Speed Up A Little Bit

The footprint of this city is not so deep, nor so wide that it can't be filled with a longing to depart for more exotic locales. I've never been one to jump to a conclusion that was only halfway to extreme, so when the invitation came, how could I refuse? I packed my bags and left to spend four days crammed into a seat too small for me, beside a woman who, despite being a lovely creature, had the distasteful ability to recreate great symphonies using only her lungs and her partially blocked sinuses. For the first thousand miles it was amusing, and during her waking hours she was a great conversationalist, however, as the border drew closer and her destination loomed in the headlights, not many of us were sad to see her go.
As the saying goes, though, I shouldn't have been counting sheep when I could just as easily have slept through the whole thing. Her replacement was a man of about forty, who, while dressed nattily, smelled vaguely of warm bread. Once my nose worked out the dilemma, finally breaking through the wall of olfactory comfort and discarding the repetitive associations it relied on, I was able to convince it that he had no bread tucked under his arm; he was all man.
Like the pictures an art teacher parades around the room, prodding his students with hints and waiting for the shift in perception that turns an old lady into a young girl, a large fur stole wrapped around her shoulders, and once my brain had registered the difference between fresh baked bread and over-warm fat guy, it wouldn't let go and I tried to breath through my collar for the four hundred miles he chatted away to me.
A romantic is a man who looks at the wonders of life in all their decrepitude and sees only the underlying synchronicity that feeds, strand by strand, our sense of well-being and oneness with all that resides under the sun. I have decided that I'm a realist, however, and I refuse to go back to those old ways. For a glimpse into the mysteries of life, a bus ride across the country will beat your senses into something like an honest machine whose cogs and gears and vibrating cams and heavily greased pistons simply do what their told all day and long into the night of your existence, while the tethered thoughts you believed were prancing out time in happily measured two steps are actually trudging around a massive gear connected to the unknown, slaves to mechanical, maniacal traditions of expansion, building up and out, creating nothing more than what you can see, the rest hidden from view.
What that means is that body odor sometimes smells like fresh bread and who wants to sit in a bakery and watch four hundred miles of nothing spread across the window.
I awoke to find that the bus had stopped, the driver had disappeared into the night and that most of the passengers were standing in the aisle with no clear indication that they were allowed to get off. I pushed my way to front and stepped out into the blackest night I have ever seen. The cloud cover was uniform and gave me no indication that there were stars waiting to reveal themselves behind it. I walked across the lot to the only light I could see and discovered an oasis of slightly stale crescent rolls and greasy coffee laid out like a banquet. My newly minted sense of defeat was losing its cohesion and I actually smiled at the waitress, who poured me a cup.
"Long way from home?", she purred.
"I'm a long way from anywhere, I think.", I answered sleepily.
"Not that far, sugar."
As the rest of my traveling companions filed into the truckstop she picked up her pad and began shouting orders at a cook I couldn't see and directing the traffic to booths lining the front window.
"Sit. Sit and Louise will be right with you. You're all just in time for the show.", Louise called out and I wondered what she could have meant. I didn't have to wait long.
The parking lot snapped to life, blazing with the light of eight floods atop the four standards spread out across the front of the diner. Revealed in that hurried dawn were two dozen forms, almost familiar but with odd shapes and angles jutting out from where nothing should have been. These mewling approximations in somewhat human form flinched under the scrutiny but continued their steady crawl and shuffle toward the bus.
I sat, awestruck by the scene, as if a curtain had lifted and I was enchanted by the seething fluidity of the players, as they climbed atop and slithered under the carriage of the bus. I absently noted a few screams of terror and a rattling of quick reactions from the audience but I was transfixed by the morbid strangeness I was witnessing. Hands were grasping at the door of the bus, long tongues lolled out of misshapen mouths, and the sounds coming from beyond the glass were muted cries of discovery and elation. They swarmed the windows, frantically clawing at the seams to gain entry but none had the dexterity for it and, frustrated, they howled into the night and that sound crawled down the spine of everyone in the diner and we became silent expecting a bad end and pain and suffering.
And then, slowly, the creatures slid down the sides of the bus and shuffled beyond the plane of light and then the lot was as empty as it had been when we arrived. Silence and despair filled the diner until Louise clapped her hands twice in the air and yelled, "That's the show, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your patronage and we hope to see you next time. Don't forget to get your souvenirs at the counter on the way out and have a safe journey."
We sat, stunned, while she marched up and down the aisle collecting half drunk coffees and cleared the plates of half eaten food. When it became apparent that no one was going to move from their seats she sighed, the long sigh of resignation born from the endless repetition that only entertainers know when they've produced their best and fail to impress.
"The show's over folks, and the bus will be leaving in five minutes. If you want to go, now is the time.", said Louise.
No one moved, thinking that a lifetime in this diner might be preferable to ever going outside again.
"Another show will start with the next bus to arrive, but not until then. It's up to you.", and she disappeared into the kitchen with a swoosh of her skirt.
Just then the bus started up, it's engine singing into the darkness and the noise startled our silence into a frenzied clamor, as all of us jumped up and fled the diner. Not a word was spoken as we jostled and fought or way onto the bus, the driver politely smiling at us the whole time.
It was then, as I took my seat that I realized that my yeasty friend hadn't gotten off the bus. He was asleep, soundly snoring into the tension and was completely unaware of what had happened. As I climbed over him the bus jumped into gear and he awoke with a start. He looked at me, suspicious and half-alert, gathered his bag to his chest and sniffled his way back to sleep.
Nobody else slept that night, and by dawn there came the quiet whispers, each organizing and re-formulating and explaining away what had happened to them in the middle of the night.
I sat, with my thoughts, evaluating and excavating a laundry list of beliefs and assertions only to come home to the fact that the machinery of life had slipped a gear and was happily firing off in the wrong direction. I looked around trying to grasp the frayed and unraveling sense of reality I could see fading into the distance but found nothing there but dust and dry rot.
As much as I want to, I might never find out what this machine does and I may have to resign myself to the harness, though it bites, and the rough stone floor, even though my shoes have, not yet, worn through, and if I'm lucky I just might be able to sleep through the night and live to see the anonymous wonders of another day. I won't, however, travel by bus again.