Fact: 8:00 pm at the bus stop in Washington DC. As I approached the bus stop, exhausted from the full day of internship, school work, and walking from class to class; I walked up on this young woman who appeared to be in her twenties, but unkempt hair and an old Walkman she was listening to made her look a lot older. I couldn't make out the song she was singing as she danced around the bus stop, but it seemed to be a song of some woman getting over the loss of some terrible man she dated. This young woman was singing her heart out, although to the other people waiting for the bus it sounded more like a cat being cut into pieces slowly. (No joke it was horrible), but she was crying as she sung and didn't care what we thought about her singing. One man went as far to ask her to be quiet. She gave him a crazed look, threw her middle finger at him, and kept on singing. I sat down on the bench after looking at what time the bus would come and waited. She danced around a few more times and then turned the Walkman off, sat down next to me, and pulled out a Huge Joint and lit it up. I didn't say anything as she began to smoke this thing and I just prayed that the bus would come and that she wouldn't start tripping, because I didn't know what the heck she was smoking. The bus came, I got on, she got on, and my mind began to play her story.
Bus Ride Fiction: I was instantly taken to this young lady in high school. She looked the same except her hair was cut short and she was dressed in jeans and a blue t-shirt. She was sitting in the cafeteria with some friends and talking about the latest fashion. She had a smile that was out of this world; not the crazed one that showed her damaged teeth I had seen in the real world. She had friends, she was in school, and she looked happy.
Fact: My mind was pulled away from the movie as she shifted from one seat to another. She was pulling on her hair and had the other bus patrons looking on in fear. She sat down in the seat directly across from where I was sitting and propped one leg in the chair, grabbed her hair, and looked out the window in a blank gaze. I was staring intently at her, trying to get back to the story my mind was creating, but I couldn't find it and then she looked at me; caught me staring. I quickly turned away and the movie started playing again.
Bus Ride Fiction: There she was with her friends, but this time they were in the schools bathroom and she was crying. Her friends, one a tall dark skin girl and the other a averaged height brown skin girl were comforting her. She was crying because she caught her boyfriend cheating on her and didn't know what to do. Her friends said he should just leave him alone, but she was in love with him. Then the tall dark skin friend pulled out a small joint and offered it to her friend saying that this would make her feel better. The young lady felt that this wasn't the solution, but her friends insisted. She smoked the joint and she seemed to instantly begin to calm down. She slide to the floor of the bathroom and began to cry again. Her friends left her sitting there. The young lady pulled out a note book and began to write a song. It was how a woman could give all her love, her body, her soul, and her heart to a man and he would still end up loving someone else. As she wrote I cringed as she gripped the pen so hard that her hand began to bleed. Her blood mixed in with the ink of the pen and became life in the book. (At this moment in real life I'm looking at the girl as she puts her Walkman back on and pushes play). The girl in my minds movie then takes the book and rips out the pages. She wraps the pages into this huge joint and lights it. The girl then puts the pages to her lips and begins to smoke it. Slowly the world around us begins to melt and her hair grows longer, dirty, and matted together. Her teeth begins to rot, the air around us becomes foul, and she starts to look like she does in the real world. I look and I see the words from the book becomes an audio tape, she picks it up, and she begins to cry. Then it all stops.
Fact: The movie stops as she rings the bell to get off the bus. She is still pulling her hair and listening to her Walkman as she gets off. I hear some people whispering to one another saying how crazy she was or how she smelled like smoke. I on the other hand just watched as she got off the bus and wondered how much of my fiction was her facts.
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