The back of the bus was the worst place to sit, and yet, he found himself working his way there every day. He was slight, and polite and I'd tell you he wore glasses, but you already knew that.
The girls were there, waiting for him, like they were everyday. He saw them and his stomach shrunk in on itself, but he kept walking.
The were predatory. He didn't know why. Wasn't his place to know why. All he knew was that every day, they would take their lives out on him and he would willingly sumbit.
Here he is.
About fucking time.
Nice shirt.
Slap!
Wanna feel my tits.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Scratch.
Let me see your dick.
Drink this.
What is it?
It's our piss.
Pinch and twist.
Look! He's crying.
Ha.
Faggot.
You little faggot.
Who's our faggot?
Scratch his face again. Let's see some blood.
I'm gonna rip his shirt.
Break his glasses!
Yeah!
Please don't break my glasses. They're very expensive.
Punch!
Grab
Smash.

Where are you people now? Where are you people now that I'm bigger than you?

But am I bigger than you? In my mind, I'm still the small child who willingly walked to the back of the bus to get beaten by the girl he loved and her sister.

I got chills, but I couldn’t tell if they were from the song on the radio, or the air conditioner, which was too high. I guess that says something about me. Not that the air conditioner was too high, but that I couldn’t discern where the chills were from.

I kept rolling and rolling fast. Not that I was in a rush to get anywhere. I think I was trying to get away from somewhere, but that never works. Days kept seeming like the days before them. The names for the days of the week had lost all meaning and all I could do was drive.

Keep driving.

What do you do if you stop driving? You have to look around at where you are and deal with it, and who the fuck wants that? Have you looked around lately? Seriously. If you had the option to drive and not look, to roll and roll fast, wouldn’t you?

No? Huh.

You’re a lucky man, then.

Me? Not so much. Luck had a way of turning me out. Inside out, sometimes. But always out. I got tastes of decent. I got glimpses of happiness. All I ever got was enough to remind me such things existed, then nothing.

I’d rather not have known.

But it’s better to have been happy for a little while, to feel like I was worth something for a short time, then not at all, right?

Fuck that. Fuck that directly in the heart. It’s not better.

Take a child and raise them in an empty box. On their twelfth birthday, take them out for a day and show them the world. Hug them and talk to them and make them feel loved. Maybe it’ll take more than a day. The kid’s obviously going to need some serious adjustment time.

Ah. There it is. Adjustment time. Give him enough time in this world to get used to it. THEN put him back in the box. Sorry kid. This was only an experiment and now we get to see the really good stuff. Put him in the box and let him spin his life out.

Fuck that, as I've said. I’d rather stay in the box for all of my days.

But you don’t get to stay in the box. Hell, you don’t even get the just one time pulled out thing. What does life really mean? It’s in the box for long enough to get used to it, then pulled out of the box for long enough to get used to it, then back in the box for the spinning and screaming… until you get used to it. Then we start again.

I’m rolling and rolling fast. I built my own box and I’m sealing all the doors. I’m caulking all the cracks. If you stick your hand in here to try to get me out, don’t expect to get your whole hand back. I'm keeping pieces.

I woke up in the desert. The sky was washed out. It looked bleached. I think it was because the sun had been beating through my eyelids, because everything had a silvery look. Like someone had come and chromed the world.

I sat up slowly. Not because anything hurt, or because I was tired. I was just wishing I hadn’t stopped sleeping, because here we go again. Another day, another place. I didn’t even know where I was, but I could still feel it behind me. Tearing up the concrete in giant fistfuls and buzzing through the rest of the road like a boat through glass smooth water. Remember me?

If I just sat there and cried and screamed. If I just lost my mind in this old car in the middle of the chromed out desert. Eventually, someone would come and put me somewhere. Somewhere I could just un-be.

I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be dead. I didn’t want to be alive. I wanted to have never been. How do you do that? How do you suicide an existence?

Amnesia. A brain wipe. Starting over without even knowing I was starting over.

That’s what I needed. A good solid kick in the head. Not in the metaphorical sense. In the true sense. A big foot wrapped in a big boot kicking me hard in my big head. Set me back to factory defaults.

But then, I imagine I'll still die at some point. And then, suppose there is an immortal soul? Then where would I be? Eternity trapped with two existences that will very likely turn out to be remarkably the same. Because I can't see a way to wipe a souls memory.

Insanity then. I once met a man who was terrified his penis was going to kill him. He drew pictures of it. Very much like Geiger. While I never saw this man’s penis, I doubt very highly it looked anything like the pictures he drew.

But he had something. Something other than this. Is that why people lost their minds? To get as far away from the here we all share as possible? And if so, why haven’t I lost mine yet?

I mean, what’s it take? Drugs? Alcohol? Unsafe sex? I hear syphilis will do a real number on your ability to comprehend reality.

In the end, all I can do is roll. Because on top of everything else, I’m a coward and syphilis scares me. And then there's the whole eternal soul problem again.

I could just convince myself there is no eternal soul, become an outright athiest. But there's the whole coward thing again.

Anyway. I could scream and cry non-stop and maybe they’d take me away. Maybe I’d fool them. Maybe. But I wouldn’t be able to fool myself.

Self-realization sucks ass. I long for the day when I was delusional.