BUS STOP an INTRODUCTION

Bus stop is made up of the stories of a boy, perhaps 10 years old who rides the bus everywhere. The stories are his thoughts, observations and things that have happened to him. While many are based on my own life, the stories themselves are fiction. I have to admit that the character of the cousin is based on myself.

DROPPED CHANGE

Once I dropped my bus fare and the bus’ wheel stopped right on top it. I told Gus that he was parked on my money, but he told me he couldn’t move the bus until I paid him. I asked how I was supposed to pay him if the bus was parked on my money?

All he said was “welcome to my world.” Then he drove off and I had to walk home. I don’t like Gus.

DISEASE

Me and my cousin and Spencer were on the bus coming home from a movie and we saw an army guy get on the bus. He was wearing a uniform and everything. My cousin told Spencer that the army guy was probably on the bus because some monkey disease has started making everyone sick. And the army guy was going to take us to a big building where we couldn’t leave and they would poke us and do experiments on us. And the army guy would shoot anyone who tried to leave. I got really scared and Spencer started to cry. Everyone was looking at us. The army guy asked what was wrong and Spencer told him that he hasn’t seen any monkeys and that he’s not sick and doesn’t want to go to a big building and get shot. Then Gus made us get off the bus. I hope he gets a monkey disease.

BIRDS

Yesterday when I was on the bus with my cousin we heard something hit the window. I didn’t see what it was but my cousin said it was a bird. Then he said that he saw this movie once where all the birds got really mad at people and pecked at them and got tangled in people’s hair. My cousin said that in the movie, birds started flying into windows before they got really mad. We looked out the window for more birds but didn’t see any. Then at our bus stop there was a pigeon and a crow. I couldn’t tell, but they looked mad so we rode to the next stop and got off there.

HITCHHIKER

My cousin told me about this ghost called the phantom hitchhiker. She stands out in the middle of the road in a long dress and tries to get people to give her a ride. When they do she always has them drive out to the old graveyard and then she scares them so that they have a heart attack and die. For a long time I was scarred to ride the bus at night but then I thought that if she was hitchhiking she probably didn’t have bus fare. So I was safe.

ADS

The other day I was riding the bus home and it got stuck in traffic. I was looking at the ads over the seats, one ad showed a bunch of happy people sitting on the bus as it flew over a traffic jam. The bus in the picture had big wings. I asked Gus why he didn’t drive a bus with big wings so we could fly over traffic. He asked my why I didn’t mind my own business and made me walk home. After I got home I had a glass of lemonade and was sitting out in the front yard when I saw the bus go by. I must have beat it home. I waved at Gus but he looked mean me at shook his fist.

BUS FARE

Another thing happened since I came back to my aunt’s house. I was riding on the bus to go into town on a Saturday because I was going to meet Spencer and my cousin to go see a movie. The bus was half way to the theatre and Gus asked me if I knew that the bus fare had gone up. I said that I didn’t know it had gone up. He asked me how much I had and I told him I just had enough for bus fare and a movie. He said that it wasn’t enough bus fare and that I would have to pay more. But then I wouldn’t have enough to go to the movie. So Gus stopped the bus and told me that that was as far as he could take me for the old bus fare. I had to walk the rest of the way and I missed the movie anyway.

ARMS AND HEADS

You know how they don’t like you to stick your head or arm outside the bus window? My cousin say’s it’s because sometimes there’s this big monster that rides around on the tops of buses. This monster grabs people’s arms and heads when they stick out and rips them off. Then he eats them. My cousin say’s the monster likes heads best of all. One time we stood on a walkway over the road and looked down at the top of buses to see if we could see the monster. But all we saw were numbers. Now I’m glad they don’t let us open the windows. Maybe Gus isn’t so bad after all.

WORK

I was waiting for the bus a while ago and this guy comes up and asks if I want to buy a copy of the glorious people’s paper. I told him that I only had enough money for the bus. He said that to be free from the shackles of the ‘pressive “bushwaazee” was worth a  walk home. I told him I wasn’t shackled and he told me I was fooling myself and that I was being groomed for a life of mindless servitude. I guess I did have to do the dishes a lot and take out the trash and make my bed. He said the man was keeping me down. I said it wasn’t a man it was my aunt. I didn’t want to do any more chores so I bought a paper. It was filled with happy looking people holding tools and articles I couldn’t understand. When I finally got home I told my aunt I wasn’t going to do the dishes because I didn’t want to be chained with depression. Then I gave her the newspaper. She told me it was all about workers and if I was that interested in work I could start by doing the dishes. Stupid paper.

REFLECTIONS

On the bus ride back to my aunt’s house we had a lot of trouble falling asleep. So after it got dark we just sat and looked out the window. We went by lots of lights and a lot more stuff that was just dark. There’s a lot of dark at night. It seemed like everything had just disappeared and we were floating through nothing. The only thing I could see was the inside of the bus reflected in the windows. I made a face at my cousin and he made one back at me. Then we pretended that we were outside the bus trying to get in. It was fun. Pretty soon though we got tired and fell asleep. When we woke up the world was back. Streets and grass and cows and everything.

TRAINS

We have to leave my uncle’s place this week because vacation is over. It sure has been a fun summer I like the country and I’m glad that we haven’t been ‘ducted or eaten. I guess that means we’ll be riding that big nice bus back home. My cousin say’s he’s sick of riding the bus and he wants to hop freight trains to get home and eat baked beans out of the can and sleep in hobo camps. My uncle say’s that my cousin isn’t old enough to hop freights and that it’s against the law. He say’s that there aren’t any hobo’s any more just drug addicts and murderers. He said that sometimes they let you on the train and then when you’re asleep they kill and rob you. That got my cousin all scarred so now he wants to take the bus. I’m glad because that’s a long trip when you don’t have someone to talk to.

STUCK

I was on the bus once and a dog ran in front of the bus so the bus skidded to a stop. But then when it tried to start again it wouldn’t move forward because it was stuck on the train tracks. Everyone started to panic and the bus driver was yelling all kinds of bad words. A guy behind me said that if a train came now we would all die screaming in a holocaust of fire and twisted steel. This made some people cry. The bus driver told everyone to get off the bus and push. So we all did and the bus made it over the tracks. I thought that because we helped we should get to ride for free. But the bus driver made us pay anyway.

ASSASSIN

My Uncle was going to work late so he gave me and my cousin some money to go see a movie in Coopville. But about a mile from my uncle’s house the bus broke down. The bus driver got really mad because he said the bus had just been looked at and was running fine. My cousin said that the bus broke down because someone on the bus was a telepathic and they were using their brainpower to stop the bus. He said that lot’s of times telepathic people get jobs killing other people for money. My cousin said that probably someone on the bus was going to have their head explode. We waited but nobody’s head exploded and they couldn’t fix the bus so we had to walk home.

COMBUSTION

The summer is getting really hot. Sometimes on the bus it’s so hot that it’s hard to breathe. My cousin say’s that maybe it isn’t really hot out and the only reason we’re feeling hot is because of this thing he calls “spoteneous human ‘bustion”. My cousin say’s that maybe it’s really cold out and we’re about to burst into flames and all they’ll find is part of a foot or an ear or something. He say’s it happens all the time. But everyone on the bus seems to be hot so I don’t think it’s “Spotenous human ‘bustion”. Besides the bus driver say’s it’s 95 degrees out.

PRISONERS

Last night we stayed up late watching a movie on tv about these prisoners. In the movie the prisoners always took this bus out to the fields where they were chained up and the broke rocks with picks. And they sang these songs about ‘miss ippi. We didn’t know who ‘miss Ippi’ was but everybody seemed to know her. So today when we got on the bus we pretended it was a prison bus. My cousin called the bus driver warden. I thought that was really funny.

BURNT BUILDING

The bus stop that we normally wait at burned down so now we have to wait by a stop sign. An old man waiting for the bus said terrorists burnt down the bus stop to undermine the US economy. He bet that all over the country bus stops had been burned down all at the same time. He said some middle east country burned them down so that people wouldn’t take the bus and drive their cars instead and that would use more oil. He told  us that he’d been waiting for this day and in his basement he had a gun and some food and water. He also said that he was just taking the bus into town for some more supplies and then he was going home to stay in his basement and watch for “Forneers”. But after we got on the bus we saw that all the other bus stops weren’t burned down. We asked the old man why they weren’t burned down too, but all he said was that it was just a matter of time.

CAR

Yesterday me and my cousin were waiting for the bus because we were going to the movies in Coopville. While we were waiting my cousin told me about this movie he had seen about this car that had come to life and was killing people. Mostly by running them over. He said you couldn’t tell the car was alive on the outside but on the inside the radio would come. And the car would drive up to people and they wouldn’t know it was alive and then SPLAT! I asked if other things could come to life. He said they didn’t in the movie but if cars can he thought other things could also, like trucks and buses. Just then we saw the bus coming down the road. We tried to tell if it had come to life but couldn’t. We tried to hear if it’s radio was on but the bus was making to much noise. We got scarred and ran back to my uncle’s house. I guess we’ll have to see the movie later.

HUNGER

One time me and my cousin were riding the bus and the bus broke down. It was way out in the middle of no where. The bus didn’t even have a radio like they do in the city. The bus started to get really hot so we all got out and waited by the side of the road. No cars drove by. People started to get really hungry and thirsty. My cousin said that when ships and airplanes break down and people get really hungry they have to eat each other. He said that’s what always happens. I bet it’s the same for buses. A little girl heard us talking and started to cry. I started to get scarred because I didn’t want to be eaten. I looked around at the other people and none of them looked very tasty. Then a truck drove up and gave us all a ride into town. I’m glad because what I really wanted was a hamburger.

TRUCKS

There are a lot of big trucks that go by the street in front of my uncle's house. I see them go by when I wait for the bus. My Uncle say's that if you raise and lower your arm sometimes they honk their horns. My Uncle says that trucks are like ships and that they carry stuff all across the country, like food and clothes. Once I saw a show on tv about lighthouses. Lighthouses stop ships from running into rocks and help them find their way at night. I got worried that maybe the trucks might run into my uncle's house or maybe get lost because there was no lighthouse nearby. So last night I went out and turned on the headlights on my Uncle's truck. This morning he was really upset because his battery was dead. I don't know why it died but I hope he gets a new one, I don't want any trucks to hit the house tonight either.

MOOSE

One time the bus was really late getting into town because a bunch of cows were walking in the road. I wonder why the call them cows and not moose. Cows moo, so moose would make more sense. But I guess then what would they call moose? I don’t know what kind of sound moose make. Maybe they moo too and got named first before people knew cows mooed, and then it was too late because people were already calling moose, moose. I asked the bus driver why they were called cows and he said it was because they were fat, stupid animals that wouldn’t get out of the road. But that didn’t make any sense either.