I've been practicing my writing every week with a writing drill. This is week number 9. I hope you like it. The Facebook post at the beginning was where the challenge originated. Thanks Blake for the inspiration. Hope you dig it.
Pete
Late Bloomer
Challenge # 9: “This morning the bus: smells like red bull breath and old cigarette clothes, sounds like tinny death metal and feels like being hit in the face with jacket zippers. Fun!”
Due by February 20th by Midnight.
Sinclair sat on the couch with his knees tucked together. He searched for meaning in Doctor McGillis’ eyes. Sinclair believed, as his father had before him, that to truly understand something one must complain about it first, and once all the complaining is through we are free to take action to change what we don’t like.
“You see doc, the recurring dream started again. No wait, that was my last shrink, you haven’t heard this one.”
“We generally don’t prefer the term shrink, but continue,” Doctor McGillis was older than his beard and Sean Connery chin confessed. He wore a plaid shirt tucked into the ‘A’ line and smoked a pipe between clients.
“Right, right. Sorry no shrink. Anyway, so, I have this dream in which I am waiting at the bus stop and there is a concession stand. You know? Like a kiosk. But the tall Sudanese woman is giving it away, coffee, yogurt, pastries. Everyone is just going along like it’s business as usual. I’m the only one that feels weird for not paying. I don’t take anything. Everyone else is chatting like it’s a dinner party - as if they all know each other. The bus finally arrives and of course the overweight bus driver - always smiling - isn’t taking anyone’s money. We file into this double long jumbo jet sized bus and, yep you guessed it, there’s a seat for everyone. The place is immaculate, like this is the bus you ride to heaven.”
“Is the bus going to heaven?” The Doctor interrupts.
“No idea, I’ve never really asked or wondered where it was going. I always wake up before we get anywhere.”
“Okay, continue.”
“Well, what’s weird about it; obviously, is that there’s no methadone zombies or skit on the seats or homeless jugend. Or even worse the hopped up 20-something with red bull breath. It’s just so civilized. Hull and Oats is playing on the radio, but it is being covered by Cat Power which throws me off because, well it sounds so good.”
“What song is it?”
“What?”
“You said Hull and Oats, what song?”
“You make my dreams come true.”
“Hmm, interesting,” Doctor McGillis writes in his notebook.
Sinclair continues as he watches the pen jerk quickly, “it’s nothing like my ride into work this morning - there is no music, only electric gears and recycled plastic chirring together like tinny death metal.”
“Yeah, that sounds disagreeable.”
“I swear this morning I sat where someone had pissed, or they pissed themselves and then I sat where they sat. It’s one thing to step in shit or step in a fresh warm piss puddle, but another to try and figure out which person urinated in their pants only to realize everyone’s looking at you cause you’re sitting in it. But they don’t know that! Instead, they think its you that soiled your bloomers.”
“In the dream did you recognize any of the faces? See anyone you know?”
“Everyone looks clean shaven except for the one’s that aren’t and they look totally normal, like they belong. No, I guess I don’t recognize anyone.”
“You said its a recurring dream. Do you have it often, the dream? Is it always the same, any differences?”
“That’s the thing, I haven’t had it for several months.”
“Do you remember when it started, the first time?”
“Yeah, the other shrinks asked the same thing. We investigated it for weeks. I really remember it starting after my pet turtle Leo died. It’s kind of a long story, but basically to pay for the cremation I had to sell my bike. After that I started taking the bus with the rest of them.”
“The rest of them? Them who?”
“You know, everybody else. The other people I guess.”
Doctor McGillis jotted more notes in his book.
“After Leo died, I started taking the bus for a couple of weeks, I remember this incident on the bus where this young kid was swinging his hoodie around, I was in the back and he lost control of it and it flew into the seat next to him, the zipper whipped this woman and then got stuck in her dread locks. I thought she was going to eat the kids face off.”
“Cause that’s what you would’ve done?”
“Hell yeah, punk kid can’t just keep his shit to himself?”
“What she do?”
“She folded it all nicely, you know after she got it untangled and then handed it back to him like nothing, you know? Like it didn’t happen,” Sinclair watched as the Doctor wrote more notes into his book.
“Well, what’d you think doc?”
“Sounds like you need a new turtle…”
The End.
