User blog:Kat2wind2archer/A Bus Stop

You’re on your way to somewhere. It’s late and the street is relatively empty. Parked cars line the curb, and you continue your trek down the sidewalk. There’s a bus stop a few feet away, and it takes you under a minute to reach it. The street lamps chase away the darkness that dares to creep up on you, its shadowy tongues lapping at your shoes. There’s two other people waiting alongside you. You try not to listen in on their conversation, but they’re being too loud.

“To become comfortable with yourself, you must become comfortable with your environment, and it with you. A bird must accept the tree for what it is, and the tree must accept the bird for what it is. The tree itself is a world, a metropolis of beetles and mites and bugs that burrow inside its flesh. The tree is not just a tree; it is part of something larger, something bigger than it itself. It’s a contraption of pullies and levers that’ve adjusted overtime, that’ve moulded and formed into what it is at this moment. Trees weren’t trees once, and they won’t always be them. They’ll continue to twist and squirm until they’re something entirely different. Over years and eons, they’ll become something that looks nothing like the tree the bird contemplates over right now.

The bird changes more quickly than the tree. It’s been so much and so little; it’s had so many colours, so many different wings, so many different beaks. Sometimes it had none of that.

And yet, despite these changes in the form and body, the bird settles its nest on the tree, and the tree doesn’t do anything, because it’s a tree. The bird will eventually fall and let the tree consume it, let its blood taint the heartwood crimson and the leaves blue. Because everything is one, and one cannot repent itself, no matter how hard it may try.

But ‘ones’ and ‘twos’ are too conceptual, too limiting. Why should something be just ‘one’? Why should something be just ‘two’? Twos and ones dangle and dingle in the air like dead fish in oily waters. The universe is ‘one’, but much more. Everything came from ‘one’ place, from ‘one’ form that continued to grow and grow and grow into a tree and a bird. Into redwoods and Mei longs, into skyscrapers and chimpanzees.

So why would it be any different when it comes to your consciousness? To feel comfortable with your consciousness, the other consciousness must accept the first, and vice versa. Does consciousness come from one place as well? Did all of the stars use to dance to the same song? Did-“

“Shut up”

“Why such a foul mood? Somebody spit in your coffee again?”

“I don’t drink coffee”

“Why not?”

“Hey, who did you kill in that room?”

“Kill- wait, what room? When did I kill someone?”

“Three years ago. In that room without colour. They were surrounded by shattered glass. Who was that?”

“…oh. The one with rivers spiralling down from their head to their toes?”

“Yes. The one you asked a question”

“Yes, I know which one”

“…who were they”

“I don’t really remember”

“You just wanted to ask a question, didn’t you? You didn’t care that they’d die and fall into nothingness; you just wanted a teeny tiny answer out of them. You’re selfish. You know that, and so do I”

“…”

“You’re pathetic. You keep rambling about a ‘one’, about a ‘everything’ and a ‘whole’ that you belong to. And yet, you never actually commit to the idea. You continue thinking that beyond this sack of skin of yours, there’s nothing. You continue to think that you’ll drown in burning tar, the sun melting your skin as you try to breathe. But you can’t breathe, because your body is buried five feet under, and the ‘you’ you used to see in the mirror isn’t the one stuck in a pit of tar”

“I don’t like to think about the ‘me’ beyond this body. Stop it”

“You didn’t shut up when I told you to. Why’d I listen to you?”

“Because you must”

“…”

“See?”

“No, I don’t see-”

“Wait- how’d you talk back to me? I-“

“It’s because you’re too uncomfortable to know what you want. Your skin is itching, it feels limiting, doesn’t it? Your eyes feel like they’d be better off spilling out of their shells, like eggs onto a frying pan. You nails-“

“Stop”

“…but you don’t really want me to stop, do you?”

“Stop”

“If you would have wanted me to stop, I would’ve stopped”

“…”

“But you don’t”

“…”

“I’m you, you’re me, that tree is us”

“…”

“That’s what you want to believe, right?”

“…”

“Right?”

“...yes”

“Are you going to kill the two new guys too?”

“What? No-“

“Are you sure?”

“About what? Not killing them? Of course I am-“

“I don’t think you’re so sure. I’ve known you for years. ‘I’ll never forget them, they’re my creations, I have so much planned out for them!’”

“Don’t mock me-“

“AH! But you see, if you wouldn’t have wanted me to mock you, you wouldn’t have made me do it”

“What-“

“Listen, I’m just an idea to you. You’ve forgotten about me for a good couple of years. You don’t get to just ‘remember’ characters and write about them again. You don’t get to fantasise about sticking me in that ink-flooded, poor-excuse of a town again. Go die in a ditch”

“…”

The bus comes. A brightly illuminated number ‘2’ is dancing above the windshield as the headlights clear a path for the vehicle. Its movements are almost sluggish, as if it’s tiered and ready to retire for the night.

Eventually it comes to a stop before you, and its doors yawn open. There’s a bored looking man at the steering wheel, his fingers tapping againced the wheel to a song you can’t hear. You take that as your cue to get on. The bus is almost empty, with the exception of two girls giggling in the back and a stranger in a blue fedora sitting a few seats away from them. You make your way down the aisle, and when you feel the floor start to move under your feet, you take a seat by the window.

You watch as the empty bus stop disappears into a void of darkness, before turning around and waiting to arrive to your next stop.

You eventually forget about that conversation.