Steering mechanism

It was a beautiful fall day. The first really beautiful day of fall, the first day it felt like fall. The air was dry and just cold enough and there was no wind to speak of. I could even smell a little of the fall -- like dead leaves and fires -- behind my neighborhood's ever-present odor of feces.

I was walking to the bus. I take the bus to work. I actually take two buses to work. I take one bus two miles west, then transfer to another bus which takes me four miles east. I pass my apartment on this second bus, but it is an express, and the only way for me to get to work.

I was walking to the bus and I saw a bright green leaf on the ground, but when I got closer, I saw that the leaf was actually an insect -- one of those insects camouflaged to look like leaves. I jumped at the sight of it. I had nearly stepped on it; that would have grossed me out. It seemed to me to be a strange evolutionary strategy. I could see how it might be helpful in the jungles where there are a lot of things around that like to eat insects, but I certainly don't like to eat insects, and I love stepping on leaves. I step on all the leaves I can when I'm walking to the bus. I almost killed that bug. It spun its antenna up at me and I stepped around it.

Waiting for the bus, a young woman smiled at me. I have trouble meeting young women in my neighborhood, I think because it so often smells of feces, no one is thinking of such things. She was eating a small salad, even though it was morning. I've been told I'm cute in a bad-skin sort of way, so I wasn't surprised she smiled at me. She had a very nice dye job, but I didn't know if that was the kind of thing I should mention, so I just smiled back.

A bus pulled up and she got on it. It was heading further west, away from work. The bus driver said they were headed to Falkous, which was a neighborhood I didn't know, but I decided to follow the young woman who had smiled at me onto the bus.

She sat in a seat under the window, one of the sideways seat that face the aisle, so I took the seat opposite her. She smiled, but wouldn't look at me. She took out a beaten-up old paperback called It Was The Husband, Who Was Cheating On His Wife With Their Daughter's Kindergarten Teacher All Along. I asked her if it was good; she said it was.

The bus was moving by now, down a steep hill. We hit a bump and everyone jumped in their seats. Then another bump and an older woman fell into the aisle. We saw the driver pressing frantically on the brake, but the bus would not slow down. He screamed and jumped out the window.

I rushed up to the front and grabbed the wheel. The young woman rushed up behind me and pressed softly against my back and shoulders. You can do it, she seemed to be telling me. I turned the wheel as far as I could in both directions, but the bus would only go straight. "SOMEONE HAS CUT THE STEERING MECHANISM" I shouted. People started screaming and screaming.

We were headed for the pier. The bus skipped across the boards. I just might have an idea how to get out of this one and rescue everybody on the bus, I started to say to the young woman, but we crashed into a very large boat at the end of the pier. I hit my head hard on the wheel and blacked out for just a second. I came to and saw the young woman sprawled out across the aisle next to me, a big bloody gash across her forehead. I looked back into the bus and everyone else looked dead or unconscious too. I opened the door and stepped out.

I was bleeding from the head myself, and now how was I supposed to get to work! I started to walk down the pier when I saw a man with a moustache and pipe and trenchcoat standing in the basket of a big red hot air balloon.

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING, YOUNG MAN?" he called.

"I need to get to work across town," I said. I didn't know where I was, but it didn't smell like feces here. It smelled sweaty and disinfected like the inside of a volleyball.

"WHY I'M GOING THERE RIGHT NOW, IN MY HOT AIR BALLOON," he said. "WHY DON'T YOU HOP ABOARD?" I had never been in a hot air balloon before, but I didn't know how else I would get to work, so I said ok.

The man said he would drop me off at the park, which is nowhere near where I work, but I said ok. I could always take a bus from the park.

As we got near the park, he turned to me and said, "SAY, I'M GETTING OFF HERE SO THERE'S NO POINT IN ME RIDING IT ALL THE WAY TO THE PARK. YOU CAN TAKE IT FROM HERE," he said, and he jumped out of the basket, arms out like a flying squirrel's, trenchcoat billowing. I didn't watch him land.

I had never landed a hot air balloon before, but I figured I'd give it a go. You had to pull on this rope to let hot air out of the top of it to descend, so I did that for a while. I started to come down towards the park, and then I did it, I landed. I landed right on a path in the middle of the park. I could feel the bottom of the basket scraping against the asphalt. But the balloon was moving too fast, and the basket tipped over. I spilled out of the basket and got caught underneath it, tangled in some ropes, and I was dragged along the path, watching pieces of myself stick to the sidewalk behind me the whole time. And then I died.

And that, gentle reader, is why you never ever get on the wrong bus, even if, the whole ride to work, wonder if you should have, wonder why you didn't, and wonder what you're living for if not the opportunity to get on the wrong bus once in a while.