This is my "ugly short-short story". I wrote it for a short-short story contest (end of 2001) which, the year before, selected as the winner what I considered an extremely distasteful story. My effort in that vein was to cobble together two ugly, real-life incidents. It didn't win (not ugly enough?). I've made some cuts and minor changes. The original title was "Bus Vignettes".

They Can Be Onerous

By

John A. Eyon

I don't like riding the bus after nightfall when the interior assumes the ambience of a seedy motel. When the outside looms deepest dark, except for isolated beads of street lamps and splashes of neon signs. When the windows reflect images of sullen social outcasts.

Into this moody coach, climbed a woman unaccompanied. While she had maintained her figure and might have been attractive when she was younger, her heavy makeup and short skirt didn't fool any of the men aboard. All the craning male necks relaxed and they pivoted their gazes away.

She paid the fare and, grasping the supports along the way, made a unsteady beeline for the first forward-facing double seat on the left where a young man in his twenties sat alone. With a low, slightly slurred speech, she asked, "Do you mind if I sit here?"

It was appropriate that she make that gesture since there were empty seats farther back.

"No. Uh, go right ahead," he answered with an unnecessary scooting-over motion.

Once she was settled she said, "I noticed you immediately as I was getting on. You're a very good-looking young man."

"Uh, thanks. Uh...."

If he planned to mutter a return compliment, she interrupted it.

"I usually don't see good-looking men on this busline. Not like you. I'm Pamela, by the way."

I think he said his name was Uh-jeff. What followed was typical barstool courting ritual. What does he do? How impressive! Does he work out? It shows! However, on this night, this well-worn enticer didn't have time to work her magic.

After a couple minutes, the young man rang the bell, half rose saying, "Uh, the next stop, uh, is mine. Uh, excuse me."

The lady took a few sluggish moments to register this before rotating her legs and body allowing the young man to pass.

It wasn't until the bus had rolled to a stop and the young man was readying to disembark that the lady called out, "It was wonderful talking to you. I hope you have a very pleasant evening." She actually sounded sincere.

As the door swooshed opened, the young man half turned to her saying, "Yeah, uh, you too. Uh, it was nice meeting you. Uh...."

He stepped down into the blackness, abandoning the lady to her lonely fate.

Leaving her to the solace of women, I telepathed the young man: Relax, kid. You should be grateful that you didn't have to suffer that grossly unattractive, hefty thirty-year-old with her dirty complexion, her flat hair, and her low-slung, torpedo breasts, bra-less, in a dirty, gray tee-shirt (!)-surveying a bus full of men sitting alone on double seats and choosing to sit down by you (!)-provoking you to instantly ring the bell and hastily disembark at the next bus stop and wait twenty minutes (!) for the next bus home-just to escape the tacit sniggering of every man on board the bus. Ooooo, I still shudder at that one.

THE END

Copyright 2003, 2004 by John A. Eyon