I sit on this bus, you see. I wait five stops from getting off to arriving at my destination. While not an incredibly far distance, it would be a pain to walk it. I must pass over the city to my job, Chiron’s boat my passage though its disguise as this distasteful bus. 

This important for me to preface before I get into the rest of story- the reader will be sure to wonder at one point, “dude, why the fuck dontcha get off of the fucking bus?”. This is my answer- the inconvenience of getting off the bus and waiting for the next one or just embarking on such a treacherous walk to my place of employment would result in a domino effect of a shitty to shittier day. If I am late to work again I get fired so I take another bus home just to put a dull knife to my wristsOr maybe just drink a handle and have at it with my upstairs neighbor. Life hasn’t proved particularly fruitful by any means, I do not need to spell it out for you, reader. 

Carla is such a fucking dirty slut. 

Anyway, this is not the story. I have always had a way of getting distracted by stupid bullshit. When I was a kid, no matter how enthusiastic the teacher would talk or how blank the wallpaper of a room, my mind would find a way to drift. The paint on the walls kind of looks like a woman bent over a desk. Those pins kinda look like a face. I wonder what it would take for my mom to kill me. Oh shit, she WILL kill me if I don’t hold my breath for 60 seconds.

I better give my crayons away.

All the while, the teacher would probably have said my name about six times, standing in front of my desk, glaring at me with that all-too-disappointed look. “Are you listening to me Dipshit? Huh, little pussy?” They would say (at least they may as well have). During tests? Psh, I was more likely to play a little made up crossword with the instructions. 

This is not the story, just a preface. 

The bus. I take the bus everyday and any bus goer in America knows the drill- you sit down, put your bag on the ground between your legs, put on your headphones and ignore all possible other bullshit (if applicable). So, I sit on the bus. 

The older woman in front of me smiles and eats her sandwich. Some of the spinach on it falls on her lap while she takes each precarious bite, but it isn’t that much of a shame, her pants weren’t attractive to begin with. Standing on the left of me is this kid- some punk- with a graphic T-Shirt, “Jesus is my Homie”. I never understood that ‘fad’ of obscenity. As the country goes downhill, the children in it become retarded little shits, I suppose. Yet another thing Clinton screwed up. The punk listens to some sort of rock or rap, it rages from his headphones. If he had had a more accurate T-Shirt it would have been a comic strip with those zigzag lines coming off of a pair of headphones. The last bus rider in my immediate vicinity is this taught little girl. Maybe 17 or 18 years old. She wears those tight little low rise leggings I see in the magazines. Her hair is up in an assorted amount and a variety of little clips. Even though her shirt is generally modest, I can see her little tits poking through the sheer fabric. The areola bounces up and down at each bump on the road, her tight ass is hidden. If God exists, her stop is before mine. I hold my breath and watch my watch. 

 She must get off past Monroe. Little cunt. 

The bus halts in jagged little shutters as it approaches the first stop on my route. In walks a Middle Eastern appearing man with a thick beard and a messy suit. His tie is dangling half down his shirt, his hands clutching at the side rails to pull himself up to the level of the bus. He coughs a nasty, wet hurl as his body weight slams down into the nearest chair. Now he is sitting two seats to the left of the old woman who is just about halfway through her bus sandwich. The bus drums to a roll and the tension between the passengers grows as the Middle Eastern man coughs more and more, his hands at his side. The old woman does not look over at all, her sandwich all too consuming. The punk with those horrible stretched ears continues listening to his music and the taut little princess reads her book, unphased. I follow suit, I sit still, occasionally dodging the spit and liquid flying from his mouth. When I mean spit, I mean thick, bubbling fluid spewing over the center of the bus hallway. The particles get caught in that untamed beard of his, he tries to adjust his tie and unbutton his shirt to breathe just a bit easier but to no avail. The projectile continues. The crowd ignores it. I look at my watch and hold captive my air. 

…

A few months ago I bought his ham on sale with a ‘Eat Day Of’ sticker on it. Back home I tossed it in the freezer. ‘Eat Day Of’ warnings mean fridge, but freezer stalls that process- I was saving a few bucks without a time crisis. A day or so later, I went to Peoria to visit Cathy, my sister, and her husband, Mike. When I got back to Chicago a few days later, I discovered that for five hours I had lost power, resulting in some sort of water leak that killed my freezer. Tired from my journey, I decided that was a future me problem and went about my day. 

Days. Weeks. Months. 

When I come into my apartment now, I hold my breath for about 60 seconds until I get past the second door. 

…

At the second stop, a new character comes in through the clanky bus doors. Two homeless people lumber up the jump to stand in the middle of the interior walkway, grasping for the handlebars above, but missing the first few times. They twitch, moan, and grunt as they itch their necks and adjust their shirts. The man is in better condition than the woman he comes in with, her shirt has significantly more burn holes. They make an adequate amount of noise and their stink is putrid. The only thing reminiscent of this odor is that of the ham leaking its decomposition on my kitchen floor. However, even then I can manically spray the room. In the public bus, I do my best to breathe through my shirt. The old woman continues eating her sandwich, the Middle Eastern man continues his coughing cacophony, the punk nods his head to his tunes and the little minx reads her book. They don’t care about the homeless tweakers, nor do I. I look at the long arm of my watch pulse past each checkpoint as my chest starts to hurt. 

The door creaks and turns itself inwards. A man, ripening like an old apricot, seems to have the methamphetamine/mental psychosis on par to the level a rabid dog mauls a child. He scampers, his walk etches in and out of slow motion to 2X. His linen shirt has one button affixed to its partner slit, and although his general condition is displeasing, he seems more put together than certain others on the bus. In his elderly age, however, he does something usually reserved for the young folks at Woodstock. The decrepit fellow begins to undress. 

…

I lost my virginity the week before my first semester of college. I had had girlfriends at that point but sex was not really a priority of mine. I listened idly while my friends talked about their crazy nights and drunken endeavors with whores and harlots. I passively asked them respectable questions and when they would berate me regarding my lack of experience, I would pinch the skin on my elbow until they moved on to the next topic. By senior year, I would then pick the scabs on my elbows and dab the thin line of blood with the back of my hand, wiping it on my jeans. While embarrassed about the image I had made for myself, I never looked for opportunity to fuck until my mom asked me if I was seeing anyone. 

“No, mom I’m not.” 

She shrugged and went back to her activities. I worried she thought I was a faggot. 

I called Linda McGregory that night. She came over while my mother made up dinner and I snuck her to my parents’ bed. I remember worrying I didn’t shake the bed enough, but when my mother walked in I knew I was doing just fine. 

…

As the man undressed, the woman eating her sandwich was down to nearly her last bite, yet continued to spill the dripping mayonnaise down her shirt. The little school girl walks from the back to the mid section, groping at the bars and sliding as the bus jumps up and down. Her tits follow suit. The elderly man’s shirt is on the ground and before he could start tugging at the belt on his slacks, the schoolgirl slams her bookbag down, dropping it on the homeless’ feet, and helps him derobe. He pushes her head down to his filthy crotch, his mouth widening with a sick, depraved expression of hunger and pleasure. Schoolgirl pulls his pants to his ankles, shifting her attention to her own. They fuck like rabbits. Or rabbit and bunny, I suppose. 

The Middle Eastern man pulls his dick out of his own pants and furiously pleasures himself, not moving his hands from his member nor his attention to the taboo as his phlegm coughs up on the schoolgirl’s back. The old lady’s eye contact is still on her sandwich, but she is down to her last bite. She takes it in, although she keeps her fingers in the same position. Swallowing, a breath, then another lean as she engorges her hands into her mouth, the tendons and bones popping and crackling in her teeth. Some pieces, whether that be her fingers or her teeth, fall to her lap as the blood spurts on her shawl, covering the past debris of the sandwich. It is time to start counting again. Deep breath in and hold. 

Bouncing to a stop, the doors open once again. Last stop before I get off. In walks a group of young boys. They are affixed with ties, suits, and beautiful leather shoes. Their hair is all perfect, young schoolboys perhaps. Compared to the poorer, lower grade model of this new generation standing aside from me, these are the anti-punks who will go on to university and perhaps keep the world from its liberal end. I smile, hoping they sit next to me. More boys walk in, one fidgets and grunts. I lean forward to see what his commotion is- he appears to be lifting something. As he comes up the steps, more boys follow with a large rectangular box on their shoulders. It must be heavy, the youths seem to have a hard time pulling it in. I catch my breath and count down, the ticks of the second hand in slow motion. 

…

Last analepsis, reader. 

When my father died, I dealt with a burden I was not expecting. While we had had a close enough relationship, it never felt deeper than a conversation about a baseball game. Friendly, but vacant. Looking at his body in the church, I wanted to feel the need to leap into the box with him and be taken to the cemetery skin to skin with his corpse. But really, I didn’t feel much. It was as empty as our relationship had been. I stood there, a few inches from his face noticing a hair on his cheek. 

When my lieutenant had died a few years before, I scooped the bits and flakes of dirt, crusted flesh and brain from his face. After spitting into my hands and cleaning his skin, I opened his jaw to affix my sock into his mouth. His cheeks did not look right so deflated back to his spine. Damping his hair and swirling it in my fingers, I left him looking more like himself. 

I buried my father with the hair on his cheek. Feel free to therapize whatever symbolism that entails. 

…

The boys on the bus pull the casket into the remaining space to the side of me. For the first time, the punk kid takes out his earplugs to notice what is happening. One of the gentlemanly kids knocks into the elderly man, pushing him out of the loins of the school girl. He falls in a spin, ejaculating on the homeless woman’s leg. She crooks her hand and scoops the cum off of her thigh, laughing with a wheeze as she sticks it in her throat. The homeless lady looks at her homeless partner and giggles.
“Look at me! Look at me!” she seems to say, jumping up and down. 

The elderly woman, blood so thick on her body and seat, it is difficult to see where the fabric of the chair ends and her body begins. She is well through her wrists now. The school girl looks concerned looking back at her lover, whose blood is pooling under his head. The punk keeps his eyes transfixed on the casket and the Middle Eastern man uses his spit to continue his furious work on himself. 

“Sir, may I please borrow that for a moment?” One of the boys says to the punk. 

The punk pulls at the bottom of his obscene shirt to reveal the handle of a box cutter strategically between his briefs and his cargo pants. He hands it to the kind boy in the suit. 

The boys in suits use the box cutter and open the casket, aggressively pulling the corpse from inside to the side seats of the bus. Bumping along, the bus slows a bit anticipatory to my stop. The boys kick and push and prod the body, tearing out its eyes, pulling its hair, jumping on its chest. They hack off the arms and legs with the box cutter and use their shoes to beat it to a thick, oozing pulp. The head jumbles back and forth as it is tugged off of its body completely, the nose at this point fully bitten off. The animal screams of the boys bounce off the windows and seats, swirling around the air in its cacophony of terror and lust. One blonde boy falls back into the elderly woman and she pulls him down to her lap and gnaws on his neck. 

Creaking like an un-oiled swing set, the doors bend open. I adjust myself and walk over pieces of the corpse, the twitching body of the elderly man, and say an “excuse me” past the homeless. Looking back just once, the schoolgirl is kneeling to the Middle Eastern man, patting his pus-filled loins with a cloth dodging his vomit. The boys chant a happy song, a celebratory football theme, I think. 

Stepping onto the asphalt I check my watch. Breathe out. I look at my briefcase to my left to check it is still with me. Breathe in. I look to my right to make sure my car keys are still in my hand. Breathe out. 

Hunched over near 90 degrees. I walk at a curve, slowly, with my face eye-line with the pavement. My friend struts in front of me the same way, occasionally bending even further to grab at the little treasures he finds. Under his tutelage, I would soon become a God at this speciality, but at this time, I was 14 or 15, and he was about 16 or 17, and I was just beginning to see the world around bumming. When kids are too young to buy cigarettes or too dumb to find the right channels, a sure-fire method of getting a few puffs is keeping eyes peeled on the ground. People litter their half-smoked butts on the street, their carnage being our treasure. Most of the time, I would find nibs of cigarettes that were basically garbage, but sometimes, if I was lucky, I would find a butt with half the stick left. With a little bag, we would gather all of the remnants of tobacco we would find, and all in all have the equivalent of a pack. This sport is a lucrative business. It takes a skilled eye to spot what we would seek, it takes a level of almost divine intuition to know whether the item looks safe enough to consume, or worthwhile, from just a glance. Overtime, one starts to know the ins and outs of this occupation, particularly the hotspots. 

Any sidewalk in the world is destined to have a few stragglers, but the money spots are gas stations, drug stores, and bus stops. Those places often have trash cans with ashtrays, harboring these little delicacies. Sometimes, I would find cigarettes just barely smoked, the stems of beautiful 100s. Even though cigarette beggars do not have the luxury of being so choosy, we had our preferences. Parliaments were nice, but so ostentatious. No one can go wrong with Marborlo reds, but the menthols never tasted quite as sweet, unless they were NXTs. We loved Camels, particularly the Turkish blends, but spit at the sight of Newports. American Spirits were fine, but only the blues. The bottom of our little bumming totem pole were Lucky Stripes. Blegh, what distaste. Hunched over 90 degrees, drooling at litter, eyes peeled and glassy, we were the sommeliers of ashed cigarettes, the epitome of taste for big tobacco. 

“I think I am going to move out to Chicago next year,” He says. 

Burning the edge of the filter and setting it to my lips I reply, “Good, man, hope you do it.” 

“Dawg, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He says, turning his shoulders to me. The cars rush by the curb we sit on, tussling our hair. I light another half-smoked nub.

I had been reading about the law of seven degrees of separation. Essentially, it says that any two people in the world can be connected by at most seven relationships. Me and a guy running a fish market in Copenhagen have invisible strings of interrelations. In hometowns, this becomes clear and universal to everyone. After any introduction you may as well say, “yo do you know…?” and they will probably clap their hands and nod. These seven degrees of separation turn more into one or two. All of a sudden the distance from me and everyone else in this city closes in, the sky becomes walls that thud against my skin.

Sitting there holding my cigarette (a filthy Newport, may I add), I see the lipstick on the filter. A soft pale pink, not too glossy,but not fully matte either. The spread out sparkles dispersed along the lines of the lip it creates, the lipstick overlaps itself. This lapping pink on the butt has the same opaque quality, as if the lady smoking it reapplied her makeup in between each drag. She ashed it with half the stick left, leaving a piece of her to disintegrate into the sidewalk. I like to think that the people on the other side of these pieces of trash were full knowing that a couple kids would smoke their remains. an act of philanthropy. Then, of course, looking at this shade of pink on the filter that I, too, put to my lips, I remember that law of the seven degrees of separation. Through our connections, I know this Soft-Pink-Lipstick girl and I feel oh-so sick. I take another deep drag, the menthol filling my throat, inhaling until the burn in the back of my mouth proves too painful. 

…

“Told you so.” 

“What do you mean?” He inhales, only this time with a cough. 

“Last year you swore you were gonna move to Chicago” 

He scratches his head with both hands. A snark laugh escapes his lips, his cigarette hanging out of his mouth, “Nah man there isn’t shit for me in Chicago.” 

“Is there anything for you here, though?” I ask, coughing at my drag. My hands scrummage in our snipe bag searching for another fag. My mind wanders to wondering whose cigs these are; maybe a cousin of the girl I hate in math, maybe the guy at the bus stop who lifted my skirt with his cane, or it may be a really attractive playboy with perfect hair and a killer smile. I purse my lips tightly around the filter. 

…

Another year later, we sit on the same curb, as the whirling cars passed by, the same clouds in the sky, the same person by my side. We can buy packs now, but we don’t even have $7 to spare. I scrabble around in the snipe bag for another cigarette. 

“DUDE.” My friend flicks the empty butt into the street, pushing his phone in my face. It is some news headline reading,

  Girls with ‘Bright Smiles and Caring Hearts’ are Killed in Murder-Suicide. 

He makes a deep gargle in the back of his throat, swallowing hard before saying, “Dude that’s fucking Canter’s family.”

I snatch for my own phone to read into it. Sure enough, it was. Her kids were gunned down by her own husband before he put the barrel in his own mouth. 

Adrien Canter, 36, on Dec. 3 murdered his children Lily Canter, 8, and Jane Canter, 6, before he killed himself. 

“That was last night holy shit”

“They live, like, not that far from here, man.” 

“Jesus Christ. I was at their baby shower.” 

“Adrien seemed so… normal …when I met him” I stare at the cig between my middle and index. It has a layer of chapstick on the filter.  Hunched 90 degrees, I walk home alone. Twirling the Marlboro in my fingers, I wonder if the Canters were smokers.