Chapter Two - Bus 40

The pole leaned slightly on its base as if one too many whale-sized persons had decided to plop their plump asses upon the weak, unsuspecting object after the "All You Can Eat" buffet at that old Asian kitchen down the road. I sat on the ground next to the pole, allowing myself to fall upon it, the cold metal stinging my warm skin through the cheap fabric that acted as a barrier between me and the rest of the world. The small patch of grass that surrounded the pole had been long since worn away, and as I settled down the dirt felt solid and stable beneath me. I leaned my head back against the metal, closing my eyes I exhaled. As my body relaxed the acute pains came rushing back. I groaned, low and steady, letting the white noise fill my head and block out the commotion of the everyday.

I exhaustingly searched through the folds of my mind, trying to elucidate the blank spaces of darkness that dotted my memory. Desperately and methodically, as the sunlight slowly crept down my face, I paced through the moments before I lost consciousness hoping like the acute retraction of a rubber-band, the lost time would snap back. After what seemed to be hours of nothingness but the empty sound of my painful grope, I gradually opened my eyes letting the dim light of the late afternoon drown in. Slightly lifting my tattered arm up, I examined the bruises that had began to appear more distinctly. It escaped me how or why I had gotten so dilapidated, but I knew whatever the case it had to have been one of their faults. The pressing question was, which one?

Creeping slowly into my eardrums came the sound of the approaching bus, its rusting brakes screeching loudly as it pulled along side the curb where I lied sitting on the ground. I winced at the awful sound, and as the large frame of the bus scattered the sunlight to and from my face, I brought my arm up to guard my eyes. The bus came to an abrupt stop directly in front of me, 'Bus 40' blinking dimly across the screen in the window. And that's when I saw him, inching his Jesus shoes from the small landing of the bus's platform down to the ground, Moses set his feet on the solid earth. He had arrived.