Why I Got Hit By a Bus
short story
Some days you just don’t have the wherewithal to keep your head up and your eyes forward. Some days you just want to stay in bed or, better yet, sink into it, into somewhere far away and unknown where nobody can find you, even you.
I don’t like to feel this way, but it comes so naturally to me that to feel any other way makes me suspicious. Today was one of those days. As soon as I woke up, I jumped out of bed ready to take on the world. I was up in every way, so much so I had to stand two feet away from the toilet to piss. Did somebody drug me with cocaine-laced testosterone while I was asleep? I even looked better. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt proud. My face was brighter and my muscles were bigger. Even my hair was perfect -even though I just got out of bed. Not a strand out of place.
Something happened. I had no idea what, but I was a new person and I liked this person. I never liked myself before. My whole life I was just a tired and flabby guy with a face nobody liked looking at and thoughts nobody wanted to hear. But now, I was different.
I opened my closet and my wardrobe was all new. I never saw these clothes in my life. Stylish, cool clothes with colors and patterns that make bad bodies look worse. I would never dare put these on my old body. But these clothes, I was eager to put on and look at myself. I’d never seen myself look good. I tried on several shirts, pants, and blazers, and twirled in front of the mirror in each combination. Everything looked great because I looked great. You couldn’t make me look bad if you tried. I got dressed and went out.
As soon as my fabulous leather shoes tapped the pavement, the sun came out to shine on my face, illuminating everything around me as I walked.
That’s what it’s like when you have it. Even the sun loves you.
I passed by people on the street and they couldn’t help but stare at this beautiful, beautiful man walking by. They were in awe. I could see the questions inside their heads: Who is that man? How can I get a man like him? How can I be like him? But I kept walking like this is me everyday, nothing special, nothing new. This is just how I experience the world and you should be grateful to be in it at the same time as me.
And then I got hit by a 25-ton city bus. The staggering weight slammed into me from my left, crushing and pushing every bone on that side into the middle of my body and into my organs. The sound of the bus horn shot into my ear and spilled throughout my brain, which was being mashed into a chaotic glob as I relived my entire life in one burst of glittering, fantastic pain that didn’t hurt so much as it struck a panic - a panic that let me know I was about to die, and everything about me was moments away from dissolving into nothingness, almost like I never existed, but certainly as if I never mattered. They don’t tell you this because they’re dead, but I’m going to tell you, anyway: Death is nothing but you ending in your immediate surroundings, and I was evaporating into a swamp of exhaust fumes and concrete pebbles.
That sinking feeling again. The one I had wished for so many mornings of my life. It was really happening now. But now I didn’t want it to happen. I wanted to stay where I was, and continue to feel that confidence and strength. I wanted that more than I had ever wanted anything in my life.
I stopped sinking. A big, flashing white light of brilliant nothingness. I didn’t have eyes to see or a body to be anywhere in particular, but whatever I was made of, I was taking in a blurry swath of fickle impressions that I was both a part of and apart, a beautifully irrational state of being that was euphoric and enormously blank at the same time. Nothing and everything all at once. I realized I would soon be one with the endless universe again, my life nothing but a random spark.
I drifted off into the serenity of nothing. Sounds nice, but I couldn’t help but feel like I got ripped off.
Did I really not figure out how to be myself until the day I died? Why couldn’t I have figured out how to live earlier if it was as simple as waking up and feeling great?
A booming voice thundered down on me:
“No, dumbass - we had to let you have a moment where you felt so confident, that you didn’t need to look both ways before stepping into the street! Your death in that way at that moment was necessary to continue the order of things.”
Everything about me was a tiny piece of a bigger puzzle, a piece nobody realizes they need or even look at because it doesn’t need to be acknowledged - it just needs to be put in that one place and nothing else.