Up, Away, Up, Astray
What if your bus driver is a lunatic? A weird short story. (Thanks, Howard Phillips, and… well, sorry.)
“I don’t want her to drive,” Alex Junior said, crossing his arms on his chest, standing in the door of the bus, his left foot still on the October ground. “She’s suspicious.”
“She’s the bus driver, son,” Alex the Old said behind him. “It’s her job.”
He looked up at the lady sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Sorry,” he said to her. “He gets these fits sometimes.”
The bus driver smiled at them, raising her eyebrows, and glancing at her watch.
“I don’t get fits!” Alex Junior said. “You get fits!”
“Come on, young man,” the bus driver said. “I promise you I’m not going to switch a secret switch and fly this old bus to the Moon, and sell you all to the Men from Leng. You know, them, who travel time and space and the Land of Dreams in their black ships.”
Alex Junior looked up at his father, and backed away a step from the door.
“There’s no point forcing it today, I guess,” Alex the Old said with a sigh. He looked up at the bus driver. “Sorry, lady. Junior here gets this day off. I’ll call the school. Do expect him tomorrow, though.”
The bus driver shrugged, shook her head a little, then closed the door.
The bus coughed a bit, then was on its way, away, off on the road to the school.
“How did you know?” Alex the Old whispered. “Gosh, son, you give me the creeps sometimes!”
“Me?” Alex Junior glanced up at him, his forehead all frustrated wrinkles. “Dad! It’s not me! It’s them! I’ve told you she’d say this! And she did! Like the postman in the last city!”
“Yeah, I remember,” Alex the Old said. “Guess we’ll use the same trap tomorrow. If it worked for him, it’ll work for her.”
“Okay, dad,” Alex Junior said. “But you’ll have to start trusting my visions. It’s getting tiresome, keeping trying to live an average life.”
Alex the Old looked up at the sky with a sigh, then nodded.
There was a bright dot rising towards the clouds in the distance.
It could have been a school bus.
