Conveyor Belt

The doors of the coach swished open. A girl, of about six or seven, climbed up the steps. She clutched a teddy bear to her chest, and her trembling fingers picked at the brown fur. She nodded to the driver and he gave the child a cursory nod in reply. The doors swished closed. The coach rolled away from the stop.

Charles peered out of the window at the dark. A pale hand waved at them as the coach moved away, and then the woman pulled a yellow mackintosh tight to her thin form and shuddered. The light from the bus stop leant her an ethereal glow, and she looked as lost and confused as he felt. As the bus trundled along, the image of the woman replayed in his mind as if he had trapped her ghost there.

Though the coach was empty except for Charles and the driver, the child sat next to him. Perhaps she feels safer seated with an adult, he thought. Her silent presence made him feel uneasy. Pick, pick, picking at the teddy bear's fur, she looked up at him.

The sight of her hollowed out eye sockets pushed a scream up his throat. It erupted as a whimper.

Her touch was cold as she grabbed hold of his hand. Her voice echoed within his skull, and sent a tingle travelling down his spine. “You get off at the next stop.”

It was only when he was about to say it wasn't his stop, that he realised he didn't remember boarding the coach or where he was going. Panic budded in his chest.

Her smile stretched back to reveal skeletal gums. “We know. We deleted those memories. It helps prevent madness. We lose too many to the dark and if you thought about it you wouldn't want to stay here.”

He looked back out at the night-shadowed world and carried the image of the woman in yellow with him.

“Alicia.” The woman's name fell as mist on the window, and then trailed away as if he had never known it. “I think I just remembered where I'm going.”

His spine stiffened as a skeletal hand scratched at the window. This was all a hallucination - the child, the woman he thought he knew, the empty coach, everything. He was at home, with his feet propped up on the coffee table, his wife in the kitchen and his daughter… He looked down at the child.

“Papa, you're only remembering where you've been.”

He pulled the teddy bear away from her and revealed the gun shot wound that had torn open her chest. A groan trembled against the metal walls of the coach and returned to slap him in the face. Someone murdered his daughter. Someone stole her away and he was too late to save her. Despair threw its cloak over his shoulders and pulled him off the seat. His hands clutched the seat in front and he pressed his face into its hard back, wanting to suffocate the year old memory.

“This is your stop.”

Charles looked down at the wet back of the chair and wondered why he was kneeling on the dirty floor. He looked out of the window, but it offered only reflection.

“There's nothing out there.”

“I know. It's easiest if you allow yourself to just fall. At some point, you'll forget and accept and let go. You've already forgotten me and yet it is my memory that drove you here. I'm sorry,” she grabbed the teddy bear and concealed her wound, “they won't let you stay.”

The coach screeched to a halt. As the door hissed open, the driver turned around in his seat. They were both waiting for him to get off. Charles clung to the velour of his seat as if he intended to stay in it forever.

“Please let go. I have to go back for Momma.”


Commentary:

This is one of those stories that you submit once and then decided it's all wrong. I don't think it's clear enough what is happening (the Editor who rejected it would agree) and the injured child would be off-putting to a lot of readers. It's life was short--one month from conception to submission to rejection--and I had to brush three months worth of dust off it.