I stepped on the bus steps, pulling my pass out from my wallet and flashed it to the driver, my bus pass was in front of my photo ID so I could have quicker access. The driver nodded his head and I walked toward the middle of the bus, it was a three car bus, and not many people were riding this time of day. My favorite seats were the ones in the middle, so you directly faced the windows. The bus started to roll. One, two, three blocks. People got on, people got off. I stared at my reflection to pass the time, the window was slightly curved inward so my reflection was warped, I continued to stare, the reflection became more and more warped, worsening the longer I stared at it.
The bus jerked to a stop, I heard a teenager in the second car curse the bus driver. The doors opened, people got on, people got off. A Hispanic older man and his daughter, I guess, sat across from me. The man was speaking Spanish to someone a few seats away from me, and they laughed together. The girl next to him had an annoyed countenance. I stared at my hands, I knicked my finger cutting a tomato and the blood soaked through the bandage. The bus drove for a few blocks and stopped, the second man got off and the father talked to his daughter. She looked worse than before, she picked at her nails and looked like she was trying to ignore what her dad was saying. I moved my head and looked at the second car, there was a couple with their tongues so down each other's throat it could legally be called cannibalism.
Another stop.
I looked in the second car again, a woman was sitting in one of the chairs by herself, her hair looked like a beehive, her eyes were sunken in, her wrinkles deep set. I pulled on the stop cord of the bus and stared at the beehive woman. She looked ready to stand up herself, but a girl intervened. "Not this stop, this isn't your stop." she repeated.
I looked at the other people on the bus, they all looked like they were dying in their seat, decomposing on the red plastic. The beehive woman sat back, then looked up at the ceiling. She looked at everyone, the lost souls on the ride to who knows where. All I knew was the next stop jerked, and I stood up and walked out the door. I stood on the sidewalk and watched the bus.
Before I could turn around, a city truck, the kind with the cement mixer, rammed into the bus, toppling it over. I heard screams around me and the shrieking halt of the cars from the intersection. I took a deep breath and held my chest.
Not much of a stop, I thought.
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