one shoulder, walks them to the back, opens the door, and hurls them off the train.
I try to look away before seeing them splash in the lake of fire.
I’ve gotten better at that. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot cover my ears enough to block out the screams. By the time I’m facing forward, the train is again a bus, but the pitiful cries are always there. They eventually grow faint, but they never go away entirely. I can still hear the scream of each man, woman, and child the conductor has tossed from the train.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
One day it will be me, the conductor signals. I hope I remember not to fall for his cruel act. I want to shove him off the train. But I’m not a young man anymore, and he is an enormous, broad-shouldered figure in his impeccably tailored gray suit.
I settle back into my seat in 2C and close my eyes, hoping to dream of who I was before this bus-train.
No, no, no. An image arises in my mind. I try to push it down, but it will not go away. The reflected face I saw earlier in the restroom, the image in the mirror. I want to push it down, forget it. At all costs, not admit that the man in the mirror had a red beard, wore a gray suit, and wire-rimmed glasses. My hopes for reprieve wither and die as a feeling of damnation settles in for my ride into eternity.
Stories by Shawn 