Bus Trip

A Monologue About A Ghost & Groundhog Day

I never got around to getting a driving license, having my own car. (Pauses, as if sorry). My parents were a little too high strung to teach me. My boyfriend at the time, who always said he wanted to marry me, gave me two lessons, but never really recovered from the one time I took a left-hand turn and nearly got laid and left behind.

It was late at night, the streets were quiet, no traffic, and we’d been getting a little hot and bothered – we were in a hurry to get home. Well, I indicated left, then pushed harder on the pedal – I thought it was the brake but no – nearly had a threesome with the traffic light. Didn’t. Nearly. That cooled him down. Didn’t stay after he dropped me at home that night. We never married.

(Sounds of friends talking and laughing together)

(Car horn, doors slamming, car starting)

I was always busy studying or working part-time or socialising. I was the youngest in my high school and university group of friends, and a bit of a looker. Everyone was always happy to pick me up, drop me off. Boyfriends were usually happy to give me a lift if I needed to go anywhere. Even my overly watchful parents would oblige me with lifts, so I never had to catch taxis, or trains, or other public transport.

So when I finished my uni studies and started working on the northern beaches, I was sort of happy and worried. I lived in the inner city, you see. And was a public transport virgin.

I knew I’d have to make my way against the traffic each morning and afternoon on a bus. Because I was now grown–up. Parents were getting old and boyfriends, girlfriends, well they were all a bit older now, too – with different agendas.

Fine. I’d sort of planned it this way. I like journeys, trips among people, but most folk I’d met didn’t have to interact with. Sometimes I just liked to watch the world rather than having it watch me. There’s anonymity amongst people on public transport. Mostly everyone minds their own business, don’t want to chat with strangers, wouldn’t dare chat someone up.

(Bus sounds)

Actually, it’s on these trips you often see things in more detail if you bother to look and listen while you’re not talking.

When I travel by bus, I escape into my own world. Can do my own thing and it isn’t considered rude. Could even read porn on an e-reader. And should I wish to look out to the world, I can do it discreetly. No-one really cares. No one is anyone on public transport. We all think we are safe in the crowd.

It’s commonplace for a glance to be exchanged with strangers. Those moments when you are deep in thought ….or not, and suddenly you focus or look up, after staring blankly. You may quickly avert your eyes so contact is cut off, or you exchange a quick micro smile.

(Bus door sounds)

Like the time an elderly woman, who really looked as if she had already died, smiled at me. When her stop came, and she was getting off the bus, she looked back at me. She had these yellowed eyes that said she had lived. Eyes that look into souls. She knew things. Maybe I’d been the only traveller who had smiled at her. Maybe this was going to be her last smile and bus-trip? I had seen her wheezing and almost stricken with early-onset rigour mortis.

She was like a tired warrior on death row. Her muscles and arteries had already hardened up. I wondered if her heart was still pumping. I felt strange because there were things I knew about her. That in her youth she had been a dancer. Her posture and gait confirmed this. She had ugly, bunioned feet. That she had struggled to live on the pension since her partner had died ten years ago.That she knew that she was going to be joining him soon. That she had lived the last two years mostly in her memories. That this morning she had seen a cardiologist. He had called her in. The bus had been her only transport option.

(Bus door sounds)

Preschool kids on their way to child care with their working parent are an interesting lot. They can be sleepy and agitated one second, then mesmerised, staring at me the next. The little boy with blonde surfer hair was always dumbstruck, and just glared at me, sometimes frightened, sometimes very curious as a child is. His father had a knack for getting his kid to look my way. ‘Look out the window’. This quietened the child down. Guess the man couldn’t be too obvious in case blondie reported back to his mother.

(Bus door sounds)

The afternoon the transit police boarded the bus was a highlight of my commuting experience. I’d never noticed they had guns. A bit extreme for fare evaders.

(Bus door sounds)

After the officers alighted, a young man in a hooded tracksuit just made it on the bus. He seemed relieved to not have missed it.

(Bus door sounds)

Over the next few days, I started noticing this young man: always dressed the same, always running late, just making it. He sits next to me. I can still smell the hours of his perspiration caked in his hair, layered on his skin, soaked into his clothes and in the air. He’s a carnivore – eats red meat. I can almost smell the metallic aroma of blood. Other passengers aren’t so tolerant.

I’ve always thought being a passenger was much easier than driving, having to find parking, pay for rego and insurance. More scenic, less stress.

I mind my own business. I’ve got my iPhone. He looks at me like a pig licks his chops at pig slop. I move my bag to the other side of me. It’s no longer a barrier between us. Two off-duty security guards from the local mall board. They sort of look like transit police, and they approach the back of the bus. They’ve probably been standing all day, and walk toward a newly vacated seat. The hooded guy next to me casually reaches down his trouser leg near his ankle. I shift away but I’m wedged behind a seat and him. The bus jerks to a stop. He’s probably scratching an itchy calf.

(Bus door sounds)

Suddenly there is chaos.

(Bus door sounds)

(Screams and panic from a crowd of people)

Everyone is pushing as they rush through the doors of the bus. It’s like they’ve all seen a ghost. Even ‘hoody’ is scrambling to get off. I follow the crowd. What’s out the back of the window? I can’t see – it dark. Is something outside? Surely we’d be safer on the bus? Unless it’s headed straight for the bus!

And then I’m alone on a bus. The doors have closed. The driver isn’t in his seat. Am I safe? I don’t panic yet. But then I see a face – one of the other passengers on the other side, the outside of the bus, and they’re screaming. I sense I’m scared. Something foreign, new, fills me. It’s alien. I’m full of dread. I imagine I’m hyperventilating. I don’t want to look back. There’s someone or something on the bus. I don’t know first aid. I don’t want to. I don’t want to look. I try to prise the doors open – get help. But I can’t. The doors won’t budge. And no-one outside seems to be trying to open the doors either. ‘ Open the doors! Open the fucking doors’.

Then I hear my echo. In my head? Bus acoustics? I’m losing it. Really losing it. (Whispers next line) Open the fucking doors.

I turn around and I see. (S)he’s almost dead. (S)he has been knifed in the side of the torso. (S)he’s bleeding out. (S)he’s sitting where I usually sit. (S)he looks just like me…….but (s)he’s not me.

Fuck, this bus terminates. I’m at the end of the line. I’m not getting off. 
(*Semi- blackout*)

(Sounds of automobiles, passengers getting on a bus)
(Bus door sounds)
I never (*dialogue starts to fade out*) got around to having my own car, getting a license……….

The End