Earlier That Day: Yellow School Bus, London
J ack Diamonds’ jaw hurt from the surprise.
He sat in the back of the bus and watched Alice drive recklessly, attempting to save the March Hare. The yellow bus jostled all over streets filled with mushrooms instead of buildings. It swung left and right as if int a cartoon show. Alice drove amidst fire and could have possibly run over people— he could not tell.
After all, Jack’s life had been an insane and unexplainable ride lately, so much that he sometimes wondered if he were still dead.
He hung tight to his seat, thinking about books being described as ‘edge of your seat thrillers.’ This wasn’t a book, he thought. But then he swallowed his own thought back. Who was he kidding? Each and every one here was a character in a book at some point.
Still, the bigger question remains, who came first: the egg or the chicken; the characters in a book or the people who inspired the characters in a book?
Such a hard question to answer. In fact, Shakespeare’s ‘to be or not to be ‘ seemed like an easier question to answer—if it ever was a question.
Jack was losing his mind. It helped to watch the other passenger’s horror to stop thinking. Other people’s misery had always been great entertainment. We just never admit it.
Everyone else was shocked and scared and hardly breathing. While they were either screaming or praying, Jack could only sum up his conflicted emotions with one word. A very articulate one. Most underrated yet overused word that even the Merriam Webster dictionary got wrong: shit .
Right to the point. One syllable. Easy to remember. And it happens .
Not that it really described the wonderfully painful act of defecating in the bathroom. It only describes that moment when life humiliates our hopes and expectations, leaving us speechless enough we can only think about our own poo.
But this time Jack’s response wasn’t to the fact that Alice was going to get them killed.
It was due to the fact that Alice will kill him again .
“Slow down, Alice,“ Fabiola demanded in a shriveled voice. Having been hit in the warehouse already weakened her—if she wasn’t going to die soon. Jack knew Fabiola didn’t mind dying for a cause but not in a school bus.
Lewis had dozed off already. His addiction to mushrooms and his darker Carolus were tearing him from inside out.
Tom Truckle was nowhere to be seen. Jack wondered if he had died. The sneaky bastard.
But what about Constance, that feisty girl?
“Don’t worry Jack,” Constance sat right in front of him, gripping at the edge of her seat and looking back. “Death is just another brick in the wall.”
He wondered if he imagined this. What did she just say? Did she just quote a Pink Floyd song about anarchy and the end of the world in a twisted Alice in Wonderland way?
“You died before,” she told him, “and you came back.”
The bus still jostled left and right. Jack had no idea how Constance remained so calm. She was so freakin’ young. Practically a child.
“How does it feel to be dead yet also alive?”
“It’s confusing,” he burst out.
“You know why you’re still alive?”
Now, this question changed everything. Death can’t oppose whys. Jack wanted to know. Why was he alive again? He was grateful, but it didn’t make sense.
“Because Alice loved you enough to believe in you.”
Jack threw a glance up ahead over Constance’s shoulder. Alice was definitely going to kill them again. If that was love, he had enough.
“Her belief in you - and her guilt - was so strong it opposed the universe’s fate and brought you back.”
“Then why is she about to kill me again?” He shrugged, being taught a lesson before dying by an eight-year-old or something.
“Because we have to remember tomorrow.”
Jack didn’t care if he had heard her right. It didn’t matter. He was probably hallucinating. His white tunnel of death was a young girl teaching him about the afterlife. Tomorrow, in this case, was afterlife right?
“When we keep the memory of one person vivid after their death, they will forever stay alive,“ she said. “And children are the strongest who can keep memories.”
It really didn’t matter what Constance said. Jack saw Fabiola was screaming at Alice again.
Alice was going over a broken bridge. Death was one twist of a wheel away.
“Don’t look in the mirror!” Fabiola said.
Jack couldn’t see. His position was twisted and tangled and he could hardly tell where he was. Constance had stopped talking to him.
“Don’t look in the Looking Glass!” Fabiola yelled in pain and frustration. “Don’t look back at the rabbit.”
It escaped Jack why Alice would have a mirror inside the bus but he couldn’t investigate from his awkward angle. All he knew was that Alice always feared mirrors because of some rabbit inside that scared her.
But then Fabiola said something that made Jack’s head spin and spin, “Not again!”
What? Did she say not again?
That’s when Jack began to remember something. He wasn’t quite sure it was a memory. Not with a racing heart and fear of death. Did he just glimpse a memory of the yellow bus he died on? Did he just glimpse himself and Alice’s classmates? Did he see Lorena and Edith, Alice’s sister’s laughing at her? And did he just see Fabiola on the bus as well, hiding in the back, dressed as a school teacher?
If Lewis always talked about six impossible things for breakfast then Jack just needed one possible thing before death. To understand what the heck was going on.
But death waited for no one. Amnesia or not. Insane or not.
Here it came. Sudden, brutal, and with a punch.
The bus free-fell off some bridge or mushroom or whatever, and made Jack’s heart plunge up into his throat. His bones cracked. A smash. Blood everywhere. Blackout.
And then…
Death.
He needn’t know more. This was death.
Ask a man who died before and he will recognize death when it comes again. Was this what Constance meant by remembering tomorrow? Cause tomorrow he’d wake up both dead and alive at the same time.
Everyone on the bus simply died.
Again!