Bus Seven

Every weekday I have the same interminable routine. I wake up to an empty bed at precisely 6:15 to the sound of radio static. I don’t have a woman in my bed. No woman with long beautiful hair, porcelain skin, and bright eyes. I crawl out of my bed and walk about four paces to the bathroom. Every morning I cringe when my bare feet touch the cold tile, and every morning I forget about my bare feet and the cold tile, until it actually happens. By the time my feet have adjusted to the temperature of my tiled bathroom floor, I am already in the shower.

The shower is the best part about my morning. I could probably say the shower is the best part about my day. It’s hard to refrain from jerkin’ it while I’m standing in a shower naked, alone. All I can picture in my head is me making love to a beautiful woman who wants nothing more but to be pleased by me, her man. But before I am about to explode I open my eyes and realize what I thought was my woman is really my moist hand. Finishing for me takes no time at all. I would be a pathetic excuse for a lover if the day ever did come when a woman would actually take an interest in me. After stepping out of the shower and drying off I wipe the steam from my mirror, drop my towel and stare at myself. Every morning I pick myself apart until there is nothing I can say I enjoy about my appearance. I am about average size and height for a male at the age of 37. What I would give to be buff. I lift my arms up and make a muscle. Even I laugh at myself. I whisper to myself “you’re pathetic” and move on to my hair.

I don’t have the kind of hair that women adore and want to run their fingers through. My hair is dark brown, dull, and brittle. What I hate the most is what is under my hair, my face. I have puffy droopy eyes, a crooked nose, and a feminine chin. My facial features are weak. I can’t even call myself a man. “You are not a man”. By this time I can’t even look at myself anymore. I walk the four paces back to my room. I open up my small average size closet and pick out the same outfit I put on every weekday. My work attire consists of baggy khaki pants, a loose white button up shirt, a tie of some bland color, and to top it all off loafers with tassels.

By 7:15 I grab a muffin from my kitchen and head out of my apartment to catch the bus and go to my dead end job. I sit on the bus and watch the pretty women as they board. They sit there all proper. They sit there with their legs crossed, their designer hand bags, and their Blackberrys. They sit there like they are better than me and they know it. I know what they are all thinking in their pretty little heads. “This guy needs to get his life together.” “That guy is such a loser.” “How do you even call yourself a man?” I can hear them talking about me. I can hear what they are saying. Their words taunt and torment me as they fill my head. The women are constantly getting on the bus and off the bus, on the bus and off the bus. I need the bus to arrive at my stop. I can’t take this torture any longer. I won’t take this torture any longer. I get off the bus a stop before I am supposed to. I have to. I need to walk alone and think to myself. I need to get the faces of the women out of my head. I rub my hands together and keep my head down as I round the corner to my office building.

Every weekday I walk into my office building and the door man greets me with a simple hello. If I just walked by that building everyday he wouldn’t take the initiative to to know me. He would not care who I was or where I was going. I would be of no significance to him. I really am no significance to him as it is. He doesn’t know my life story. He doesn’t know that I wake up alone. He doesn’t know that it has been six years since I have fucked a woman. He doesn’t know the highlight of my day is blowin’ a load in the shower. And why would he want to know that? My life is shit. My job involves sitting in a cubicle. I really can’t say anything more. I work for an advertising business. I mainly do filing work. If I were not here, nothing would get messed up. Nobody would care. Nobody here even knows I exist. If I died, right now, nobody would notice. They wouldn’t realize I was dead until my cubicle started to reek. Even then, they would all ask “who is this guy?” and probably toss me out with the garbage. I sit in my cubicle all day and watch the world around me as I slowly decompose.

By 1:00pm I head to the cafeteria to stand in line for crappy food. Everywhere I look I see women. I can’t escape them. I see women who think they are better than me. Not MY woman. MY woman would let me be a man. She would stay at home and cook and be waiting for me to come home and make love to her. Making love would get boring after a while and she would let me fuck her. She wouldn’t get mad because she would understand. None of the women here are like that. These women look at me and see nothing. I hurry and eat my lunch fast so I can hide and be invisible in my cubicle. I’m back in my cubicle by 1:35pm. No one here has yet to talk to me. Their ignorance doesn’t even bother me anymore. The rest of the day consists of me staring at my clock neatly placed on my desk. I wait for the big hand to land on the twelve and the small hand to slowly land on the six. By this time, I pack my things, leave the building, receive a “goodbye” from the doorman, and make my way to the bus stop. I stand at the bus stop like a deer in the headlights. Every day I stand here at this bus stop and dread the moment I have to step on the bus. Believe me, I have considered walking but the distance is tremendous and cab fare is too expensive. It’s the women on the bus. The women who ride this bus are terrible women. The women who ride bus seven are terrible judgmental women who deserve nothing but pain and torture.

My bus arrives at approximately 6:15. I stand at my bus stop with clammy hands until it arrives. Once the doors open I scurry onto bus seven and take a seat as far away from people as possible. But there they are, the women. They sit there in tight skirts and designer suits. They sit there knowing they live a better life than I do. They are whispering to each other. They are talking about me; I know they are talking about me. They know they are above me and I am below them. I, a man, below a woman. This just satisfies all the women on bus seven.

As the bus stops in front of my apartment complex I jump to my feet and run into my building. My mind is racing and my hands are soaking wet from sweat. I get inside my apartment at 6:45. This marks the end of my night. First I will eat a T.V dinner, then I will watch television shows that make no sense, I will lie in bed and beat my meat while I think about how much my life sucks. This is an average week day for me. This is how I spend every weekday. This is how I spend five out of the seven days of the week. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. This is how I spent every work day except for that one day in March. That one day in March changed everything for me. That one special day in March made me man. March 16th is the day my life became meaningful.

I woke up on March 16th like it was any other day; but instead of hearing static, a song played on the radio. I couldn’t actually make out what song was playing but the fact that any music played at all was odd to me. There was somthing about that song that replaced the ear wrenching static. I knew this would be the start of something brilliant.

Like every morning, I stayed in bed for a few moments to think about my lonliness. I thought about how complete I would feel if I woke up to a woman in my arms. That would never happen because I revolt women, but the thought of having a womans touch was pleasing. As I sat up in bed and turned to get up I looked down and saw my old raggedy slippers. They reminded me of myself; left alone, mistreated, unwanted, and unused. I don’t know what it was about this day, I put the slippers on my feet to avoid what I run into every morning. While stepping into the bathroom I didn’t feel the cold tile on my bare feet. All I could feel was the fabric from my untouched slippers.

While stepping into the shower, I realized nothing about this was going to be different. The shower was going to consist of the usual jerking and rubbing. The shower is one routine I will never break. After finishing what I started I stepped out of the shower and dried myself off with the towel I had used the previous morning. As much as I tried to restrain myself, I couldn’t help but drop the towel and pick myself apart. I stared into my eyes. I didn’t see a man. I saw a pathetic loser who spends his free time watching pointless television shows and beating off to the thought of a woman who doesn’t exist; a woman whom I stand no chance with. After checking the time and realizing I had been staring at myself unusually long, I changed the four paces to three paces and made my way over to my closet to throw on my usual work attire; although something was different. Due to my laziness and lack of wanting to go out in public, I didn’t have any clean white shirts. All I could grab was a black button up shirt I have had for years and have only worn once. The thought of changing my look sickened me and made me extremely uncomfortable, but after glancing at the clock I buttoned it on, slipped on a pair of khakis, put my feet into my loafers, grabbed my usual muffin and headed out the door to catch the bus.

Bus seven. Stepping on to bus seven is what I dread the most about every pointless miserable morning. All I wanted to do was go back to my small apartment, take off this ridiculous black shirt, take an absurd amount of prescription pain meds, and drift off into an eternal sleep. I don’t know what stops me. I cannot think of one thing that will stop me from pulling the plug on myself and ridding me of this awful world. But can I let the world win? Can I let the world be right? I bet everyone on bus seven thinks I want to die. I will prove them wrong. I will make my life worth living. Is this the start of something? Is my world about to be turned around? This is one life changing decision I will make while standing here, at the bus stop, waiting for bus seven. As the bus arrives, my heart raises. I know in my head and in my heart what I have to do to keep living. The door opens. “Oh God”. I step one foot on the bus. It’s like I’m having a mini heart attack. My left foot is next, then my right foot again. All I am thinking about is walking all the way onto the back of the bus, sitting down, and, and, shit! What am I supposed to do after I sit down? Nothing is planned out. Just wing it? Can I wing something like this? Can I just walk onto a bus and do something like this? I sit in an empty back seat, my head is down. As the women step onto the bus I lift my head up just enough to see them sit down. I keep my head up just enough to see who it is entering the bus. Then she walks on. She is the one. She is my goal. Am I doing this? I’m doing this.

She sits there with her shoulders back and her head up. A small smirk grows on my face. I stare at her for a good amount of time; I want to get to know her. I want to get to know her short soft dirty blond hair; I want to get to know her green piercing eyes. I want to touch her fragile pale hands.But does she want to get to know me? No. But she will. She will know who I am. I stop staring and drop my head back down. My hands are clammy. My hands are more than clammy. My hands are drenched in sweat; I wipe them on my stained khakis. My heart is racing along with my half disturbed mind. So many thoughts are going through my head, so many thoughts that I can’t even stop and fully think of just one. I know she gets off the bus soon. I just know she does. “Oh God.” She is preparing to stand up. This is it. I collect my thoughts and stand up. As the bus starts slowing down I close my eyes. The bus stops. “Oh God”. This is not my stop, this is her stop. This is blond hair green eyes stop. Four other people are getting off here. She smiles at the bus driver. She smiles a perfect white smile. She gracefully steps off the bus. I clumsily stumble off of the bus. As I turn my head, my heart stops. Did I lose her? No. “Oh God.” There she is. She turns the corner and walks alone. I follow.

Will she notice me? No, no one ever notices me. I glance down at my old beaten up silver wrist watch. 8:00. I have thirty minutes before I start work. Can I be late? Will they notice if I come into work late? I pick my head up and look straight. There she is. How will I do this? How will I make her know I am alive? My mind goes off and I think about all those shows I have watched late at night. I don’t know what I am doing. I need this. I need to feel something.

I gather my demented thoughts as I approach my first. I step closer, closer, closer, closer. “What am I doing”? “I can’t do this”. But then I think about it. I think about how superior she feels towards me. My mind is spinning faster than a tornado and act on impulse. As she turns to look at me I stop. Her green eyes pierce me. She is looking into my soul and sees how pathetic I am. She sees how little of a man I am. I have never been this close to her. Her skin is flawless. Her designer suit looks even more expensive when she is next to me. I close my eyes and grab a quick breath.

Oh no Chuck, what have you done? I can’t believe I have done this. I step back and examine what I have accomplished. I, myself, this excuse for a man, has the power to rip the life from someone else. My heart beat excessively and a feeling came over me that I had never experienced. Adrenaline rushed through my veins. I pulled my shoulders back and felt some what proud of myself for once. As I stood there I felt like a lion in the wild. Proud of my kill, like I wanted people to walk by and fear me.

Her body lay limp on the ground in the alley behind a family owned deli. I looked down at her, something I never thought I would do. Her neck was bruised with the outline of my hands. I bent down and traced the bruise with my finger tip. Her skin was cold, but it was soft. I gently touched her face and followed her cheek bones down to her lips. Despite the loss of color, I wanted desperately to kiss them. This woman meant more to me dead than alive. Now she is nothing but a body, not a woman thinking ignorant thoughts about me, thinking she is equal; better than me. I had to leave the scene of the crime. I couldn’t look at her anymore. My mind was about to lead me down a path of exploration.

Paranoid, I swiftly walked home. “How did I think I would be able to go to work after this?” It was a long walk but I couldn’t take the bus, I needed to be alone. My attempts to be alone were interrupted when my mind quickly started remembering what I had just done. I rounded the corner to my apartment building, kept my head down, said nothing, saw no one. I took the stairs to the fourth floor quicker than usual. My legs were moving faster than ever, pulling me ahead to my door. 508, the walk that took forever was finally complete. I stumbled to get my key out of my back pocket. Fumbling and sweaty, I dropped the key to the floor. Before I could blink, I had already picked up the key, opened the door, and made my way into my apartment. My usual routine was cut short. I dropped my belongings to the floor, walked to my bedroom, and collapsed onto my bed. My mind replayed like a VHS that had been left unattended. I closed my eyes and let myself absorb into the memory. The way her eyes widened as I grabbed her throat, the struggle, feeling her body go limp as she realizes she is helpless, I couldn’t get enough.

The feeling of her cold skin lingered on my fingertips. After an examination of my fingers I brought them up to my face and caressed my own cheek. “She would have never touched me like this.” “That bitch.” I convinced myself that she was better off dead, for everyone. I was doing the world a favor. I was getting unusually aroused by all the excitement. My routine began to kick in.

After I finished the usual jerking and tugging, I walked into the kitchen to microwave some food. “Chicken tenders, corn, and mashed potatoes.” I opened the box, placed it into the microwave, and closed my eyes. I got lost in my thoughts again. Her eyes got so big. I scared her. I remembered how I could see the reflection of myself in her green eyes as I squeezed her neck. She gasped for air and tried to scream “help” but I was too determined. I was determined to carry through this act and prove to that woman I am better than her. I didn’t bother to check her name. I didn’t much care too. I knew her type. The microwave beeped and quickly brought me back into reality.

I slightly burned my finger as I removed my food from the microwave. I set the tv dinner down, examined my food, picked it up again, walked nine paces to the living room, and sat down to consume. Despite what I had just done, I had no problem eating my meal. I didn’t feel disgusted or nauseous. By now I had convinced myself that what I had done needed to happen. I should be praised for my evil deed. I stand up for all men who are tired of being put down by women. Women who don’t know their place and think they serve a real purpose in society.

It was hard to not think about that woman behind the deli. The way her body just collapsed there. I made that happen. I don’t think she had ever looked so beautiful. Am I really thinking about that woman like this? I could feel myself growing. Before I knew it, my dick was in my hand and visions of myself strangling that women haunted my mind. It didn’t take long before I opened my eyes and realized that my meal was no longer in any condition for me to eat. I was scaring myself with my own demented thoughts. What was I even getting off to? The power? Strangulation? A dead lifeless corpse? I couldn’t help myself. I envisioned her again. How is she gaining this control over me. I killed her. This isn’t supposed to happen. I took this power away from her. I stood up and paced across the room. The way her eyes widened as I grabbed her throat replayed in my head. “Fucking bitch.” “I killed you for a reason.” I banged my fist against the wall as I screamed out in rage. I looked down at the fingers that I had used to caress her skin. God, she was so soft. But she was nothing but a worthless woman. She deserved everything that I done to her. I couldn’t get her face out of my head. I knew no one else would die the way she did. She was my first. Nothing will ever fill that void. The power, the way I felt. I will never get that back. I started sweating, more than I had ever sweat before. “What have I begun?” “I can’t live my whole life like this.”

I was getting more and more worked up over the situation. “I can’t do this.” Who did I think I was? I, Chuck, this pathetic excuse for a man. I stood still for a second. Finally, a second of nothing. But it wasn’t a second of nothing. “Her face!” Her face was there. Haunting my mind. Still controlling me. I screamed. Tears poured down my cheeks as I ran to the kitchen knowing what had to be done. My hands were shaking making it difficult to perform tasks properly.

I was losing time. I needed to hurry up. I grabbed my only wooden chair and dragged it into my bedroom. Just another reminder of my loneliness “I’m really doing this.’ I thought about her face one last time. How could I not? She made me feel like a man. For once. Maybe that was something special about her. But she still deserved to die. She died for me. She died to give me a taste of what power and arousal from a woman could feel like. I looked down at my hand. The hand I had just had around her throat and the fingers I had just touched her cold skin with. I moved my hand to my waist and removed my belt. My pants slid down on there own. “Pathetic.” My hand was cold as I slid it under my waist band. This was nothing new to me. I had been here many times before. I closed my eyes and let my mind take over.

There she was. She didn’t know I was behind her but I quickly made myself known. I pushed her against the cinder block building and forced both my hands around her throat. She tried to scream, she wanted to scream, but I would not let her. I controlled her. I looked into her eyes. They were green and growing larger and more bloodshot each time I tightened my grip. I could see my reflection in her eyes. I looked like a man. Veins were popping out of my arms from using strength I never knew I had. Those eyes.

I took one last look in her eyes. I Thought about my hand caressing her skin. The way her body just allowed me to take over. I tightened the grip I had around my shaft, it caused me to jump from pain. My mind brought me back to that moment. I tightened my grip around her helpless throat. I could feel myself about to explode. This was like no pleasure I had experienced before. My hands grew tighter around her throat and tighter around my shaft. As her neck is about to snap my body can’t take it anymore, I feel my final release as I step off the chair.