Waiting for the Bus

You are sitting on the bench at the bus stop. While you watch the road for a glimpse of the bus, an empty green beer bottle rolls into view. You watch it career down the unusually empty road, watching the coloured label chasing itself around the green cylinder; watch as it drifts daringly over the delineated centre to the wrong side of the road, rolling slower and slower, like a curling stone in the final moments of its fleeting journey across ice... It comes to rest towards the side of the road near the bus stop. Soon a car approaches and you wonder if it will hit the bottle; if it does, will the bottle shatter into a thousand pieces and launch a shower of green shrapnel rocketing through the air, a miniature firework display against the black tarmac? Or will it be crushed with a single crunch of a bulldozing wheel into the baking road? The car whips past, missing the bottle by scarcely an inch and leaving it oscillating gently, as does the next car, and the next, and the one after that.

More and more cars hurtle past, and you sit shielding yourself with your paperback novel, squeezing your eyes shut and flinching whenever a car draws near, imagining thick daggers of green glass slicing through the air, flying at you wildly like stray bullets and gashing out your eyes and slashing your tender skin. You remain there, however, rigid; watching; your fear numbed by curiosity, unable to take your greedy eyes off the glinting green glass.

Just as the suspense seems it will engulf you, the bus looms into sight, growling and hissing and spitting as it heaves up the incline, and draws to a shuddering stop. It too only just misses the shiny little bottle that bounces emeralds off the dazzling sun, and you board, looking relieved to escape. Then as the monstrous engine sputters back to life, coughing out billows of thick black smoke, the giant wheels roll back - scarcely an inch - and through the bus’ roaring announcement of departure you detect the inimitable sound of crunching glass. You spin around and press your pale face and hands against the streaky glass of the large window at the back of the bus as it lurches forward, and seeing the lifeless green shell lying there like cast-off bits of refuse, you weep.