The Night bus.

Away.

Streetlights cut the world in twain. Pools of blinding bright light and outside them, shadow. Islands in a dark ocean. And weaving through these dark pools, Will walked. His boots on the ground were the only sound that night, echoing through and around the dark street he walked down. But he did not hear them. All he wanted was to get away. Not to safety, not to hide, but away.

Away in a concept unto itself. Away from a family that was not a family. A home that was not a home.

It was for this reason that when a purple bus pulled up beside him, he clambered aboard instantly. It was of an old design, all purple paint and visible rivets. He stumbled aboard and before he could say a word the doors closed behind him, and the bus jerked into motion.

Will turned to where the driver should be, to ask him to stop or at least to pay his ticket fee but saw only a dark, opaque wall of glass surrounding the driver's seat. A slit opened up near the bottom and an old-fashioned ticket stub slipped out with a mechanical click. Will began to explain that he had no money to pay for a trip and to ask where exactly where they were going before a gruff voice stated "you will pay when the journey is over. Take a seat in the back".

There was something off about that voice. Its tone reminded him of description of sailors that had been lost at sea, only to be rescued. A voice that had shrivelled after years of disuse. For some reason, of all the things that had happened to Will so far, all the things that would happen later that night, that voice scared him the most. So, he did as it commanded and took a seat in the back. A comfortable old thing, with a view of the entire vehicle. It was at this point that Will fully realised how unusual the bus was. He hadn't fully considered it when he had first got on, but everything about the vehicle he now sat in was slightly off.

For a start, there were no lights. The only thing illuminating the inside of the bus where the brief bursts of light when the bus went past a streetlight. Secondly, despite the windows of the bus being made entirely of the same opaque glass that had partitioned off the driver, it still somehow let all light through. But that couldn't be the case, no light was let through the driver's area and Will doubted he could see in the dark. Come to think of it, there hadn't been a visible door either. It was at this point that Will decided that when the next stop came, he would get off the bus. He would just calmly walk out of the do-

The bus stopped.

It didn't slow down, there was no slamming of breaks or screeching of tires, it just was moving one second and the next, as stationary as if it had been parked for hours. The doors popped open and there was the creak of something getting onto the bus. Will was about to get up and try to sprint through the doors when the light illuminated- something twisting through the air down the corridor. It was a pale, peach colour with what looked like veins running down and along its length.

Will felt a terror flooding through him as he realised what it was, that thing was a neck. And twisting and flailing on its front, was what once was a head.

Will had, in better times, went to a pottery class once. His class spent a day making a self-portrait of their faces out of clay, before putting in a kiln to harden it. Will's kiln had a fault and so his portrait had melted partially before it had hardened. Its jaw and stretched and warped, its eyes were far longer than they should have been and its nose and disappear entirely.
The thing that now shambled aboard the buses face was similar to his model, as if Wills creation had been made into flesh. Its lower jaw was distended, pulling back into its mouth, leaving its tongue lolling out of its mouth. The things lips continued far up its face and as Will watched, the entire top half of its mouth flipped up. A strange keening sound began to leave its distended mouth. Its face was not the only twisted part of it, however. As it moved closer and closer to Will, it brought its body along too. Its legs and arms were lengthened horrifically, not like its twisting snake of a neck, but angular, jagged. Like its arms and legs had been broken and re-set hundreds of times to get it in that position.