| Via Nihilumby Josh Black"It goes nowhere," the pale girl smiled with slanted lips. "Just like I told you."
He didn't speak for a moment, trying to absorb what she was saying, what she'd been trying to get across since he'd singled her out among the rows of seats and sat down next to her.
"Where's that?" he finally asked, defeated.
"It doesn't go any place," she said. "None..."
Her gaze shifted from his eyes to some indeterminate spot in the distance ahead of her. Her own eyes began to glaze over, lips parted slightly. She looked in that moment for all the world like a porcelain doll, fragile and bearing an unspoken demand to not touch, to not speak, to not notice.
Two more passengers boarded the bus, silently made their way down the aisle. He felt himself shaking slightly. The depths of his chest and stomach fluttered, felt icy and hollowed somehow. His pulse quickened and suddenly this girl was all he could seem to hold on to. He felt an overpowering urge, no, a need, to keep this conversation flowing.
"Emelia," he whispered. Her face shifted not in the slightest. "Emelia?"
"Mm?"
"I don't think I should be here."
"We all should," she whispered back, so quiet he would never have noticed had his attention not been focused solely in her direction.
"It's where we all end up."
He knew, without knowing how, that by we all she meant the passengers scattered throughout the bus. Glancing around, he couldn't help noticing they all bore an expression quite similar to that of his unlikely new friend. Few spoke, and those who did used the same hushed, conspiratorial tones as Emelia, as he himself had, he realized, been using. All the same, the air was thick, redolent with a subtle yet very tangible sensation of electricity, like the atmosphere built up before a storm.
"But why?" he broke the silence. "Why here?"
"You lose something, it always turns up somewhere," she said, looking right at him now. "Even if you don't know where."
"I really don't know what you..."
"Johnny," she said. Her smile was on her lips alone, her eyes just backdrop, somewhere further away. "Why did you get on this bus? Where were you headed?"
He bit his lip, furrowed his brow. It took a moment for the question to register, and another for him to remember.
"Atlanta," he replied. "I was going to visit..."
Who?
Why couldn't he remember? It wasn't a trick question.
"It doesn't matter." Her eyes joined in the smile now, and the smile was sad.
"You're here now. You always have been."
He noticed then that her hand rested on his own. His palm was sweating. He couldn't recall her putting it there.
The bus was getting more crowded by the minute. The overhead lights shone dim, muted, a pale green blanket over silent, stagnant people. He was going to Atlanta, he remembered, to meet Jackie. To finally meet her in person, instead of meeting her every night in the darkness of his bedroom, shooting instant messages back and forth.
He looked down again, at his hand. Uncovered now by Emelia's. Closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them.
Emelia was pressed against the side of the bus, curled up and lightly snoring. Something was happening here and it was beyond John's comprehension. Still he felt as though he was compelled to remain. Like the seat, the whole bus, was a magnet for him. It made him shiver and it made him more than a little nauseated, but there it was, and here he was, and he found himself sinking further into the seat, into the green twilight of a night he had never expected to turn out this way.
As ever, he did not want to disturb Emelia. She was off somewhere in a night of her own. He took the time to once more take in his surroundings.
The bus was nearly full now. The collective silence of so many people enveloped it like a shroud. He saw an old man in a patchwork jacket across the aisle and a few seats ahead, scratching his greasy head and muttering something, apparently to himself, since the man in the seat beside him was transfixed by something on the other side of the window.
He saw a couple of seats ahead of him a man inching tentatively closer to the woman beside him, then pulling away, sneaking a sidelong glance at her and repeating the process. The woman seemed not to notice.
He saw a young mother cradling her baby, saw on the part of her arm that was exposed the scar lines running along it like railroad tracks, the pock-marked flesh of it and the various bumps, ridges and tiny holes, some healed over, some fresh and red and raw.
He saw more than he wanted to see. It was as if his eyes moved of their own accord, soaking in this odd gathering of souls.
And then he saw in the headrest of a seat near the door a flash of red hair, a pair of slender hands run through it, and he knew he really didn't want to see what was coming. It was too late, though. He knew that too.
The scene before him began to fade like a dying candle. For a brief moment all he knew was darkness, and he wanted, at the expense of all reason, to stay there under its wing. If he'd been uneasy before, he was now descending into a sort of dulled hysteria. Somehow in a corner of his mind he knew what was next, could already begin to feel it all over again.
She sits across the table. Twirls her red locks absently as he beckons the waitress, orders himself another drink.
The air is ripe with resentment and the cloying scent of sex.
He's talking now, telling her the way it is, the way it's going to be.
Just like that, she sobs. Her tears are the color of the untouched wine glass on the table in front of her.
Just like that.
I'm sorry, he says. His hands are folded together. He eyes them intently.
I thought maybe you brought me here tonight to...
I'm sorry, he says. He is very practiced.
I can't believe... Johnny... God, is it that easy for you?
It was. It is. He says little more. Nothing of consequence. She weeps, primal, an arm's length away.
And soon the night is over.
In the darkness once more he wandered, felt its velvet touch on his skin. There wasn't much to see here and his blindness rendered the other senses far more potent. The pain in his chest brought him to his knees, clutching the nothing in front of him, the expanse of blackness thicker than any fog. It felt like he was being torn open from the inside. He heard a faint humming sound in the distance, getting closer and closer...
The harsh banging and grating of metal on metal, the whir of the insides of the machines drilled into his head until he barely noticed, and somehow it was as though he was just another cog in the wheel. Like a drone, lift, place, repeat. Sometimes, in a reverie, he would be drawn back to thoughts of something else, something far away now. He saw an image of himself holding a diploma, saw an empty retail space before him awaiting the touch of someone who had pride and set expectations and would turn it into something perhaps even touching on wonder. This man he had envisioned since he was a boy roaming endless aisles of books and antiques, holding them in awe, these long-forgotten relics of someone's past collecting dust and awaiting a new home. One day he would have his own shop. One day he would sit behind an old oaken desk and drink tea and sell his wares to customers (though at times, of course, saving some of the better items for himself). One day it would all work out, just like this.
But then the recollection would bend and break and he would once again be sealed to the erratic motion of grasping limbs, heavy shoulders, neon lights and the pulse of machinery like clockwork until the five-o-clock bell rang and freedom came round for another fourteen hours.
Sometimes he wondered why.
He heard a pressured sound, like a quick release of air. One of the gauges faulting again?
It took a moment for the present to place itself. He was on the bus. The door had just closed, the airlocks secured. Not an empty seat in the house now, except the driver's.
"Well hello."
The voice startled him into a jump. He realized it was only Emelia, hunched up in her seat, arms wrapped round her knees, blank stare in his direction. What had just happened?"
"Shouldn't be too long now," she yawned. "Looks like we're almost ready to go."
"Why, Emelia?"
"Why what?"
He found himself without an answer.
"I don't know," he admitted.
"Well," she said, her face contorted into what may have been a smile in a different place, at a different time. "That's a start."
What was that supposed to mean?
Then, meeting the vacant gaze of this stranger sitting next to him, he found another question.
"Why are you here?"
"Lost..." she muttered.
Another flash of black and she was staring straight ahead, as though they had not been speaking only a few seconds before. It was like she'd been reset.
Johnny...
He looked around for the source of the voice, saw only what he'd seen before.
Johnny...
Johnny, go play in your room while your mother and I have a little talk. This last word he nearly spews like an unseen trail of vomit. His eyes are sunken and he smells like cigarettes and sweat and another day of moping around the house.
From where Johnny sits in the corner this man is but a shadow on the wall, looming. Sometimes Johnny hopes he will sink into his own shadow and get lost and never come back.
Their "talks" are always the same. Mom is sitting there and looking at something else, dad is talking, talking. No hitting, not even yelling, but when Johnny hears the words he feels the worst he's ever felt.
Later, when he was old enough to reflect on it, he'd find himself almost wishing it would have come to blows, because at least then this quiet, embittered malaise would be given form. As it stood, there was only that manipulation, and a whisper, an uneasy stirring deep in his gut beseeching release but denied.
He sees the dad-shadow raising its arm, gesturing in synch with the words from his mouth like a crazy dance, a bad dance.
Comes around again. Around...
He stopped his arm in mid-wave, coming back to reality again. Set his arm down on the rest. Looked at Emelia beside him. And thought...
I'm me.
I don't have to be alone, even when I'm with someone, I don't.
I'm not a stained and empty wine glass and I'm not a piece of driftwood in an endless ocean of faces and limbs and I'm not, I'm not my father's bastard son. I am here.
I am here.
"I have to get off this bus."
"Johnny?"
Before he knew what he was doing his lips were on hers, and in that brief gesture he knew this girl far too well, he pitied her and felt bad for her and yet felt removed somehow, like an invisible line that had connected them was now severed. He hoped above all else this kiss would be the last of its kind.
"Take care, Emelia," he said, gripping her hand.
He let go.
The engine was running, the silence of the passengers drowned in its thrum. This was it. Johnny rose and made his way down to the door, not looking back. He took hold of the double bars and pulled, eager to set foot once more on solid ground.
The doors, however, wouldn't budge.
He turned toward the driver, but there wasn't one. Only the empty seat and the steering wheel, which to his dismay was inching slightly to the left, on its own.
"No," he heard himself say.
"No!"
He twisted back toward the door, pulling with all his strength. His hands were white as bone, his fingers throbbing. He propped one foot against the right-hand door, pulling on the handle of the left with all the weight and force his body could summon. It didn't seem to move an inch.
"Let me the hell out of here!" he screamed. From somewhere deep he saw himself beating on the door with fists and feet and elbows., beyond pain, beyond desire, beyond anything but need.
"I don't want to be here, I don't want to feel this, I don't want it, I don't..."
His chest heaved and he choked in his breaths and he vaguely noticed the blood from his smashed knuckles smearing the plexiglass and still he pounded amidst the noise of a chaotic wail he would later realize was coming from his own throat.
"I don't want to be this way, I'm sorry, ohmygodi'm sorry!"
He screamed and he screamed and he leapt back to the driver's seat then launched himself into the door.
Which was now, he saw, wide open.
The pavement met him with a sickening crunch he heard and felt in every bone, muscle and nerve in his body. It hurt, yes, it hurt like hell. But the pain was nothing compared to the instantaneous relief of knowing there was solid ground beneath him.
Thank you, oh god thank you.
The doors swished shut behind him, and he tensed, half-expecting the thing to open up like some hideous mouth and suck him back in. But it didn't. It slowly backed up, away from the station. Away from him. He watched it go, a warm wetness flooding down his cheeks, a salty sting passing by his lips. They were the first tears he'd felt in as long as he could remember. They felt good.
The sun seemed to have newly risen, a bright ball of life in a cloudless blue sky.
He must have been on that bus a long time.
He scanned his surroundings, had to be sure he was really here, now.
There was a girl sitting on the curb at the edge of the platform.
Her skirt, blouse, and makeup were black, fishnet stockings torn to match her gaze.
"Hey," she said. She drew in a breath of smoke from her cigarette and exhaled with a sigh, watching the driverless bus slowly back up and head towards its destination.
"Hey yourself," he replied.
"Second thoughts?" she said, nodding toward the bus which now was fading into the horizon.
"Something like that."
"Those things are always so full." she said. "I'm just gonna wait here a while."
He thought about where he'd been heading that afternoon when he came to the station. He thought of Emelia, hoped she might make it, wherever she was going. He thought about Jackie waiting for him in Atlanta. He thought about distance. About time, spent and wasted and gone. About all the people he'd seen tonight and how he'd seen them in himself.
He thought that maybe he'd stick around here a while. Email Jackie, try to find the right set of words to express that he was tired of running from himself and keeping his distance from others, to tell her the reason he had been so enamored with the mechanics of their particular relationship. He didn't want to hurt her . Didn't want to hurt anyone.
He thought about the bus that goes Nowhere.
Looked back at the lost girl sitting on the dusty curb, waiting for the next one.
"Let's go somewhere," he said, a faint grin spreading across his face. "Have a coffee while you wait."
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