A Night's Bus Ride - 2nd draft

[Cobalt Katze]

The few people that read my first post on this story will recognize a chunk of the bus ride, but there is a whole lot more this time. It keeps going in new directions, and I'm not sure where it's going yet. But please, I'd appreciate any feedback. I spent a lot of time workin on this.
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To Raissa, the neon lights looked like a forest without leaves. Big green letters that would've spelled out Tillander, if she weren't horribly nearsighted. She carried a pair of prescription glasses in her purse, but preferred the abstract mélange of color. She could recognize a bus stop, knew the times it arrived by word of mouth, and that was good enough for her. Bus drivers were often confused by her constant questioning of route numbers. Most assumed she was a dangerous blind, choosing not to carry a stick. She didn't care what they perceived, as long as she wasn't persecuted. She did, however always carry a small black kitten, whom she considered a life-long companion.

It was midnight in the city. Fog rolled in and out like a tide. Hands of the wealthy were covered in silk gloves to protect against the cold chill. Hands of the poor were stuffed into socks and paper bags. The rumble of a car could be felt shortly before it rocketed past. Its lights left a lasting impression on anyone daring to look straight into them. A general bustle of people could be heard from a block away, the location of a popular theatre, but no one wandered close to the bus stop where Raissa sat.

As the moments of waiting progressed further past the bus' deadline, the girl heard the soft vibration of an engine approaching. Far off along the street she spied an orange shape, gradually drawing near. She stood up slowly, stuffing her uncovered hands into her pockets. The orange shape defined into an oval blur, then a taxi cab once she squinted her black-rimmed eyes, recognizing the checker-shaped pattern on the side of the car. Even before the door was opened, she could identify the cigarette smoke leaking through the frame. The door popped open, and the full-on scent was too horrible for her to bear, causing a brisk sitting down and averting of her eyes. The passenger coughed, closed the door and walked away, taking another puff of his well-used cigarette butt before tossing it to the pavement. Sunken green eyes peered out from under lightly-tinted sunglasses as he leaned against the bus stop.

"Horrible night," he said, clearly knowing the girl had noticed him. Everyone did. She didn't reply, but gave him a pained expression, wishing the bus would come sooner. The man smiled and shook his head, crossing his arms tight across his chest.

"Knew y'wouldn't agree. Y'like this kind'a weather too, don'cha?" She frowned, wishing he hadn't responded for her.

"Nights like these, them's the kind where nuttin' goes wrong, ain't that right?"

"…The bus should be here." she replied, wanting to get away from any confrontation. He seemed to not hear her, continuing to babble as the headlights of a larger vehicle could be seen on the horizon.

"The kind'a nights where you jus' let it all go. Y'jus' let it go. Y'let it go."

The bus continued to approach, the sound of its engine becoming almost deafening. No number showed, the vehicle simply a steel vessel that pulled to the side of the road. The man raised his voice over the bus to be heard.

"All this wishin'! All these lies! These nights y'just let it go!"

The bus doors opened mechanically with a hiss of hydraulics, leading to a staircase which Raissa scaled. The doors closed and she found herself in a blue-lit walkway with leather seats on either side. She fumbled around until she found an empty place to sit down, placing a cold hand on her chest as her heartbeat began to slow. With a other brisk hiss, the bus began to move again, pulling away from the curb and back to the street.

Outside, the drunk man collapsed to his knees, grasping the bus stop to keep from falling over. His glasses askew, he half-shouted at the departing bus "Damnit! …Damnit. Jus' let it all go…"


Many adored her curls. Long, elegant curls you'd see on a porcelain doll, the color of a slight tinge of twilight. They would fall and bounce, framing her face like dangling snakes. Her skin was soft to the touch, cool but an underlying warmth came from beneath. Raissa felt this as she rested a palm on that soft perfect pale cheek, dabbled with a streak of mascara.

A breeze from the open bus window drifted past her bare shoulders and she shivered. The black kitten always at her side began to purr audibly as the girl hugged it close into her lap. Stretching her neck, she let a smile come to her lips, realizing that the bus was purring too. It rumbled as it meandered across the dark country roads. She wanted to confront the bus and ask why it was so happy to be traveling at such a late hour. For all she was concerned, night was a horrible time to be driving. With nothing lighting the roads but the moon and headlights, surely something dangerous could happen. But all was quiet except the rumbling and purring and a little tune running through the girl's mind.

Soon, the bus rounded a turn and it could be seen that the road now wound close to the ocean, small peaks of water in the distance highlighted by the moon and its false rays of light. "False?" the girl pondered as she questioned why she had thought of it that way. The rays were perhaps truly from the sun, but why did their reflection off of the moon deem them false? Maybe there was something about the moon that contained a certain sense of untruth.

She shifted her position on the seat to look behind her at the ocean, causing her kitten to protest in the form of a subdued 'mrrouu.' Looking down at the waves lifting and falling, she remembered that the moon too controlled them and their tides.

"That moon…" she scolded silently, furrowing her brow at the silver sphere. Like so many people in her life, controlling and filled with falsities. Brilliant one night, so full of itself as it floated in the sky like a proud balloon. Nearly invisible another night, hiding away in the shadows as it lead a hidden life under the black covers.

"And where does it go during the day anyways?" she continued in her head, accented by a string quartet gently swaying in a sonata never written. This distracted her from any other further thought, turning back around with a smile returning to her lips. Gently stroking her kitten's neck, she closed her eyes and concentrated more on brilliant music than unanswered questions never to be answered. It was much more soothing on a night's bus ride.


A soft honey-colored aura filled the sky early on the second day. Eyes closed to the rising sun, a warm veil of light was pressed to the Raissa's face as the bus rounded a turn in the pass. It was now gliding through the fields and mountains away from the waters. She raised her eyebrows questioningly and let out an inaudible yawn, lids slowly parting. Her kitten began to wake up as well, shifting positions in the girl's lap. For the first time since she boarded the bus, she noticed the other people in seats around hers were beginning to stir as well. Some still slept on. Their shades were drawn to encourage a lack of sunlight, despite the electric white lights bordering the patch of carpet in the middle. While noticing all the people around her, the girl also noticed there was no driver to be seen, instead a door leading to a compartment where she believed he sat.

As the passengers began to wake up, they began to notice Raissa as she noticed them. They would murmur a series of short comments like "Isn't that cute?" or, "Curious, a girl on the road with her kitten…" or, "Where are her parents? Perhaps she hasn't got any."

She didn't pay any mind to them. All she was concerned about was herself, her kitten, and the questionable location where she was going. With that on her mind, she turned her attention back to the window and beyond. The sun continued to rise, and the surroundings seemed to be painted with that amber hue. Grasses swayed, sparse patches of flowers were dwarfed by the fields. A familiar sight caught her eye in the distance along the roadside. It appeared as a grey blur, but she knew it to be a small stone building standing there, rooted at the base of a hill. Wooden blinds were in place. As the girl stared at this monument gradually getting closer, she looked into the slits and stared back into her eyes as a child. They were peeking through, looking out at everything. The mountains, the country road, the village far in the distance. It was her fortress, her sanctuary. She remembered a bed with off-white covers. Snow flakes drifting through the blinds and melting on the floor. The sight of salty droplets falling to blend with the melted snow. The fire raging across her reddened cheek. She remembered the shouts of wild animals coming from the kitchen under the floorboards. The birds chirped regardless. An old record player sat on a bookshelf playing a half-finished recording of Schubert's unfinished symphony. It was enough to drown out everything, but the quiet between intense passages seemed too quite at times. As if the raging below was to be expected.

She did expect so many things back then. The first were always the most basic. The sun would rise, that was a given. Her bed was positioned in such a way that the first rays of dawn would slip through the wooden blinds and hit her face. They were always still asleep when she woke, which was perhaps the most eventful portion of the day. For about an hour she would sit on her bed and let the dream she just interrupted begin to unravel from truth to fiction. Some times her dream would be so pleasant that as ideality began to fade to reality she would fall into a depressive slump. On those mornings perhaps the first hour or two would be spent staring out the blinds. If she was in a particularly good mood, she might put on music and dance around. Of course doing that would always result in an unpleasant woman standing in her doorway. At this point the sun would always be high enough to spread the light through the blinds across the room onto the stocky frame of her mother.

"Where did you get this?" she questioned, abruptly removing the needle from the record. Raissa winced at the scratching noise that came from the speaker, the music ceasing to play. She didn't respond, searching in her mind for words that wouldn't make the situation worse.

"Answer me. Where?"

"Samyu." she finally replied, barely making a noise. Her mother didn't need to hear the response though, already knowing what she would say. Samuel, or Samyu as she called him for short, was her uncle, a composer. He was often regarded in the family as the black sheep of sorts, never having found much sympathy for his low income and creative endeavors. Of the few times Raissa had gone to visit, she was always amazed at his collection of records. They took up his entire basement, laid out almost like a store. But they were never organized alphabetically. Instead, he chose to arrange them by their covers. As much as he was an admirer of music, he also enjoyed the art that packaged each vinyl disc. And so he organized them by color and complexity. At the beginning of his collection was the white album by the Beatles, then progressed through all the rest of his black and white covers. Red came next, from solid shades to fire to roses. At the end of each trip Raissa would, with the help of Samyu, smuggle several records into her travel bag. Her parents were, unfortunately, very paranoid when it came to the ears of their daughter. They had been raised with the "classics," and by all means their daughter would receive the same up-bringing. Anything else, regardless of personal taste, was regarded as

"Garbage." the woman stated, holding the record irresponsibly. Sweat from the thick covers and greasy husband went from her fingertips to the delicate ridges of the disc she held in front of Raissa's trembling figure. "Take it to the dumpster there and we'll never hear this ruckus at 7am again, am I right?" The girl nodded, holding back her swelling emotions of rage and sadness. She grasped the record carefully from her mother. and exited the room. Her mother, always one to make an example, slammed the bedroom door shut with such fervor as to vibrate the very foundation of the house. This woke the father, and the wild beasts began their rampage yet again as Raissa gently shut the back door, not planning to open it ever again.

[starlitdancer]

Wow. Your descriptions are vivid and imaginative; they not only provide information about the story, but they also remind me of the few bus rides I took at night. I'm also curious about what will happen to Raissa next.

One other thing: I know you've divided the story into sections, but putting a space in between each paragraph makes it easier to read. Just a suggestion.

Hope you continue your story.

[Cobalt Katze]

Yaeh sorry about that. Originally my story was double-spaced in Word, so I forgot to re-format the paragraphs while pasting into here. I'll go edit that.

[Alorox]

I'm really loving the story man... Keep up the good work... But there's a big problem...

WE WANT MORE!