The bus rolled into the stop at five thirty in the afternoon, but from the darkness looming in the skies, and the cold pressing against the windows, it might as well have been midnight. Trent was the only one on the bus besides the driver, a tired old giraffe with graying hair and one eye that was starting to go white.
He remembered thinking, Am I gonna make it to Whatever Springs?, when he'd trudged up the stairs onto the bus proper, but it hadn't even been a question. They'd made it there no problem, no hesitation, not a word shared between them as he'd gone to sit in the very back of the bus, clutching his suitcase, his backpack sagging and heavy.
It had been a long, lonely three hours.
Their bond of silence remained unbroken as he walked up to the front. He glanced briefly at the giraffe, who simply looked back at him with a blank expression.
Trent nodded, once, feeling somehow compelled to, and although no visible change came over the driver's body language or facial features, he somehow got the impression that he had, in some way, earned the man's respect, as he nodded back.
He walked off the bus then, finding the bus station cold and lonely, but lit up at least.
Frost had formed on the windows.
It had snowed at some point, the powdery stuff collecting in drifts in the woods not far from the highway he'd just come off of, but at least it wasn't currently snowing. Behind him, the bus roared off, disappearing into the winter night.
Trent sighed softly, his breath appearing as a puff on the air. Night, already. It wasn't even six o'clock and it was night and freezing and it would only get worse as they approached Longest Night. How far away was that now? Couldn't be more than a few weeks. Right? He'd lost track of time so much lately.
Clutching his suitcase tightly, he walked up to the door and peered in. There wasn't anyone actually inside, from what he could tell. Great. He pushed the door open and looked around. There was a soda machine to his immediate right, with Fiasco Soda. A big mural on the wall with a lot of trees. Some benches. A front desk, a TV droning over it, and…
No people.
"Hello?" he called, shifting his backpack nervously.
Nothing. Trent tried again. "Hello!? Anyone here?!"
Still nothing. Maybe they were off taking a piss or something.
As he stood there, staring at the bland mural but not really seeing it, the penny finally dropped on Trent that he didn't actually have a plan. Like at all. For how to get to his new home. He didn't even have a map of the town. He wasn't even sure of what cardinal direction he needed to travel, or how far, to get there.
Feeling the raw, bile-flavored edge of panic gnawing into his gut, Trent tried to make himself relax by reminding himself that he knew the address.
His phone was out, because he hadn't paid the last bill. He'd been vaguely expecting to be able to call a taxi or an Uber.
Jeez, did they even have Ubers out here?
It seemed unlikely.
And even as he slowly looked around the area, his eyes fell onto a payphone, huddled up on the wall right next to the Fiasco Soda machine, and he saw that the actual phone was missing. The silver cord hung limp, a few thin black cables sticking out the bottom. Holy crap, had someone just ripped it straight off?
Why?
For a few seconds, he had a strange but strong impression of a man, a fox, in a black business suit with black sunglasses walking through the woods, carrying a dark briefcase, carrying on a completely serious conversation into the decapitated payphone.
It was Fiasco Fox he was picturing, he realized.
In a business suit.
Well why not?
Realizing that he had to do something, Trent walked down the length of the small bus station. He passed the benches and a couple of doors that were clearly bathrooms and came to the front desk. No one there, totally vacated.
A TV buzzed silent static on the wall beside an old clock with a cracked glass face and a big board that showed arrival and departure times.
The next arrival wasn't for another two hours.
Trent walked back over to the bathrooms and knocked on each one, waiting and listening. He heard nothing and when he tried each knob, they both opened onto dark single rooms that were clearly empty.
"Where the fuck is everyone?" he muttered.
For a second, he felt like he'd stepped off the bus into the Twilight Zone or something. Or into a horror movie. Wasn't this the perfect place for something like that? Some middle-of-nowhere little town called...what was it? Oh yeah, Possum Springs. What if everyone was dead? What if there was some maniac with a hockey mask and a machete loose? What if he was being hunted right this very second? What if-
The door opposite the one he'd come in through opened up suddenly and he jerked in surprise, his heart jumping into his throat as he spun around, prepared to defend himself with his heavy-ass suitcase, or probably just run for his life screaming bloody murder, fully expecting to see the doorway filled by a hulking menace holding a blood-dripping machete.
Except he saw the opposite.
He saw a rather short cat with dark blur fur, her hair dyed dark red on top, wielding an old baseball bat. It sat cocked on her shoulder and she stared at him with big red eyes.
"Holy shit! I was right!" she cried.
Trent stared at her for several long seconds as their eyes locked and he felt something strange pass between them, something intense, something immediately and imminently powerful that he couldn't find a word to describe.
From the widening of her eyes, he figured she felt it, too.
Suddenly, she walked in, the door falling close behind her. Then she kept walking until she stood before him, looking up at him, (she was really short).
"Hi, I'm Mae. I'm twenty years old," she declared abruptly.
"Uh...hi. I'm Trent, I'm...twenty two years old…" he replied.
The feeling of wandering into the Twilight Zone, if anything, simply grew.
"So it happened again," she said. She sounded proud.
"What did? Do you...work here?"
"No. I don't have a job. I'm a loser," she replied. She sounded less proud this time around. "But I knew it. I had a dream. This happened before. To me."
"What did?" he asked cautiously.
"When I came back home, there was no one here, and no one to pick me up. Although…" She looked around, craning her neck to peer behind him. "Did you see a janitor?"
"No. I haven't seen anyone," he replied. "So you had a dream about...me?"
"No. Well, not exactly. I dreamed I was here again...or I was remembering...but when I woke up today, I just knew. Like it was gonna happen again. I have really weird dreams."
"Okay. Uh...is there any way you could give me a ride?"
"Oh. No," she replied simply.
"...is there any particular reason?"
"I don't have a car. Or a driver's license. I can't drive."
She suddenly walked around him and marched away, towards the door he'd initially come in through. Trent turned to watch her go.
He'd met some weird people, but she was something else.
She was also really hot in a weird kind of way.
She was really thick.
The ripped up jeans she wore seemed to strain to contain her nice butt. Trent started walking after her. There was apparently no one else around, and she seemed to be a local, so if anyone had the answer to how to get to his new home, it was her.
"Oh my God they still haven't replaced it?" she muttered, stopping and staring at the payphone. She laughed and then moved on to the vending machine. "You got a quarter? Or, um, three, I guess?" she asked.
"No," he replied, already knowing that all his money was either digital or paper.
"Hmm. Maybe…" She reached out and pushed a button as he came to a stop an appreciable distance away from her. She was a strange stranger, carrying a baseball bat that looked like it'd seen good use, and although she was short, (he doubted she broke five feet), she was...sturdy. She looked like she could crack his skull open without much trouble.
Plus he didn't want to make her uncomfortable, although she seemed far from it.
"Ah yes!" she cried as a can dropped. "So he must be here…" she muttered, grabbing the can and popping it open single-handedly.
"Who? Is it broken?" Trent asked.
"No, it's rigged. The janitor. He rigs it when it's just him," Mae replied. "You want one?"
"Uh yeah," he replied, looking around. He didn't see any cameras, and still no one but them.
"What kind?"
"Lime," he replied.
She looked over at him like he'd screamed a curse word at her, the surprise plain on her face, then she looked back at the machine and pushed the button again.
"Is that surprising?" he asked uncertainly. "You're drinking lime."
She passed him the can. "No one in-" she began, then took a quick drink and suddenly spewed a spray of the stuff onto his face and the front of his hoodie, coughing violently. She somehow managed to hold onto the can and the bat, and swung the bat almost on reflex as she stumbled, still coughing, choking it sounded like, trying to speak.
"Shit!" he snapped, having begun to step forward to help her, Trent barely managed to step back out of the path of the oncoming bat, and decided to just let her sort it out.
Mae spent another minute coughing, finally dropping the bat and holding up her hand flat, palm out. "I'm-okay-" she gasped, and kept coughing. Finally, once she got it under control, she knelt and scooped up the bat, then took another drink and looked at him. "Like no one drinks it but me in this town-oh shit! I spit all over you! Goddamnit! I'm sorry! Here! Let me help!" she said, racing off and almost cracking him with the bat again.
"Wait, it's fine!" he said, wiping at his dark fur with the back of his hand. Everything was happening so fast and this was about the last thing he'd expected to run into.
"No! It's not! Shit! Hold on!" She disappeared into one of the bathrooms and he heard her muttering angrily to herself as he approached.
Before he could get close enough to the open door to see what she was doing, he heard glass shattering.
"Oh come on!" she cried.
Trent peered nervously into the bathroom. The mirror over the sink was shattered and that bat of hers seemed to be the culprit.
This girl was a walking disaster area.
"Fuck!" she hissed, setting her can down on the back of the toilet and gathering up a big wad of toiletpaper.
"Seven years' bad luck," he murmured.
"I've got seven eternity's bad luck already," Mae replied, rolling her eyes. She stepped up and began dabbing at his face with the toiletpaper. "I'm really sorry. This always happens to me."
"You always spit in stranger's faces?" he asked.
She frowned and kept dabbing. "No. I mean, sometimes. Just bad things. They always happen to me. It sucks. I'm really sorry."
"It's okay, it wasn't on purpose," he replied.
"And we're not strangers, you know my name and age and location, and I know yours," she said.
"Seriously?" he asked, genuinely unable to tell if she was trying to make a joke or not.
"Seriously! Okay, I think that's all of it," she said, and tossed the toiletpaper in the trash, then collected up her can and stepped back out of the bathroom. She peered back inside once, winced, then yanked the door shut firmly with her foot. "I'm sure someone else will clean it up."
"I...okay. Whatever you say," he replied. "And I think it takes a little bit more to not be strangers than knowing those things."
She pursed her lips, then rolled her eyes. "Okay, mister smartass, how about this then: I'm the girl that's gonna get you home. Now come on, it's a long walk through the woods."
