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• 1 Katie Cummings // Jan 6, 2008 at 10:02 pm

  The Direct Ride

  Her back against the window, she watches as people load the bus. Across from her three small children and a young mother sit. In front two tired nurses sit gabbing about their jobs. The bus driver, a large doughboy with a smug face, climbs into his seat. Just as the doors begin to close, a dark man yells out to the driver. An ancient woman floats to the door and stand catatonic.

  “Where do you want to go, Mary?” the dark man asks into the crumpled woman’s face. “Do you want to go home, Mary?” still no answer from the placid face. The dark man instructs Mary to the doors of the bus. She slowly ascends the steps and plops into the third seat next to a young girl who apparently does not the strength or the common decency to move for the aged woman.

  In the very back of the bus, hidden in the shadows, sits a young man trying to look important with his briefcase clutched on both hands. Three seats ahead a young couple sits drooling on each other. Occasionally they look around to see if anyone is observing their foolishness. Mary, in the third seat, barely moves. Her hand is searching for something in her purse. Looking up, as if she had forgotten what she was trying to find, a smile crossed her wrinkled face and eyes would spark faintly with life forgotten. Across the isle one of the three Mexican children searches her plastic purse. Pulling out a trinket, she would laugh as if she had just received a gift. The spectator by the window glances a t her bag. Once she possessed a child’s plastic purse, but now it is replaced by a backpack laden with books.

  Everyone seated, the bus roared away from the curb. Next stop, the library. Three little, blond girls, who had been in an intense discussion about the coolness of the socks they were, jump and run from the loud bus.

  The small girl, who never sits with her mother and seems much older than she is, was now standing on the sidewalk next to her mother, waving down the bus. With a beaming smile she heartily jumps up the stairs and quickly glances around for a suitable seat. Seeing the three small children, she asks if she can sit next to them. None of the children respond, unable to speak English. The girl’s mother at first did not even acknowledge her child’s attempt, but with a swift pat on the back, she exclaims rudely, “There’s no room here!” Then she pushed past her girl shoving her to the side and practically walking over her. The girl stands in the isle, bewildered.

  The watcher by the window shoves her bag aside and offers the girl a seat. Disappointed she accepts. As the ride continues, the small girl stares longingly at the three little children, anxious to communicate with them. When the three little ones departed with their mother, the girl looked after them, following them along the sidewalk with her eyes until she could not see them anymore.

  “Well I might as well sit here now.” She moves to the seat previously occupied.

  Another pickup. A little boy and his grief ridden mother. Smiling apologetically, she seats her son next to her at the front of the bus. Stiff as a nail, the boy sits with his hands in the air, clenched in tight little fists.

  “Your hands are cold.” the boy’s mother states loud enough for all the passengers to hear. She wouldn’t want anyone to think otherwise. She attempts to wrap them in her own for warmth, but the boy pulls away. Another apologetic smile traverses the mother’s face. The little girl now seated next to the boy, smiles sweetly and offers an animal cookie.

  “Do you want a cookie?” the mother becomes the interpreter.

  “He’s shy.” she says quietly as if the boy wouldn’t hear her.

  Seeing the young woman observing from her seat by the window, the mother smiles as if requesting that their secret not be revealed, not now. This grief ridden mother assumes the watcher is the little girl’s mother. With her eyes she seems to be asking permission for her son
  to interact with the girl, please it’s not contagious.

  All the while the girl sits, shining in her pink raincoat. She is holding a cat, wrapped tight in a blanket.

  “It’s not real though.” the girl explains.

  Two straight-laced boys carrying identical lunch boxes, march onto the bus and systematically take their seats. Never saying a word, they sit, feet in front of them, faces forward, striving to be men, soldiers. Meanwhile, the two tired nurses continue blabbing. Their conversation encompasses the first three rows of the bus and echoes like shouts from a cave.

  “If you spank them, then they say you’re abusing them.”
  “That’s why we have all these spoiled, disrespectful, brats running amuck!”
  “And the parents end up having to go to court over the whole thing.”
  “There should be protection for the parents.”

  A group of teens, who think riding the city bus is cooler than riding the school bus, bounce around outside as the bus rounds the corner. A Four-H member tugs sharply at her seeing-eye-dog-to-be’s leash. Sitting in the front, she pushes the dog under the seat like dirt under a rug. A lazy girl in healed boots and miniskirt rides the bus one block and gets off to go home. Old Mary would cherish the ability to walk a block. The observer by the window is writing in a
  ridiculously small, red notebook.

  “What are you writing?” a half of a twin pair asks.
  “A book.”
  “About what?”
  “The bus.”
  “Oh, you should write about a person who hijacks the bus and like shoots the driver in the leg!”

  Outside the sun set beautifully as the bus neared the last stop.

• 2 Femme // Jan 16, 2008 at 9:45 pm

  Sitting up straight in a small poof light thrown by a sodium lamp outside, she watches as people load the bus. In her mind, she pushes them along to their seats faster, so they can get back on the Interstate, and rolling toward Bismarck. The trip only half complete, she finds her excitement has doubled.

  Never in her twenty four years has she done anything so rash. In the space of seventy-two hours after responding to the ad in the Post-Dispatch, she found herself quitting her job, giving up her apartment and embarking on a long journey to an unfamiliar city, for a job she knew nothing about. “Research” was all she’d been told. It was enough. She was on her way.

  She looks up into the face of a scruffy, bearded man reeking of beer and soiled clothes and bad luck. He smiles with rotted teeth and she smiles back, despite herself.

  Let’s go!

  Up front, the door chunks closed and the bus lunges forward, points itself to the highway. Her heart leaps into her throat and settles there, beating like the wings of a very small bird.

  Outside the grimy window, the late summer of 1979 fades to a sweet twilight, as the miles fall behind and she gets closer to her destiny.

• 3 Flash Fiction Prompt #2 | One Real Story // Jan 18, 2008 at 1:00 pm

  [...] Gotcha, the flash fiction prompt is an image this time. Just take a look at the picture and start writing. Don’t think too hard about it and if you forgot what this is all about check out the first flash fiction prompt for direction. [...]

• 4 Flash Fiction Prompt #3 | One Real Story // Jan 25, 2008 at 1:14 pm

  [...] how to do this, read the instructions. Then get over to the forum and share some of your flash fiction prompts. Join the forum discussion [...]

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