Making It Up As I Go Along #338

MONDAY...
— Ten hour shifts at work are actually not feeling too long. Tonight went alright. A skunk walked past the AFIS window and it’s getting colder at night now.
— After a few days of reduced spam e-mails, I hit the mother load. 228!
— Get screwed by the gas stations... again. Last week I pulled in to get gas one night on the way home, as I pulled in the price went up 2 cents. So with more than a quarter tank still in the car, I drove away wanting to wait for it to drop again. The next day, the price jumped up by about 12 cents... d’oh! So I drive on without gas and Saturday, as I got home, the low fuel light came on. Didn’t go out yesterday but today, on the way to work, I have no choice. I get the gas at that 12 cent hike price of a few days ago. Only on the way home tonight, with a full tank (thanks to the fact that newscasters said the price will stay up for a few weeks) I see that the price dropped 8 cents since my fuel up. ARGH!

TUESDAY...
— Go to the gym with Annick at supper tonight. She does cardio work while I hit the weights. Also a little walk at break... so it’s an active day. I plan on a walk when I get home at night but, by then, I’m just too tired.
— So Monday coming will be the day I go to CPSIC for sure. Confirmed today. And I’ll do at least three weeks of 7 to 3 shift again while I train. Ugh, three or more weeks of straight days sounds tiring.
— 197 spam today.

WEDNESDAY...
— My extra day off so I only go to work for 3 hours of banked time. Go from there to meet Sam for supper and a drink. Good time catching up and I drop him to the airport after we’re done.
— Some groceries and a restful night.
— 198 spam.
— Hour plus walk tonight. It’s cool and a low fog over the fields. When I get home, there’s dew on my fleece. The legs are a bit sore from my workout the other day... and a dark bus passes me with the number 666 in the slot where the route number goes. It’s a Stephen King moment.

THURSDAY...
— Quiet night at work. Get Greek food with Holly... and lose Annick early in the evening, so I’m working alone much of the night.
— down to 154 spam today.

FRIDAY...
— 169 spam today and I make a folder and do a filter to at least get most of it out of my inbox.
— Last day in AFIS. I start the day picking up Annick and going to the restaurant for our luncheon. It’s okay but the day shift all go home after it and I’m left to go finish my AFIS time alone and not really knowing how late they want me to stay.
— So I ease out of AFIS work... do a few things and talk to Cindy in CPSIC about what I should expect next week.

SATURDAY...
— Quiet day. Baseball on TV... working with the dumb bells... a walk before supper. Talks on the phone with both Edena and the parents... and laundry.

Skunks of the Corn & Hell Busses
Walking after midnight can bring you to the edge of the paranormal while also creating face to face meetings between man and those mysterious nighttime members of the animal kingdom.

There’s a particular route I walk at night. A section of this route goes beyond some of the housing that’s sprung up around me. Sure there may still be houses on one side of you, but looking across the street in one section, there are kilometres of meadow. While at another section, a field of corn sits surrounded by homes.

At these areas, the lights of homes give way to shadows and darkness.

At the meadow area, distant trees can be seen silhouetted against the night sky. Individual trees some two or three hundred yards into the high grasses. Standing bleakly. They remind me of those trees where a mob would have taken one they have convicted themselves, stringing them up by the neck, leaving the body to dangle from the branch.

Now that the nights are getting colder, a low lying fog is often building over the meadow at night. It hangs in the distance, growing thicker with each passing second. It will soon envelop the hanging trees... as it creeps towards civilization.

I walk faster, not wanting to be here when the fog arrives. Yet I still look towards it. I expect to see a dark shadow emerge from the misty light as it makes its way through the grass towards me. The sooner I can see this shadowy figure, the sooner I can break into a run.

For since I’m only a half block from residential streets, I feel close to safety while looking into the unknown. It’s silly of me really. I mean if a dark shadow figure emerges from a meadow fog, walking past hanging trees as it comes towards me, I doubt a bit of asphalt and single family dwellings will keep him at bay.

Once, when the summer heat kept the fog away, the meadow served as a foreground to a distant lightning show. Again, the darkness and emptiness of the space cause you to expect great evil to emerge. The lightning a sign of it’s destructive force building in the distance.

Beyond the meadow, you walk for a few blocks of normalcy. Homes on each side of you and a new school bathed in light. But soon after the school, a field of corn remains. In the fall, the stocks of corn stand high... anything could be in there.

In past walks, I’ve come along this section with the street lights extinguished. It leaves a block of blackness to either venture into or turn back away from. I’ve usually gone in, but with the precaution of turning off my music and keeping my eyes fixed on the field of horror. I figure if I heard voices or the sound of bodies pushing through the corn, I’d be ready to make a sprint towards the light some 200 yards away.

Again, there’s the feeling of finding safety in the light. As if dark spirits will not venture where the street light shines. Or they fear the possibility of suburban onlookers peering out the kitchen windows.

This past week, after walking past the foggy meadow and making my way to the corn, more oddities occur. A bus passes from behind me. It overtakes me quietly and it’s inner lights all remain off. On the back, the lit numbers which normally display the bus route, mark the more ominous 666. The bus shoots by, racing into the night.

As I’m left to ponder the apparition, I’m stopped in my tracks. There, on the side of the road, a skunk.

The skunk skips up over the curb and crosses my path. I remain transfixed. My way is blocked. Perhaps the skunk is not a real creature but something more evil. A demon skunk brought forth from the gates of hell... come to entrap me and take me into the corn... never to be seen again.

But the skunk keeps waddling past. It doesn’t even appear to show any interest in my presence as it slips into the higher grass, leaving nothing but it’s puffy tail to be seen as some sort of living periscope. Until the skunk order is given.... dive, dive, dive... and it slips into the deep... of the corn.

I edge on, still staring into the darkness encase the skunk resurfaces and shoots its smelly missiles in my direction. Once I make it past it’s space... I begin to breath easier.

At this time, I look up to see a new sight that causes my heart to stop and my blood to run cold (although with stopped hearts, I should feel lucky that my blood is running at all, temperature be damned). In front of me and speeding towards me... it has returned...

The great headlights of the bus from hell is rocketing towards me. I think of diving into the corn but remember the creature which lays within.

They say that, before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. Gibberish. As the bus hurtled towards me, I didn’t think of my childhood. I didn’t think of my family or my friends. I didn’t think of the places I’ve visited over my lifetime. No, all I could think was “these last two minutes must be from a Stephen King novel.” And not to say Stephen King is a bad looking guy, but I can’t say it’s his visage I’m hoping to see as the last thought racing through my head.

The spirits of the night must agree with me. They too must feel that meeting your maker with Stephen King thoughts is a tragedy fit for no-one. For as King was in my brain, the bus passes me by. It’s fully lit. The driver appears human, and a single passenger sits halfway along the rows of windows, leaning and peering out at the corn.

Perhaps this was an ordinary bus and my imagination had gotten the best of me. Or perhaps the hell bus was only after one soul, and I happened to see him leaning there... halfway along the window rows. I’ve been saved thanks to his sacrifice. I walked on, sticking to neighbourhood streets for the rest of the way where only bunny rabbits venture in the night air...

While he remains on that bus... speeding into the meadow towards the fog as a dark and shadowy figure stands waiting... waiting.