untitled

Two days and counting on a bus, you learn a few things. One is that thinking is a surplus; an absolute overabundance. Another is that even your dreams collect dust and ache. For Sam, the first lesson was the most troublesome. Fatigued dreams beat a fatigued reality any day. She bit her lip reluctantly and cast her eyes once again toward the landscape.

Plastered before her eyes was the same, unchanging scene. Yellow grass and red earth. Dry bushes and rasping sand.Heat stacked itself around her in clumsy piles; extra luggage for the journey. She could feel it baring down on her, getting under her skin, weighing her down, pressing her into her seat. She could feel her surroundings start to compact under the pressure, the wheels of the bus seeping into the ground. She could see the road become molten tar, the wheels fusing with the asphault. It was an artificial river, black as motor oil, oozing toward New York.

"This is freedom, " she thought. But as those massive old tires groaned around the bend, she heard the familiar creak of that old gate; breathed in the thin desert air once more. She was still fenced in. The walls had just been stretched thin.


Brushing her hair to the side, she sank into the sun faded cushions and welcomed sleep. She dreamed of nothingness. A few hours later she awoke with a cough.Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, the sunset pierced it's way through her eyelids in flutter of deep blood red and the vibrant orange resting on the horizon. She spent a few minutes soaking it in, floating into reality, and then narrowed her gaze to the glass in front of her. It was littered with fingerprints, adorned with tiny superficial nicks in it's surface. The sunset wore a veil patched together with the debris of living.

She stretched and looked around her for the nearest passenger. She wasn't sure how long she'd slept and feared the bus had stopped off with her still curled up in the back. Sleep was somewhat of a risk on these things when one travelled alone. When eating, breathing, and pissing all become a luxury one is wise to have someone along to remind them that they're dreaming them away.

About three rows up she noticed a crumpled old gray hat looming over the seat back. She briefly wondered why someone would wear a hat in this nearly unbearable heat that had no sign of waning until long after the sun had fallen, but disregarded it and walked over. As the girl drew nearer, she noticed the man beneath the hat. His head was cocked to the side in a completely unnatural position, his lips slightly parted, stubbled chin resting on his chest, his eyes half closed. He looked as if he were trapped somewhere between death and living.

She lingered a second, unsure he was even breathing.Suddenly the bus pitched and jolted forward, sending Sam crashing between the occupied seat beside her and the one behind it as it pummeled through a deep pot hole. She grasped at the seat back, trying to catch herself, her hip smashed into the armrest.

"Shit!" she exclaimed, wincing and holding her hip.

The sleeping man awoke with a start, his eyes darting manically, trying to find the source of the chaos,finally settling on Samantha. His brow furrowed. He leaned around the seat back.

"What in God's name are you doing?" he accused, catching his breath. "You scared me."

"I scared you?" she asked, scowling, still holding her side. He frowned back.

"Uh. I just came over to ask if the bus had stopped yet," she said flatly.

"And you thought it wise to ask a sleeping man that question?" The man replied as he straightened his old hat.

"I- whatever. Nevermind," she said, turning back toward her seat, wondering how big the bruise would be. "Sorry for bumping into you," she said, half sincerely.

"Wait," he said. "It's six fifteen. We should be stopping soon."

"Ok, thanks," she replied.

"And try to be more careful."

She pretended she didn't hear him.

A little while later she noticed people start trickling toward the front of the bus. The smokers had begun their anxious queue, cigarettes and lighter in hand waiting for fresh air in which to light up. They reminded her of fish in a tank;catching a glimpse of humanity outside the glass and making their move toward the little door, their whole lives leading up to it's opening, the meager sprinkling of brightly colored, lightly flavored flakes of cardboard. She supposed she was no different. She desperately needed to get up and stretch her legs;feel solid ground beneath her and find something to eat.

As the bus pulled into the station, the faint smell of asbestos seeped into the atmosphere. Outside, the ground crept past at a snail's pace. One could see black patches of chewing gum and cigarette butts speckling the concrete. The yellow safety line at the edge of the platform glowed with the subdued orange of the lights evenly lining the station, working in vain under a sky still half lit by the light of dusk, and the peeking white-blue of the moon.The girl felt under her seat for her bag. Finding it, she tugged out from under the seat and waited impatiently. The bus finally whined to a stop and with one last exhausted breath, opened it's doors.
Those with cigarettes in hand stumbled anxiously out onto the platform and lit up. Some of the crowd set off immediately, as if they knew exactly what life had planned for them at that moment. Others of the crowd gazed around through the smoke in a sort of disoriented haze, almost as if they had just been born into that world. And in a way, they had been.
The girl made her way to the front of the bus and awkwardly down the to-narrow steps.As her feet hit the platform, she was at once hit with her own weight and reality. The world was vast and she was alone. It had sunk in all at once. There was nobody to follow but herself and her own inclinations. She hesitated near the door as other passengers pushed past her and went on their way.
At the far end of the building, there was a large and rather plain door with two benches on either side of it. Drawing near, one could see the chipping green paint, the dull rose colored flowers carved into it's surface, the traces of rust at it's feet. To see it when it was new would have reminded one of the simple beauty of nature, now it only reminded one of it's powers of destruction and the fleeting nature of time, a reminder that everything in life is delicate.
Inside the massive old doors, one would think they had walked into a church. Long rows of plain benches stood in filed lines all facing the platform, like pews to the altar. Light shone in from the lofty, slightly tinted panes above the doors. From the mouths of travelers one could make out prayers for escape.
Underneath the meandering feet and piles of baggage were old tiles in white and brown, some with little diamond designs on their faces. Following the brown tiles, one would come across the restroom which was where Sam found herself staring back in the mirror. The dim orange lights above each mirror were miniature versions of those outside the building and the effect was a dullness of features reflected back at her. She strained to see herself more clearly, but all she could make out were more shadows.
The girl slipped out of the heavy wooden door and into the red stain of the lobby. She continued following the path of brown tiles. Surrounding the unyeilding dark stained benches that made up the bulk of the space stood the ticket booth, luggage check, and a small stand. Laid out in one of the small glass counters were a collection of food items; palm sized cakes on tissue paper doilies, thin sandwiches in plastic wrap skins, donuts with meager coats of chocolate or powdered sugar mess. Looking past the case one could see a variety of knick knacks. She noticed a shelf of little toy buses in neat form, too-small grey blankets with too-high price tags, and a list of other things one could imagine buying only to find buried in a corner of one's cellar collecting dust as seemed to be their function judging by the state of the shelves on which they rested.

She bought two sandwiches, one to eat the next day when she took breakfast. Since she tended to stay awake late into the night and dark hours of the early morning, she found herself eating in the early morning hours and having an aversion to food when the rest of those travelling were host to growling breakfast-time stomaches. Typically she would sleep until lunch time, but the early morning sun was impossible to evade on the bus and would wake her after only a few hours sleep leaving her nauseous and in opposition to physical reality for a good time afterwards. She stashed the extra food in her bag and headed toward the small bench on the platform.

Sam plopped down on the heavy green bench and watched people move about in the quickly fleeting sunshine. Some of the travellers had reached the end of the line. She watched as hugs and hand shakes were exchanged. One woman she recognized from the ride peered shyly out of the corner of her eye and smiled at a tall black haired man as he wrestled her luggage from its place near the belly of the bus. Brothers embraced quickly and immediately began to laugh with each other as they made their way to the doors and out of the station. A mother hugged her child, mussed her hair, and placed a tender kiss on her cheek. A lone traveller or two found his bag and walked off uneventfully.People found home, and Sam watched from a distance.
"Anyone here for you?", asked a dry voice to her left. She blinked and turned to find the sillhouette of a slouched over figure in a crumpled hat. She raised her hand to sheild her eyes from the sunset glare behind the figure and found the old man from the bus.
"No," she replied. "You?"
"You were staring so intently you seemed about ready to burn a hole through the crowd."
She paid him silent attention, unsure how to respond.
"Well?"
She furrowed her brow.
"What are you looking for, then?"
"Nothing."
The man smiled wryly at the girl and stepped back into the station.
Sam ate her sandwich and tried to shake the feeling that the conversation she had just had was anything more than meaningless.
Back on the bus it felt like she had spent an eternity staring blankly out of the window at the darkness. She was a bit chilly now and had wrapped herself tightly in her blanket, removed her shoes, and tried to settle into the seat and sleep through the most empty part of the journey. Just like every other night, she tried in vain. She heard the faint rustling of fabric as people travelled through vast worlds in their dreams.
The girl's mind began to wander and her thoughts eventually stumbled clumbsily through her past. She hadn't left much behind. There wasn't much there to leave behind. And yet it was everything. She briefly wondered why she had left, but she knew. She knew it better than anything she had ever known. Life in Lorraine was nothing but a long and uneventful road leading to death. Life in Lorraine was not so much life as simply not death. People were born, raised, married and buried there, and never gave a thought to the fact that their lives were contained and finite. The lived birdcage lives and either simply didn't notice or didn't care.
Since the day she was born she had been slowly gathering her malaise in a tangled knot, turning it over in the pit of her somtache.She had grown accustomed to the dull commingling of contempt and contentment that seemed to define her very nature. She was at once violently opposed and silently resigned to her fate to be tied to the soil of Lorraine just as fast as the old oaks lining the cracked streets.
Walking through town on warm, fragrant spring days she regarded the signature brown façades of the shops on Main and wondered if there was anyone else in the world that felt so detached. Did anyone else feel helpless as they stood idly by and watched as the cool late afternoon rains grew tepid, as lilacs bleached and faded in the sun? She scratched her feet across the gravel casting pebbles to the side, sending them tumbling into the gutter. "Maybe", she considered, "this is just it." Maybe there was nothing to think about.But maybes are almost never reassuring.
Either way it seemed not to matter much. Acceptance or not, the end would be the same. Samantha knew this to be the case, and yet something in her knew that it was the only thing that did matter. She conceived of the purpose life being the simple acceptance that one would inevitably be consumed by it. She might be consumed, but she couldn't be (docile). All spring she moved with a sense of immediacy. Friends and neighbors remarked on how Samantha seemed to be living a million miles away. She went about her day paying all of the necessary attention while leaving the rest of it for the evenings when she could curl up in her room or on the old porch swing and write with a fervor she had never experienced before. She wrote as if her life depended on it. She wrote as if it was life itself.
When she wasn't writing she was working in town, cashiering down on Hover St. She came in and out as a shadow, counting the hours one by one as the minute hand floated past the twelve time and time again. Each dollar was collected and saved in a small tin box under her bed. The future was a nebulous mass lining her every move.
Months had passed her by and the people in town would have let her pass out of their minds if it weren't for the vague compulsion to gossip lazily as they passed by the tired porch on which they had watched Sam pass through childhood. Rumor slowly trickled through small groups of neighbors and passersby. The girl's presence had been missing at church for months and her eyes were far away. It had become evident that Sam had inherited the ways of her elders, and had given up God in favor of aimlessness and sin. "I am not," asserted Faye, a fixture in town, and an expert in speculation, " a bit surprised. If family's any indication that girl's no doubt taking her whiskey with breakfast." If family was any indication,Faye may have had something, and probably a lot more than she had ever bothered to consider.
Disregarded as tragically typical,Sam had become a living ghost to most. To her friends she seemed in such a boring mood. She refused calls only to be seen in the window absorbed in one of her composition books. She was gone, alive in a reality far away from the one in which she walked and breathed. It seemed her mind had taken off on a late summer breeze. After a while she succumbed to the inevitable. She hastily packed her bags and followed it where it would go. She had already left the town long before she watched waving hands wilt and mute lips command her to write through the dense glass.She felt a tug in her stomache; glanced down at an empty notebook. And so the wheels began to turn and the waiting began.
She was still waiting in that spot days later as her attention was turned back to the dark near-silence of the bus. She felt a twinge of regret for the way she had left things. The very far edges of the earth were beginning to catch fire, and the girl, still stuck in her memories, propped her head against the cool window and fell into a deep sleep. With time the sky boasted a pallet of soft pastel hues. The girl slept as life went on around her. Restless minds began to whir,bellies churned, hands tapped at the plastic armrests impatiently, voices rose. Total strangers engaged in the tradition of sampling their lives to one another, sharing bits of candy with one another and creating sacred bonds of travelling friendship which almost never survived the distracted smile and wave when one or the other had reached their destination. The vehicle writhed with activity.
The hours waned and with them the content of each individual. Polite gabbing became cranky grumbling. Demands disguised as requests to stop were tossed at the driver. He reluctantly complied, growling to his fellow driver about quotas as he pulled into the next rest station.He stopped in a huff, opened the doors and bellowed. "Ten minutes! If your not here, you're left behind!" He then exited and made his way to a nearby payphone still wearing a vague scowl.
A middle aged woman who had taken a seat near the back of the bus during the last stop made her way toward Sam. She shook her gently. The girl opened her eyes and found a kind face looking back. Sam regarded her inquisitively. "We've stopped," she said softly, " if you needed anything...seems we won't be stopping again til about eleven."
Sam smiled thankfully, but remembered the sandwich she had stashed in her bag. "Thanks for letting me know, but I'll be fine."
"Alright, then," the woman replied before rushing off. Sam turned in her seat, trying to bring back sleep but it was of no use.She groped around for her notebook, slid her fingers between its sheets and frowned as she read their contents. Painted in small black letters was an abundance of idle scrawling and nonsense. In small nests of ink lay snapshots of her past, presumptions and conjectures on the lives of those she encountered, sensory imprints. Nothing connected. Time had not proven magical. She was quickly approaching her destination.
She turned the pages until the ink faded to white. She searched. Outside the city grew more dense. One could feel its energy, its fabric writhed with life. Sam could focus on nothing but those white pages, the steady sound of her own breathing, a lead heartbeat. Released onto the platform, she floated through the crowd of quickly moving men in hats, strangers with thick armed hugs. She opened the door to the body of the station and slipped through, careful not to get caught by the strap of her backpack as the door closed behind her.
Upstairs the world erupted with light, and she was almost blinded by living static. Everything ran together recklessly. She made her way to the vast archway across from where she stood. Somehow she could hear each individual step echo through the space as she crossed. Nearer to the doors, her steps began to melt into the atmosphere, combining with the beat of an invisible drum. Outside a man furiously smacked his palms against an overturned bucket, beads of sweat collecting at his hairline and above his lip. Another sold scarves and key chains to anyone who would stop. Cement and steel stretched toward heaven like idols to be worshipped. The girl walked on.

(I think it’s done.)