Paradise

EIGHT

I end up there again. The dangerous bus stop that doesn't lead to anywhere in Rolling Hills. The ones that lead to otherworldly places and otherworldly people. I sit on the 'Go-Green' ad bench, my light honey-brown bag hiked on my shoulder. Except I don't sit to be consumed. There isn't anything to drown for. The Rabbit is in the den and Lucky is in one of the windows, harassing some other kid with existential problems (because he's an undead dork.)

It's just me; a random stranger like the strangers that are ejected from the brightly-colored buses every hour. I can be anyone. Or maybe no one at all, just invisible, just another detail to the scenery.

For once, I don't feel my skin prickling with fire, feel the monsters dancing around me and leaving trails in their wake. I can't feel anything, just the Summer sun beating down on my head as if it were trying to pry it open and infiltrate the frozen cells in my brain. My brain, which has turned off, unplugging the tubes that feed the howls of The Wolf, the rock music of coked up mothers, and thorny friends.

Those memories belong to Lucky.

I am just a nobody, a nobody that's sitting at a 'Go-Green' ad bus stop, a nobody that stands up for the dark blue bus that slowly whizzes forward. It's the same bus that'd stopped here in Paradise before, spitting out foreign people with their foreign bags and foreign thoughts. The bus that had haunted my - Lucky's dreams for weeks; the ultimate hope of light, shining brighter than the beam in the Leo Carillo beach, more luminous than the lights of the beautiful, teal house.

However, I can't label the light as a lie, not yet anyway.

The white, blocky words reading,' Sunny California,' greet me as the bus stops, the doors making a tired wheeze as they slowly open. The driver looks me up and down and I realize she is the same woman from only two weeks ago, the woman who looks like Lucky, dead and ghastly. I had spent days wondering what killed her, but she doesn't look dead now as she gives me an acknowledging nod, taking a moment to look down at her cell phone.

There is vast, brown plains in her eyes, wild grass reaching for the skies, and she doesn't look empty. Her stare is wholesome, her voice a feather on thick currents of water as she says, "Getting on?"

I feel something stir in my chest, or maybe in my mind.

I feel them again, the monsters, and all the emotions rush up to the surface like a gush of water, or a gush of red matter. The monsters are unearthing the frail boy underneath their feet, pulling him from his dark corner by the hand, pulling him towards the boy who's Converse move to take a step towards the bus.

For the first time they speak, they don't want me - Lucky - to forget about the beautiful, teal house, to forget about the sprawling roads of suburban dreams, to forget about The Wolf, to forget about what I am.

'You belong there,' they say.

I can't leave.

Lucky can't leave.

Lucky is stuck here in Paradise, he has no choice.

I can feel my skin coming alive again, hear The Wolf's howls ringing in my ears, feel the monsters leaving ice cold kisses in my brain.

I almost turn around and walk away, go back to The Wolf where the Rabbit is waiting for my return. I almost let the monsters yank me away from my dark corner, almost let them limply guide me back to my body swaying in the wind at the dangerous bus stop.

But then I fight.

I don't know how or why I do, maybe it is the glimmer of hope on the driver's face as she looks down at her phone once more. Maybe it's the sun continuously beaming down on my brain, warming the icy kisses of the monsters until it is nothing but residue in my head. Maybe it's the sun girl, her star-embodying smile engraved in my thoughts.