The Last Flight of the #57 Bus

Ged was unhappy. It had not been the best day of Ged’s life, despite it being the last. Because Ged was dead. Quite definitely dead. He was sure about that.

He had an inkling he was going to die when he saw the bus coming. Buses were not, in Ged’s limited life experience, things to be associated with impending and grisly doom. That all changed three hours ago though, when the bus fell on him. He had been out for a brisk jog, having been informed of the health and spiritual benefits of such activities. But today, Irony rode the number 57 Blairgowire – Dundee route and did for Ged good and proper.

Being run over by a bus was one thing. Having a bus dropped on your head was quite another.

Young Barry, a Satanist who was in league with the devil, had been riding the double decker bus with his school chums, on the way home from yet another day of mostly wasted education. The bus company, also in league with the devil but for reasons other than passing their geography exams, had learned by trial of experience that school children and buses do not mix. Seating is ripped up and destroyed, fly cigarettes are dropped upon expensive upholstery, and the age old game of ‘Everyone run to one side of the bus when taking a sharp bend at high speed and see if we can tip the bastard’. Thusly, the number 57 Blairgowrie – Dundee was a bit of a banger. The kids could destroy it if they wished; the thing was due for the knacker’s yard anyway. Rust and duct tape were the order of things on board the old and neglected bus.

The rear window had the Batman logo inscribed upon it, daubed in tippex correction fluid by some enterprising young artist. Beneath it was chiselled the legend ‘Jakie Scott is a Slag’. DNA evidence of this stained the rear seating, what little had not been shredded and pulverized by years of happy sexual adventures. Little bastards thumped the fabric of these seats in glee, raising miniature storms of dust and dead skin cells that went for asthmatic lungs something chronic. The air reeked of vomit, fag smoke and stale plimsolls. And amongst it all, was the Barry, and the Barry was in a mood for mischief.

Barry had set alight a wad of news paper. This he contemplated for a while, much to the hooting and guffawing of his classmates. With a lucid and practiced overhead swing, the flaming ball was launched over the greasy hair of the errant children and went sailing into the lap of Willie Mustard, the bus driver.

All this was unknown to Ged, who was jogging merrily beneath the bypass bridge and contemplating life, the universe, and everything (good book, you should read it). Then everything went dark.

Funny, thought the Ged, looking heavenward in search of the sun and instead seeing the first and last flight of the number 57 Blairgowire – Dundee, plummeting gay and free towards his noble head. Clouds of oxidized steel and mouldering concrete billowed around the descending bus, its wheels spinning, desperate to find purchase against nothing but the air and the wind.

Bloody hell, thought the Ged. I’m going to die.

The second last thing that passed through Ged’s mind was the image of Willie Mustard, simultaneously battling with both the airborne bus and the raging inferno that engulfed his pubic regions.

The last thing that passed through Ged’s mind was the radiator grill.

BUMP AND CRASH AND FUCK!!! went the bus (and the bus occupants, now wailing like the damned souls they were and being thrashed wild around the interior of the now mangled and rolling bus). Into the Ged it pummelled with a tiny little splat of brains and neck, and then into the ground where it bounced and crunched and eventually came to a flaming halt against a conveniently placed gas station. BOOM AND BOLLOCKS!!! went the gas station, which was rather a rude thing to say for your first word ever. KA-BOOM!!! went the gasohol.

Once again the sun was eclipsed, this time by a steaming great mushroom cloud. And finally all was silent but for the crackling of fire and the pop of melting plastic as plimsolls and calculators were slowly incinerated inside the red hot blaze.

Far from the blaze lay the sad and broken body of Ged, a look of confusion plastered across his misshaped and abused head. The word ‘Volvo’ had been tattooed in a deep purple post-mortem bruise across his forehead.

It was going to take more than an aspirin to clear this one up, thought the mashed brain within the entity formally known as Ged.

Shakily, the Zombie rose to his feet. There was a series of sickening crunches and snaps as his head lolled around flaccidly upon the snapped neck. After a series of pratfalls and humorous staggerings, the Zombie Ged righted his smashed cranium and looked upon the devastation of his demise.

“Bollocks,” said he, with feeling.

“Bollocks indeed,” said Barry the Satanist, who stood not five yards hence and stood tall, uncooked and unscratched.

“Bollocks to this story, it doesn’t make any sense,” said the Zombie Ged.

Then a giant toaster came screeching through the sky, and the Queen flew in on her magic carpet and tentacle raped everyone in the word with her octo-vagina, and everyone died in the world, apart from the Queen, who ate a biscuit and farted a stupid story that I typed and it all started again and again and again fuck this the end

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