The bus waited at the desolate bus stop, shrouded by the dark shadows of the fallen souls, which had crafted it. The boy stared at it, the red words haunting him the more he stared at them. They were the last words to have fell upon his ears.
The doors opened and he walked onto the bus, his body moving slowly as his eyes scanned the foreign vehicle. Tinted windows dimmed the light and sucked the life from the outside, turning everything into a black and white mist; the tall metal poles had long rusted bronze and diminished what little light reached it.
The bus jolted alive; the thin boy gripped the rusty metal pole in an attempt to steady himself. Everyone was staring at him (well, everyone apart from the blind driver, whose eyes bore into the glass screen in front of her). He quickly sat down in the seat nearest to him.
A few minutes passed, but they felt like hours to him. He sat silently, like the rest of the passengers, contemplating on his last goodbyes, his first hellos, and all the other words he had exchanged in between.
It was too late. Too late to to make amends, to say goodbye, but most of all it was too late to change.
The murky bus stopped to let an old woman on. She shuffled onto the bus, her wooden walking stick trembling in her hand. Her white blouse was covered in tyre tracks and her face was masked by bruises.
The frail boy felt sympathy for her. He wanted to go to her and tell her that everything would get better, but then he remembered his bald head and the hospital gown he wore. How could he lie to her, when he himself did not know what was going to happen to any of them.
Once the bus driver had helped the old woman to her seat, the bus carried on its journey; after a few hours the bus travelled through a tunnel. When they reached the other side of the enclosure, everything surrounding the bus was black and white, like some kind of grey scale photograph. The only colour he could see came from the red lines of the bus and the passengers.
The bus came to a halting stop. He gripped the pole once again as he was hurled forward. Passengers around him stood up and walked off of the bus all in an orderly line, leaving him as he steadied himself, his mind still overwhelmed from the sheer force of the bus coming to a standstill. He stumbled after the other travellers and fell onto the cold, grey cobble stone road.
The bus roared and the boy cowered, his small hands clinging onto his bare head.
The bus left without warning anybody standing nearby, but there were new red words printed on the back of it that caught his eye.
"Welcome to the Land of the Departed!"
