Ditty: tribute

She looked up at the bus driver, then back out the window, at the night, at the neighbourhood going past, then at the other passengers, and it suddenly struck her that they appeared somehow otherworldly, like ghosts out of a dream. She realised that the bus was going faster than it should have been, and then, much faster… screeching around a corner and picking up speed… and she  understood that her life was in danger; all of their lives were... 

The other passengers weren’t paying attention at all, but were simply looking out the window, as if the whole thing was completely normal, was just part and parcel of their daily lives… She looked up at the bus driver, the uniform, navy and pristine and cardboard-like, and then saw that the back of his head was white and hairless, more like alabaster, and looked exactly like bone…Now, he was laughing maniacally, then turned and looking at her, not even bothering about watching the road…

She saw a head and a face that was nothing more than a skull… the eyes, two cue-balls twisting and turning around in their sockets…and then, it threw its head back and laughed and then the head turned back to the road… a skinny arm, shoving a gearstick forward, grinding through gears…

And now, they were moving faster than she ever thought possible, speeding through the neighbourhood at an unbelievable pace, the skeleton driver pulling on the wheel, and laughing and grinding through the gears and the neighbourhood soaring passed, the tires screeching and the bus thrown around the streets, making impossible manoeuvres, and the other passengers continuing with their conversations as though everything was normal… It moved into another bend and she screamed and then it skidded to a stop, throwing everyone forward, including the bus-driver himself…

It took her a while to recover; when she did, she lifted her head and looked around; the other passengers, passed out. She stood and made her way to the front of the bus, saw that the driver’s head had smashed a hole through the windscreen; the glass, cracked and starred… and then, his body moved, the head scratching its way from out of the glass… He turned and looked at her, the iris’s, a yellow colour, and then the mouth moved, and the jaw started to unhinge…

‘See you next Wednesday,’ it said, ‘and don’t be late…’

She looked back at the thing, and couldn’t make out what to think, and then it was looking at her and holding the door handle, waiting for her to step off; and she could see, from the corner of her eye, the other passengers waking up…

She looked at its mouth, fixed in a permanent smile, and then, she turned and stepped off, and then, the door closed and the engine started up, and it roared off, screeching around a corner and disappeared… She looked around, at the neighbourhood, struggled to comprehend what the hell had just happened, turned and walked the path to her home, opened the door and stepped inside the heated house and wondered if she had imagined the whole thing, grappled with the fact that if that were the case, then surely, she was going mad…