Bus of Barbarians

By Connor M. Kizer

It is hard to determine the amount of time I have spent waiting at the bus stop.  I am not someone who is good at nailing time down; it always seems to be squirming away from me.  If I need time it isn’t there.  When I have time to kill there is so much of it that drowns me.  There are times where time can’t even decide which way it wants to be.  The time, for instance, when I was waiting for my bus, but also waiting for my friend to arrive.  We normally ride the bus to work together, as we work in the same office.  So I wanted the bus to come because it was cold, and it was early, and bus stops in this town don’t have benches at them, so I had to stand, and I was tired, so that sucked.  On the other hand, my friend was late.  If he missed the bus and showed up late, the boss would yell at me about it, because I’m there, and I’m his friend.  So, on this hand I don’t want the bus to come until my friend gets here. 

I looked down the empty street, past the thrift shop, to the converted warehouse we both live in.  No friend to be seen.

            Now, usually when I want something to happen time dilates.  It seems to take forever for an event to happen. When I don’t want an event to happen time contracts, and it happens right away.  So what occurs in instances like this, when I both want and don’t want an event to happen?  Well, in such Schrodingerian situations the exact thing that you would think seems to happen.  Time both dilates and contracts.  That is why I can’t tell anything about how much time passes. 

            A dog walked by, the same dog I see everyday at the bus stop.  I was starting to think of it as my dog.  Still no friend.

            The problem is in the way we view time.  We look at time as if it were some physical, spatial aspect.  In fact, the people who study time are physicists, the same people who study space.  Time and space are often talked about in the same word: space-time.  Time, however is a very different beast than space.  It doesn’t have the same properties as space, and it doesn’t behave like space.  We also don’t move through it like we move through space, and it doesn’t move around us either.  Motion is a spatial thing.  All of these terms refer to spatial behavior.  This seemingly semantic argument is important, because speaking of time in these terms clouds our concept of it and allows us to ignore the fact that it is different from space.   If we divorce time from spatial constraints, then it may be possible for time to both dilate and contract, or do other things that seem to make no sense. 
Regardless of all this, the bus came.

            The bus, seeming to have had a late night, and still not being one hundred percent sober, lurched over to the curb.  I jumped back, and as I did, I scanned the scenery for my friend.  He was nowhere to be found.   I resigned myself to a morning of the boss telling me exactly what was wrong with my friend, and I stepped onto the bus. 

            The bus listed strangely towards the curb, so that the first step was below it.  The wheels on the other side must have been off the ground.  This struck me as weird.  I consulted my brain and, finding it too bleary with morning to investigate, climbed aboard.  Once inside the doors slammed shut.  They clipped my heel before I could haul it all the way onto the bus.  I yelped and looked back at them.  They weren’t very forthcoming.  Supporting myself with one lone leg and the rail, I limped up the rest of the stairs. 

Leaning over the rail like this gave me a great view of the dashboard.  It was littered with filth of various kinds.  There were paper wads and Mardi Gras beads all around.  Must have been some kind of party bus.  The refuse pooled against a figurine that was glued to the dashboard.  I looked at it, and I couldn’t look away.  It appeared to be some kind of rampant antelope, its wicked hooves carving the air.  Two icy black wings sprouted from it back, and the dingy light from the overheads on the bus glinted with unwholesome sharpness on them.  A wiry mange of tail lashed from its ass-end, each filament a promise of pain.  It had two eyes.  One of them, wide and insane, was stuck squarely in the middle of its face.  The other was a cataract-covered waste, gargantuan and situated in the belly of the beast.  This second gastroeye was a painted marble suspended in a milky liquid and left to roll around in confusion, trying to find some stable piece of reality to focus on, and failing miserably.  The rest of the creature’s face was taken up by a single flaring nostril.  Mucus ran from the nostril, and matted the hair on the mouthless chin.  At the pinnacle of the skull two protrusions of horn reared up to nearly half again the height of the creature’s long saurian neck.  The vision of this effigy screamed in my brain.  The driver screamed to get on the bus.  I fumbled to get money to put in the slot, and he shouted, “Broken, get on!”  He slammed a slab of foot down onto the gas pedal.  The bus squealed, and stalled out.

I stumbled down the aisle on my bad leg and fell into the first seat I could find.  I settled in to enjoy the hour-long* ride to work.  I glanced at the seat next to me.  The man there was huge.  He was easily a full head taller than I was, and about as big around as three of me. He wore a large fur coat.  None of his teeth touched each other, although each was the size of a primary school textbook.  He had a cascade of blond locks flowing in a deadly torrent down his back.   On his head a hunk of metal formed to fit his skull, and it obscured most of his face, leaving two dark pools of blue to stare out menacingly.  He was continuously shouting and banging on the seat in front of him.  I noticed the smell of shit and sweat was stronger than normal on a Baltimore bus.  It made me gag. 
I looked around and saw that the entirety of the bus was filled with men such as my seatmate.  I saw one poke a finger in another’s eye.  Blood ran down his cheek.  Another bit the ear off his neighbor.  A man was pushed into the aisle. I saw that it was because he wouldn’t stop masturbating, and his partner wanted to get out of his seat to more effectively threaten someone.  The driver steered the bus with two cords that disappeared into the steering column.  At the back a squat fat man beat a large kettle drum, as if he were keeping time for oarsmen.  Trrump!  Thrrrrrrrrrump!!  I was on a bus of barbarians.  A bucket of cold water was thrown on my loins; the bus coughed, started, and lurched away.

In search of some kind of escape I went to the window.  It was unfortunately not an Emergency Window, so all I did was slam my face against it.  It was then that I saw my friend, running to catch the departing bus.  His messy hair hung about his head like a halo, his shaggy coat attempted to slip off his shoulders, and he kept it on with shrugs.  He was frantic not to miss the bus, not to be late.  He waved his hands madly trying to flag it down.  He thought that if he didn’t catch it the boss would give him the axe.  He didn’t know that axes of a different sort waited for him on this bus.  I tried to signal him to save himself, but he mistook it as encouragement.  He put on the speed.  I signaled that this was wrong.  I shook my head.  I drew my finger across my throat, signifying death.  He was going full out.  His head was down.  He didn’t see.  The men on the bus did see.  They started to go into some kind of a frenzy.  Their screams grew louder; they took on a higher tone.  They started to beat on the windows, causing the bus to sway a little.  I was slammed back into my seat.  A face the size of the sky filled my sight.  Foul vapors spilled out from between quivering purple lips.  A low growling sound assaulted my ears and rattled my organs.  Fear took my spine and crushed it, completely paralyzing me.  I could only sit and watch what happened next.

The bus leaned back over to the curb. My friend ran up to the front door, thinking he was saved.  The barbarians surged to the doors, causing the bus to list as I had noticed earlier.  One of the barbarians started screaming.
“Back door!”
The others took up his cry.
“Back door!!  By DIF the BACK DOOR!!!!

They slammed their fists against the windows and seats until the driver opened the door. Then they poured out, two waves of screaming death.  The waves smashed together right where my friend was standing.  A bloody froth of friend was thrown up into the air, and then caught by the arms of the mob.  I saw his eyes, and there was no comprehension in them.  They were wide as could be.  His lips swam around his teeth in a mad scream of surprise.  For a second he looked to be one of them, a barbarian favorite held exalted on the shoulders of the rest; blond haired, blue eyed, shaggy coated hero.  Then hands were grappling, fingers ripping, and my friend disappeared.  There was a kind of whirlpool motion in the crowd.  In slow motion my friends shaggy coat came flying out of the crowd and up over the bus.  It was followed by his eye.  In smacked against my window and everything seemed to freeze.  The eye stared at me and I wanted it to stop.  It looked sightless into my eye, and in my head I knew it always would.  An image of a single eye stuck to a pane of glass, gore dripping down the glass.  This image would be in my brain for all time.  Stupefied, I slumped back in my seat, and started waiting again, waiting for the barbarians to reboard the bus.  I didn’t care if they did or not.