Bus Stop Encounter

Hello Dear Readers,

    I had a most unexpected encounter today.  At the bus stop of all places.  I was returning from a trip to Ziggy’s to buy beef sticks when I strolled past the bus stop.  There was a nurse seated at the bus as I approached.  Not just a nurse, but THE nurse that gave me the eye when we were visiting Otto at the hospital.  She was sitting there holding her purse and had earbuds in.  I stared at her as I approached.  As I walked up to her she looked up.  It took a moment before a look of realization crossed her face.

“You,” she said.

“Yep,” I didn’t really know how to respond.  I slowed to a stop.  We stared at each other wordlessly for a long moment.  Her name tag said, Janice.  A neuron fired in the back of my mind.

    “Hi, sorry about the other day,” she said, holding her purse on her lap, breaking eye contact.  “It’s just that I’ve seen you before.”  I nodded.

    “I do walk around town a lot.  I want to get a bike, but I can barely afford rent and snack cakes.”

“No, not like that,” she said slowly.  It was in a dream.”

“A dream?”

“Well, more of a vision, but they happen while I’m sleeping.”  Another neuron fired in my brain.

“Are you Jan March?”  The nurse gave me a horrified look like I’d asked her if she ate puppies.

“I should go,” she started to get up to rush away.

“But the bus isn’t here yet,” She paused, sighed, and sat back down, a look of resignation on her face.

“I was Jan March”.  I raised an expressive eyebrow, but she didn’t notice.  “I left town after high school, got married, became Janice Mountz.  Got divorced, kept the last name.  Then I moved back to town, I figure with a different last name and over a decade since the incident, I could go unnoticed.  And I had.  But I guess they’re still telling the story, huh?”

“Yep,” I said with a smile.  “My name is-”

“I know who you are,” I was bit surprised.  “Everyone in town knows who are by now.  You’re not exactly low profile,” I thought I had been keeping a low profile.  “I guess that I knew at some point you’d come looking for me.”  She sighed again.

“Well of course,” I said with excitement.  “You had a vision of where Captain Abraham’s treasure is!”

“And still no one’s found it”.

“Huh, that's a good point.  But the visions, you do still have them then?” I said, getting excited.

“Like clockwork.” I didn't say anything, we both knew we had come to the part of the conversation where she would tell me about her vision with me in it.  I hoped I had a good haircut in it.

“I saw you about three weeks ago, the last… you know.  Sometimes the visions are dramatic, sometimes surreal and unsettling.  This one was pretty mundane in comparison.”  I felt a little deflated.  It was you alright.  You were standing in a wall of lockers, the ones at the Telford Bus Terminal.  You reach out in locker 212 and put in the combination 8-32-14 and the lock popped up.”

“And?” I said on the edge of my seat.

“And that’s it.”

“Oh,” I sat back.

“So I‘m guessing you don’t have a locker at the bus terminal.”

“No”.  I had definitely been hoping for something more exciting than a random locker.  Maybe fighting a dragon while riding a unicorn, or eating a donut with rainbow sprinkles.

“Sorry if that was anticlimactic.”  The bus began to approach.

“Well, what about the rest?”

“The rest?”

“Of the visions!  What do you see?  I figure if it's roughly one vision a month, twelve visions a year, and it's been-”.

“I have notebooks, where I write everything down.”

“Fantastic,” I say, leaning forward in my seat.  I decided to take a chance, it was too great on an opportunity not to!  “Could I see them?” I tried to hide my excitement.

“I'll think about it,” was all she would say.

“Okay.”  I smiled and the bus door opened.  She got on the bus and was gone.  I sat there for a moment, satisfied with the interaction.  What a day!  A new source of information into Newton’s dark, fuzzy underbelly.  And beef sticks.  If I wasn’t worried about the former tomato plant smothering me in my sleep, then I would say that life was perfect.  But I am definitely becoming worried about that happening.

The only grey cloud on my otherwise ideal life is that I probably won’t get over to Telford bus station anytime soon.  It’s clear on the other side of Telford and that much bus fare is going to cut into my Tastykake budget.  It doesn’t seem pertinent, so I guess it’ll have to wait.  Something about those numbers seems familiar though.

Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  The tail of a cat disappeared around the corner.  The poked its head out and stared at me, a diamond shaped tag having from its collar.  It was the ‘not a real cat’/observer.  I stared back at it.

“Well?” I said.

It turned and sauntered off.  Just like a real cat.  I hope a random subterranean slug eats it.

I'll keep you updated.