Friday

An old lady entered the bus and looked to her right, spotted the hooded figure slumped at the back of it and decided against it, moved closer to the middle of the vehicle. Barry couldn’t blame her, as he wouldn’t have wanted to sit near himself either. He looked like one of those people occupying three seats at the end of public transportation who triggered other passengers to dial the ‘See Something Suspicious?’ number on the window stickers.

Doing all he could to not slouch further down, he held himself sat up with the pole next to the seat, his other hand pushing against his stomach, where things were relatively dry. At least, drier than he would have thought. The sitting position, in a ninety-degree angle forced by the shape of the back row, was absolutely unbearable, but the cobblestones of the road were really adding some challenge. “Motherffff” he cussed through his teeth, clinging to the pole like it was sticking out in the middle of a tornado. It was early evening and not so light outside anymore and, thankfully, some very dark clouds had gathered in the sky, dimming all the surroundings of the road through which Barry was travelling towards downtown Indianapolis. The darkness was his friend, he saw, keeping some corners of the bus in a blessed obscurity.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Focus, focus. It was really arduous to figure out a specific plan in his current state, the pain monopolizing all his attention. Bolting from the bar’s bathroom to the bus stop to remain incognito had restored a freshness and alertness in Barry’s brain, which was welcome, but he couldn’t think straight in the absence of relief from his body. He knew one thing, and that was that he didn’t have a lot of wiggle room in his plan. It was a desperate plan that relied on a lot of luck and a lot of gambling on one person, and that person was Ms Eugenie White, his former Geography teacher.

Barry allowed himself a few seconds of reminiscing. Because, why not? There were still at least fifteen more minutes of bus trip to survive, and any distraction was welcome. The big vehicle hit another pothole and the commotion bumped through the seats with all the passengers, bending the accordion in the middle of the two bus wagons like a crazy caterpillar, “fuuck aiille ohmygod” It had been some five to six years since he had been in Ms White’s classroom, an eternity. He thought it possible that she had completely forgotten about him, which he saw could be an advantage, as she had not so much enjoyed the endless pushing of her buttons he had inflicted to her between freshman and junior year. It had been all in good spirit and nothing extravagant, but would she see it this way?

Barry knew a lot of things about Eugenie White, which she wouldn’t have spontaneously volunteered to the crowd of her students, and one of these things was that she had been a nurse in a distant past.