A bus journey to a bus stop then off and waiting for another in some English town or other. Cigarettes. No, no cigarettes. It’s bad for me, that’s what she says, and what she says goes. The number 24 arrives soon after. We get on and sit downstairs at my insistence because there might be perverts on the upper deck. Or gangsters looking to stick a knife into my neck. Looking down at my feet, she asks where I would time travel to if I had the chance. Theoretically speaking, of course. As trees and fields go past in a blur, I don’t even take the time to think it over. To the moment the asteroid struck that wiped out the dinosaurs. She frowns and asks why. Because it has meaning, and I too wish to have meaning. She’s waiting for me to ask her the same question, but just to annoy her I put in my headphones and listen to some Phil Collins. She’s appalled and retaliates by pinching me on the leg. She pinches hard, and I gasp before telling her to fuck off. I try to dampen the subsequent argument the best I can so the other passengers quit turning their heads to look at us, but she’s having none of it. After hissing and scratching, she presses the buzzer and makes to get off, but I grab her hand and pull her back. She tries to wriggle away from me but with no real intention and so takes her seat again refusing to speak. The bus slows down and when no one gets off the driver asks who pressed the buzzer, but I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep like the coward I am. It’s another moment in time that leads to any other, and even though it holds no real significance, as it plays out I know there will be a day when I’ll look back and remember it with a tear in my eye. Because that’s what happens. Stuff happens and then it’s gone and only later when you’re trying to feel real do you miss the stuff you once considered shit when really it was bliss. But yeah, those poor dinosaurs. Imagine the tsunamis that asteroid caused and how scared they must have been unable to fathom that the end was reaching out to snatch them away. Resting my head against the window, I contemplate her anguished beauty and then the inevitability of death as it begins to piss down with rain.
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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