Archive of Our Own ^beta

As Jay saw the sign plastered in front of bright orange barriers balanced on the sidewalk in front of her normal bus stop, she felt her heart sink into her stomach.  The normal overhang she stood under to wait for the bus was partitioned off and the label that signified the bus stop had been removed.  

The sign read, in blocky official text: “Closed due to complications with construction, bus stop will be temporarily moved to 5th Ave North and Byers Street” 

Jay groaned, bringing her hands to her face and scrubbing her eyes.  She couldn’t believe this.  It was just her luck that the one day that she had to stay late at work, she couldn’t even catch a bus home without some sort of issue.  Nothing could ever go right for Jay.

She knew there was going to be construction soon in the area , but she didn’t think that it would actually cause any disturbances in her normal route.  Every other time something like this would happen the bus route would always find some way to skirt around the construction and Jay would be able to get home just fine.  Apparently not this time.

It didn’t help that the air was cold and Jay hadn’t brought a jacket because the weather was warm earlier in the day, and she figured she would get out of work before the sunset.  Again, apparently not.

She shivered, curling one arm around her waist as she fished around in her pocket for her phone.  Jay figured that she wouldn’t need directions to figure out where she was going to find the temporary bus stop since she was pretty sure 5th Avenue wasn’t that far away.  But it was starting to get late, and Jay didn’t like walking alone outside of her normal route.

It was quick work to pull out her phone and dial the number that she had memorized better than her dad’s.  She brought the phone up to her ear and listened to the sound of it ringing faintly.  Her shoes thudded against the sidewalks as she did her best to pick up the pace, not wanting to be out here in the cold for too long, especially without a jacket.

After a few painfully long rings, there was a click on the other line.

“Jay?  What’s up,” Chip’s voice was slightly grainy through the old speaker of her phone.  He sounded a little groggy and Jay worried that she may have woken him up.  She didn’t realize how tense she had gotten until the sound of Chip’s voice sent a wave of relief rolling down her spine.  It was as if just his presence was enough to ease the ache in her shoulders and the anxiety that was bubbling in her stomach.  She almost smiled to herself, but the chill and the frustration at the current situation stopped her.

“Hey,” Jay said, swallowing thickly and glancing around just to make sure that there was no one else around her.  She didn’t want to be alone, and she didn’t want to let herself get unaware of her surroundings.  Her heart pounded in her chest and she felt on edge, like she had to be constantly aware of what was going on around her.  “Did I wake you?”

“No, no,” Chip yawned loudly, making his case as unbelievable as when he tried to tell her that no, he didn’t see what happened to the rest of her food. “No, I was just watching TV in my living room.  It’s pretty late, don't you think, you okay?  Why’d you call?”

“I’m fine, had to stay late at work though.  It’s been such a long day dealing with customers and I’m so ready to go home,” Jay’s feet were still aching from all the walking from the front to the back of the store a million times over, “And today just keeps getting worse and worse.”

“How come?” 

“Apparently the construction going on downtown is affecting the bus routes too,” Jay rolled her eyes, stuffing her other hand in her pocket and letting her purse hang from the crook of her inner elbow so her hands weren’t too cold.  “The bus stop I normally take home from work has been ‘temporarily’ moved to 5th.  It’s just a few blocks away but it’s a bit further than I’d like to walk alone at night.”

“Ah really?  That sucks,” Chip must have moved somewhat on his end of the line because Jay could hear shuffling and then the sound of him taking a deep inhale, “You want me to just come pick you up?  It’s pretty cold out there for you to be walking all the way across town and I’m right by.”

“I’m not walking all the way across town, it’s just a few blocks, I’ll be fine don’t worry,” Jay insisted, but even she couldn’t suppress her sudden shiver as a sharp breeze blew through the streets, causing her hair to blow in front of her face.  “You don’t need to come pick me up.”

“Well, then why’d you call?” Chip shifted again on his side of the line, it sounded like the rustling of fabric, or maybe paper, it was hard to tell.  He sighed again and the buzzing of his breath on the line caused Jay to flinch.

“It’s pretty dark out here with some of the streetlamps out,” Jay muttered, not knowing why she suddenly dropped her voice, but a crawling feeling all the way up her back made her hesitate.  She glanced around, her fingers starting to go numb from the wind as she held her phone to her ear.  The streets were deserted around her, with not a car or another pedestrian in sight.  “I guess I just didn’t want to be alone… not when I’m walking away from my normal route home… I figured you’d be awake instead of Gill.”

“Yeah,” Chip paused for longer than Jay was comfortable with, “It’s past Gill’s bedtime anyway… but he probably would’ve picked up.  Especially if it was you, I think he has our numbers as emergency contacts.”

“I just figured you would be the easiest to get a hold of.”

Jay paused at a stoplight, waiting only a few seconds to make sure that there were no cars around her before crossing the street.  She didn’t bother pressing the button on the crosswalk, there was no one here anyway, and she didn’t want to be stuck in one place waiting for too long when it was cold and she was walking by herself.

The streets were so strangely quiet that her footsteps almost seemed to echo between the tall buildings that surrounded her, apartment complexes, stores, and office buildings.  Her shoes clacked against the pavement, reverberating in her skull, and when she lingered on the sensation long enough, splitting into another set of footsteps walking behind her.

Jay craned her neck to look over her shoulder just to make sure there was no one following her.  But there was never anyone there.  It was surprising that there wasn’t a single other person out on the streets at this time of night.  It wasn’t incredibly late, but it also wasn’t midday either.

“Well, here I am,” Chip’s voice lilted with the hint of a joke, and she could almost hear him rolling his eyes playfully.  “You sure you don’t want me to come pick you up, I’m just sitting here watching TV so it’s not like you’re interrupting anything.”

“I’m sure, I don’t want you to have to come all the way out here to bring me home, especially when I live on the other side of the city,” Jay reassured him, hoping that the anxiety in her voice wasn’t audible.  She twisted her fingers around the fabric of her shirt and swallowed thickly, licking her lips.

“Really it’s no trouble to me, I can just grab my coat and my keys and be out of here in a minute.”

“Chip, I promise, I’m okay, I just wanted someone to distract me and… and keep me company so I’m not out here alone,” Jay frowned slightly, looking over her shoulder as the streetlamp that she was under flickered.  Every few feet she passed by another bright orange construction barrel, but there was no actual sign of any construction being done.  That’s how it always went every spring and summer, construction signs and roads closed, but no sign of anything actually being done.

“You just want me to keep you company?” Chip asked, his voice cracking through the speaker.  He hummed softly and all it sounded like was static.  “I’m pretty good at doing that.”

“Yeah… just to make sure nothing happens… and… and to keep my mind from wandering,” Jay slid her tongue across her lips and frowned. She really wished that she had brought a jacket to work today.  Her normal uniform barely kept the wind from biting her skin, and she quickly found herself with goosebumps.  “Though I’m sure nothing will happen… I’ve just been having some strange dreams lately and they’ve been making me a little nervous.  Especially when I’m alone at night.”

“Nightmares again?”

“Well… I mean I wouldn't call them nightmares… it’s nothing like the dreams I have about my dad or Ava…” Jay bit back tears in her eyes as she thought about the countless sleepless nights that she’d been too afraid to sleep because of the nightmares.  “It’s weird because it’s nothing like the dreams I’d normally have but they’re just really upsetting for some reason .  Like I keep waking up in cold sweats and I feel like crap.”

“Well… Do you want to talk about it?” Chip offered. 

Jay looked down at her feet for a moment as she walked, stepping over a crack in the pavement and turning the corner down another street, doing her best to work by memory of where she was going. 

“I don’t know…” Jay slid her tongue across her lips and shivered, the yellowish streetlights illuminated the street in front of her, shimmering against the slightly damp roads, “It might just freak me out more.”

“Well, it’s always worth a shot, no pressure though,” Chip hummed again and Jay was glad that she had decided to call him.  The sound of his voice was just barely enough to ease some of her nerves, especially the ones that came with walking alone at night.

“Okay…” Jay nodded, mostly to herself because she knew Chip wouldn’t be able to see her.  She looked both ways before crossing another street and continued talking.  “I feel like I’ve been having a lot of dreams about the bus lately… And I mean I’d rather have those than the nightmares… but still it’s unsettling.”

“You’ve been dreaming about the bus?  What, that you’re late for the bus or that you forgot your pass?” Chip barked out a small laugh at his own joke, but for once Jay didn’t find his laughter contagious.  She grimaced and hunched her shoulders, surging forward despite the cold and her aching feet.

“Well… It’s more that I’m running late for work… and… and it always seems like in the dream I’ve been riding the bus for hours… and…” Jay hesitated, nearly jumping out of her skin as she heard the rumble of tires and saw a car pass by her suddenly.  She stopped walking for a second and turned to look at the gray car thundering down the street it disappeared down a different block.  “And all the buildings look different and no matter how hard I try, I can’t recognize anything around me… and it’s so dark outside the window anyway that I can’t see.”

“Hm,” Chip clicked his tongue and the phone buzzed with his idle humming, “That does sound a little stressful, but nothing really to be freaked out over.  You know I keep having this dream where I’m on my way home from school—you know I used to walk home—and I’d get halfway to my house before I realize that I’m not wearing any shoes.  Pretty surprising stuff.”

That got Jay to laugh, even if just a little bit.

“Yeah well… that’s not as scary.”

“You don’t know that!” Chip insisted, “I spent a lot of money on my shoes.”

Jay laughed again but didn’t really feel it in her chest.  “I know… I know… It’s just…” She trailed off.

“In your dream, are you the only person on the bus?” Chip asked, a question which surprised Jay.  She hesitated and shuddered.

“I think… I think at first I am, but then the bus stops, and even though I don’t know where I am, I know this isn’t my stop and… and this lady gets on and sits right in the back of the bus where it’s hard to see at night because the lights don’t always work,” Jay bit down on her lower lip and frowned, glancing around nervously as she passed closed buildings and dark interiors.

“Was she scary looking?” 

“I don’t know… I… I never looked at her…” Jay could feel herself getting more freaked out now that she was talking about it, but it felt like once the words started, she couldn’t stop herself.  “I think I felt that if I actually looked at her… something bad would happen… but I could feel her staring at me from the back of the bus, it’s like I can still feel it.  It was like a burning sensation right in the back of my head.”

Chip was silent for a few moments.  Jay didn’t like the silence, it made her heart pound harder in her chest, and she almost kept rambling on, just to put some noise in the air. 

But then Chip spoke.  “How did the dream end?”

Jay thought for a moment , slowing her steps as she wracked her brain to try and remember.  The more that she tried to recall the events from her dream, it felt like the harder it was to really visualize the scene that she had been trapped in all night.

“I don’t know… I can’t remember… I feel like I blinked and then suddenly I was at work…” Jay shivered and hunched her shoulders, her shoes thumping on the pavement beneath her, “I don’t even remember getting on the bus this morning.”

“Ah, one of those days?”  Chip asked, and Jay knew what he meant.

“You ever have that feeling where sometimes you can’t tell if you’re actually awake or not like you could be living life and then suddenly wake up and find out everything was actually a dream…” Jay pulled on the fabric of her thin shirt, “I feel like that a lot sometimes… like one day I’ll just wake up and everything that I’ve been working towards is all a dream and I’m back in my father’s house listening to him and mom argue all night.” Jay could feel tears prickle in the back of her eyes, she pulled the phone away from her face and sniffled, using the back of her hand to wipe them away.

“I get that sometimes,” Chip admitted, “Sometimes it feels like I’m still on the streets with…” He trailed off for a moment, and then continued, “It’s hard to believe that I actually have an apartment for myself, as crappy as it is, at least it’s home.”

“Yeah…” Jay sighed, “Hey Chip?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for picking up the phone… it’s nice to hear something familiar on a night like this,” Jay’s chest felt tight, and for a moment it was hard to breathe.  She looked around, glancing over her shoulder again.  There was no one around.

“Of course, you sure you don’t want me to pick you up though?” Chip shifted on the other line and sighed.

“I’m sure, it’s fine,” Jay nodded to herself.

“Do you at least have a coat or something?  It was pretty chilly out when I got home today, can’t imagine how much colder it’s gotten.”

Jay really wished that she had brought her coat to work.  Her arms were prickled with goosebumps and she could feel every gust of wind on the back of her neck like sharp needles poking into her skin.  She just wrapped her other arm around her torso tighter and sighed.

“It’s not that bad when I’m moving…” Jay muttered, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice when she hovered.  “It’ll be warmer on the bus.”

“Jay… I know you’re all Ms. Independent and Ms. ‘Won’t take handouts from anyone’, but my offer to pick you up is always open, I don’t want you catching your death out here in the cold.”

“I’m fine Chip, really.  But I’ll keep that in mind,” Jay heard another car somewhere nearby, but she couldn’t be exactly sure where it was.  For a second she thought it was a bus and felt a spike of both relief and alarm, but it was too quiet to be a bus.  She sighed and bit down on the inside of her cheek.  “Anyway, what have you been up to today?”

“Not much really,” Chip started, Jay’s phone crackling every time he spoke, “Gill came and visited me at work during his break and we got some lunch after that.”

“Yeah?  He make you pay this time?” Jay chuckled to herself a little bit, knowing that she had given Gillion a talk a few too many times about not letting Chip skeeze him out of a free lunch.

“Yes,” Chip huffed out , “No thanks to you.”

“You always make Gill pay.”

“He always offers to pay.”

“Gill makes less money than you.”

“Yeah well, when a guy offers to pay for lunch three times in a row, how could another man, me, say no to that,” Chip exclaimed, the incredulous tone in his voice sounding only partially real, “I mean it’s not taking advantage if—”

Chip cut himself off as the sound of a loud male scream echoed from somewhere in the city around Jay.  The voice echoed between the buildings, making it impossible to really tell where it was coming from.  Jay flinched and nearly tripped over her shoes, eyes widening to the size of saucers as she looked around for any sign that she wasn’t alone on the street.

“Uh… Everything okay?” Chip asked cautiously.

Jay was silent for a few moments while she sucked in painfully deep breaths to calm her rattled nerves.

“Yeah…” She swallowed thickly, not wanting Chip to catch on how shaky she felt, “I’m fine… It’s uh… It’s probably just some drunk guy or something.”

“On a Tuesday?” Chip sounded skeptical, and Jay could hear worry in his voice as he spoke.

“Yeah… well… this is the bad part of town, there’s always someone drunk out here at night,” Jay said, mostly to reassure herself more than anything, “Mayfair is going to the dogs.”

It sounded like Chip was going to say something, but before he got the chance they heard it again, in the distance, a man’s scream echoing between the buildings.  It sounded so close yet at the same time too far away to tell where it was coming from.  It was hard to tell if it was even a scream of pain, a scream of help, or just the sounds of a drunk guy yelling in the streets in the middle of the night.

Jay began to pick up the pace, her shoes thudding against the pavement with every frantic step.  Her breath puffed in the air in front of her and her entire body felt soaked through with the damp cold around her.  The lack of a jacket didn’t bother her as much anymore as the cold fear that struck her right between the chest.

“Sounds like it’s far away anyway, it’s not my problem.”  Jay was almost running at this point and she didn’t care if Chip heard her panting.  As much as she didn’t want him to realize that she was scared, it was harder to hide it and stay safe than just try to get to the bus stop.

“How much farther do you have to go until you get to the bus stop?” Chip asked.

Jay looked around, slowing her pace only long enough to look at the signs on the streets that she crossed to make sure she knew where she was.  Her heart pounded against her rib cage and she felt out of breath.

“I don’t know… I don’t normally walk this way,” Jay admitted, in the dark, it was hard to see where exactly she was.  She never walked to this part of town during the day, so of course she had no idea where she was at night.

“Are you sure you’re going the right way?” 

“Don’t say that!” Jay snapped, but there wasn’t really any malice in her voice, “You’re gonna freak me out even more!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Chip shuffled again on his end of the line, “I was just… Never mind, are there any landmarks nearby?  I’m decently familiar with that area so I might be able to figure out where you’re going.”

Jay stopped for a few seconds, breathing heavily and trying to calm her racing heartbeat.  Her knees were shaking and despite the cold, she felt sweat running down the back of her neck.

Around her, the streets were dark, and only faintly sprayed with the light from the streetlamps.  There wasn’t a soul around, no cars, no people, nothing.  And when the wind blew, the emptiness of the streets kicked up some bit of trash from the alleyways, making it seem all that more eerie.

There wasn’t a lot around her, apartments, maybe office buildings, it was hard to tell.  It was a bunch of big, tall buildings with hundreds of windows with not a single light on in any of them.

“Not really… There’s just like a lot of those big gray apartment buildings that kind of look like office buildings so you don’t actually really know what they are,” Jay looked around, squinting in the darkness to see if there was anything she or Chip might recognize.  “It’s really dark, the street lights are placed so far apart.”

“Could you use your phone flashlight?” Chip suggested.

Jay pulled her phone away from her ear for just a moment to check.  She tapped the screen of her phone and was about to turn the flashlight on when she noticed that her phone battery was getting pretty low.  She didn’t remember it being that low when she left work, but being on a phone call usually drained it pretty fast.

“My phone is at forty percent,” Jay said, “I should probably save it in case I really need it.”

“Are you going to hang up?” Chip asked, his voice full of worry.

“No… No, I need this,” Jay figured that she wouldn’t be able to do this if she was alone.  It was too dark out, too lonely, too ominous.  She wouldn’t have been able to get this far if she was walking by herself, she probably would’ve turned back around and waited by her work until the next morning.

She paused for a few seconds and took another deep breath, beginning to walk again, “I’m… I’m just going to keep walking.”

Silence fell between the two of them, Jay could still hear the buzzing of the phone signaling that the call was still going.  But for a long time, Chip said nothing, barely even breathing near the receiver of the phone .  Jay said nothing either, her footsteps echoing between the buildings as each step she took thudded against the pavement, ricocheting off the walls and objects around her.

It was like each step was repeating, just slightly off from her footsteps.  One, and then one, and then two, and then two again.  Like the echo of her shoes on the sidewalk was just slightly out of sync with her actual footsteps as she walked, glancing around every which way.  She felt like an owl with her head on a swivel, constantly checking around her.

The phone buzzing quietly next to her ear didn’t help.

“Chip… You still there?” She asked nervously, her voice sounding faint and far away, even to herself.

“Yeah… I’m still here, don't worry I was just…” He trailed off and Jay waited a beat for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“Just what?” She urged, her heart hammering so hard against her ribs that she could practically taste it in the back of her throat.

“Just listening…” Chip concluded, and then he paused again, clearing his throat and taking a deep breath.  If Jay was with him right now, she could imagine the strained look on his face and the way she could always tell when he was thinking really hard about something.  “Jay, are you sure that you’re the only one on the street right now?”

If Jay were not scared out of her mind, she would’ve laughed.  But she looked around, facing the empty streets from every direction, no cars , no people, no lights on in any of the buildings.   There was no one here.  It was like this side of town was deserted.

“Yeah… I can’t see anyone around…” Jay slid her tongue over her lips and felt the cold air freeze it against her skin, “Do you know something that I don’t?”

“Are you completely sure?”

Jay felt her heart sink at the question.  She continued to look around, throwing her glance over her shoulder to make sure that there was no one visibly following her.  She was pretty good at noticing when someone was , but she hadn’t heard anything or noticed anything different about the streets around her.  Nothing that would’ve alerted her that there was someone around that she didn’t know of.

“Well… I’m not sure now but… But I’m pretty sure there’s no one around… There’s no cars or lights on in any of the buildings…” Her voice trembled minutely and she hoped that Chip couldn’t hear it too well over the phone.  

He let out a long breath.  “Okay… yeah okay… I just thought I heard something… but I think you’re just making me paranoid.  It’s all those dumb crime shows that you make me watch.”

“They’re not dumb ,” Jay retorted, but it was hard to really care about that right now.  She took a deep breath and tried to calm her nerves.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chip let out a small laugh that sounded a lot more of a painful wheeze than anything.  “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

There was another beat of silence between the two of them.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to come pick you up, absolutely positively completely sure?”

Jay really didn’t like hearing that tone of voice coming from his side of the line.  Chip’s worried voice was a lot different than that, he didn’t normally sound so genuine when he was talking to someone, especially when it required the other person to acknowledge that he cared about the other person’s well-being and would hate to see them end up on the news as the next missing person.  

Chip would rather die than admit he cared.

But right now, Chip sounded scared.  More than Jay had heard from him in a while.

“I’m good,” Jay insisted, sounding less confident every time she turned him down, “I swear… I don’t want to cause you any trouble, I’m fine out here I swear.”

“Why didn’t you just decide to take an Uber or something once you realized that the bus stop was moved?” Chip asked, almost sounding frustrated.

“The app's been really weird on my phone lately, it like won’t let me select a pickup spot and once I get past that before I can finish the selection, it resets the drop-off area to somewhere completely different,” Jay swallowed thickly despite the dryness in her throat, “Besides… I didn’t think that it would be this bad of a walk.”

“Right…” Chip sighed and clicked his tongue, “Of course.”

As Jay turned another corner down another street, at the end of the block she saw the temporary bus stop at the end of the street, a bright yellow light shining down on the hooded structure from a streetlight a few feet above it, washing the area in a circle of light.  It almost looked like the gates of heaven opened up to shine down on Jay and bless her with her dream destination.

She gasped with relief, nearly dropping her phone as she picked up the pace to get there.

“Jay?  What happened?  Are you okay?” Chip immediately asked, his voice cutting through the buzzing in her phone, panic filling his tone.

“The bus stop, I found it!” Jay couldn’t hide the shake of her voice anymore.  She was so relieved she didn’t even know what to do with herself.  But she stopped herself from running all the way to the structure, settling on speed-walking down the rest of the street to get herself under the shoddy structure.

Chip sighed in relief, “Oh thank god.”

Jay found herself laughing, almost tears prickling the corners of her eyes, “I knew my sense of direction wasn’t that bad!”

“Do they have any extra information posted there at the stop?” Chip asked frantically, his relief and worry also showing through despite the static on the phone.

Jay scoured the board behind where a bench should have been, looking at the map that detailed different routes that the buses took and places around the city.  There was a lot of older information, the map was discolored and scratchy, and most of the signs, posters, and other things pasted to the bulletin board looked like they’d been there for years.  Jay couldn’t find anything new posted to the bus stop, nothing that acknowledged the change in schedule or anything like that.

“Well… nothing about the bus stop changes… but it says here that buses run every twenty minutes,” Jay read, lining her finger on one of the informational pages, the dirty paper sticking to her skin.

“That’s not so bad!” Chip sounded hopeful, “We can kill twenty minutes no problem.”

Jay shivered and she really wished that the bus stop would hide her a bit more from the weather.  She was still not wearing a coat, and it was still almost freezing outside.

“It feels like forty in this weather,” Jay muttered, shaking her head slowly and wrapping her arms around her torso, “But I’ll survive.”

“Maybe if you had brought a coat,” Chip audibly rolled his eyes and Jay sighed. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll just steal yours the next time I come over, you can afford to donate it to those in need,” Jay chewed on the inside of her mouth and hunched her shoulders over, trying to hide behind the plexiglass screen.

“Hey watch it, you never know when a man like me might need a big soft warm coat to keep warm,” Chip protested in complaint , “I spent a lot of money on that coat.”

“Yeah, more than your car,” Jay rolled her eyes, knowing how protective Chip was over his prized coat.

“That’s not a fair comparison, I got my car for like a couple hundred bucks from the scrap yard, that’s not the same,” Chip claimed as if it made it any better.

“Normally it’s supposed to be the other way around with the guy spending all his money on a nice fancy car to impress the ladies,” Jay rolled her eyes and shifted her weight from foot to foot.  Her legs were killing her.  “God I wish there was at least someplace to sit here.”

“No bench or anything?” Chip asked.

“No, looks like it was removed,” Jay kicked at the rusty holes in the ground where it was obvious that bolts used to be.  She sighed.

“Heard they’ve been ripping benches out all over the city.  Just another one of Mayfair’s plans to screw over the homeless population,” Chip grumbled, not even directing it at Jay as he shifted on his side of the call.

“Yeah… I think I saw that on the news—”

Jay looked to the side, rocking back and forth underneath the shallow cover of the bus stop.  As she turned, her heart dropped to her stomach at the faint outline of a figure in the road down the street.  She froze where she stood, her eyes wide as she locked them on the unmoving, static figure.

She was silent for a few seconds, long enough to alarm Chip.

“Jay…?”

“Hold on,” Jay hissed, pulling the phone closer to her mouth so she didn’t have to talk as loud.  She backed up a few steps, hoping that despite the dusty glass of the sides of the bus stop, the figure wouldn’t be able to see Jay from where she was standing.  She had been alone this entire time, not a single soul out on the streets except for her.

“Are you okay?”

“Shh!”

Jay said nothing, doing her best to shrink down despite the warm light that was spilling over her from the streetlamp.  She kept her eyes firmly on what she at least believed to be the figure of another person nearby.  Her heart hammered in her chest, she could feel her pulse in her ears, the rushing of blood causing her face to flush and her entire body to tremble.

They were tall, hard to tell how much from the distance, but a lot taller than Jay was, a fact that already made her a little nervous.   She couldn’t tell what kind of person it was, man, woman, adult, lanky teenager.  She couldn’t make out anything in the darkness, especially not with how far away they were and how dark it was.  

Jay swore that she would’ve heard them approach if anything, the night was so quiet she could probably hear a pin drop if she tried.  And the streets had been completely empty before.

Jay leaned in close to the microphone of her phone, “I think there’s someone else here,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice as quiet as possible, squishing the speaker of it to her ear so Chip’s voice wouldn’t carry too far.

“What?” Chip’s voice broke through the pained silence and Jay flinched.

“There’s someone standing here… forty… fifty feet away maybe…”  Jay’s voice trembled and she had a hard time keeping it quiet and steady enough for Chip to understand.  She wanted to shrink down and hide, but there was really nowhere for her to go without drawing attention to herself.

“What are they doing?” Chip lowered his voice a little bit , seeming to understand Jay’s panic.

“Just… Just standing in the middle of the street,” Jay swallowed thickly, keeping her eyes firmly trained on the figure to make sure it didn’t do anything.  “Like… Like in the road.”

“What do they look like?”

Jay didn’t understand why Chip was asking so many questions, she almost wished that he would stay silent and not say anything at all so she wouldn’t have to respond.

“I don’t know… They’re too far from the streetlights… but they’re tall.”

Jay hunched her shoulders and did her best to peek around the other side of the dirty glass barrier wanting to get a better look at the figure.  As she did, the sound of a loud creaking noise filled her ears and Jay felt a burning sensation spread from the center of her chest all throughout her body.  She felt a deep, visceral sense of being looked at, eyes boring into her very form, digging into her flesh and picking her apart atom by atom.

And when she looked back at the figure, they were closer.  And she could feel their eyes on her, like the eyes of a predator.

“Chip,” Jay’s voice trembled, and it was a monumental effort just to force the words from her lips, “Chip, come pick me up.”

“What?” Chip’s voice seemed to echo in her ears.

Jay heard that odd creaking noise again but the feeling of being watched never went away .  She clutched the phone tighter between her fingers, shivering so hard she could feel her teeth chattering.

“I think they just moved,” Jay whimpered, hunching her shoulders and doing her best to block the figure from view.  She figured that if she ducked behind the grimier part of the glass, maybe they wouldn’t be able to see her.  The eyes never left her form.  She felt the heat boring into her chest.

“I’m putting my coat on now,” Chip said and Jay could hear him moving on the other line.  She heard the sound of something getting knocked over as well as Chip swearing quietly with the phone pulled away from his face.  

Jay squatted down underneath the shoddy hood of the bus stop, trembling and trying not to throw up from fear.  Her stomach churned dangerously and she felt that every nerve in her body was on fire, her body erupting into pins and needles.  Her breath puffed in front of her face with every breath that she exhaled and Jay just listened to the sound of Chip shuffling and moving around.

She could hear the sound of that figure creaking… getting closer.  She dared not to look.

But then, the sound of a motor began to get louder, the squeaking rumbling of the bus loudly bumbling down the street.  The bus squealed loudly, the brakes making a god-awful squeak as the bus slowed gently to a stop right in front of the stop.  The vehicle hissed as it idled next to the curb, air deflating faintly.  Jay audibly gasped, standing up so quickly that all the blood immediately drained from her head.

“The bus is here!” Jay exclaimed a little louder than she meant to when she was trying to hide from some weird creepy figure stalking her.

“You still want me to come get you?  I can leave right now and be there in just a few minutes,” Chip offered, almost sounding a bit frantic as he spoke.  Jay heard him continue to shuffle on the other line and then the jangling of keys.

“I’m just gonna get on, stay on the line,” Jay hurried to the steps of the bus before the bus driver decided to close the doors and drive away.

“Okay, I’m still here.  What’s the bus number?” 

“No time,” Jay insisted, pulling herself up onto the stairs of the bus , scanning her pass on the small card reader next to the door.  She fumbled with her card, shoving it back into her pocket as her footsteps clattered down the thin aisle.

The seats were grimy and the fabric faded from years of continued use and as soon as Jay had gotten on the bus, she noticed an odd, rancid smell that permeated the entire vehicle.  There were scuff marks on the floor following the exact path that Jay followed as she found a semi-clean seat in the middle of the bus.  The doors to the bus creaked behind her and Jay flinched at the sound, clutching her phone tightly in her fingers.

Jay plopped down heavily in one of the old worn-out seats, the cushion flattened into nearly nothing as her butt hit the hard plastic.  She heaved a sigh of relief, sinking into the seat as if it were the most comfortable throne in the world and not the gross, worn-out seat of an even older bus.

“I’m on…” Jay muttered, tilting her head back and staring up at the ceiling with her phone still pressed against her ear.  “I’m on… Thank god.”

The engine caused the entire bus to rumble slightly and Jay could feel the slight vibrations go through her body like small little shocks of electricity.  She just sighed and tried to let her racing heart calm down.

“What’s happening, Jay?” Chip asked, his worried voice filtering in through the ambiance of the bus rumbling and the flickering lights above her.  Jay swallowed thickly and slid her tongue over her lips with a small sigh.

“I’m sitting on the bus now…” Jay reported, looking around as if she may have missed someone sitting behind her.  The bus was thankfully empty.  It was pretty late after all, so it wasn’t too unusual.  “There’s nobody else on here.”

“Are you safe?”

Jay pulled her attention from the stained, cracked ceiling and looked towards the front door of the bus.  She couldn’t see the driver from where he was sitting behind a thick screen, but she could still see the open door.  The lights above her buzzed.

“I’m just keeping my eye on the door,” Jay said, taking a few deep breaths as if that might help calm her racing heart.

“Why?” Chip cleared his throat and shifted on the other line.  The phone buzzed next to her ear and Jay released her grip on it just a little bit .

“I’m worried that the person I saw outside is going to get on,” Jay blurted , not even realizing that she was worried about that until her mouth formed the words for her.  She shivered the phantom sensation of eyes on the back of her neck causing her to shift uncomfortably in the chair.  The bus continued to idle at the stop, rumbling slightly.  Everything inside was slightly yellowed and faded with age and the lights were flickering .  Jay squinted in the darkness.

“Are you sure you actually saw someone out there?” Chip asked slowly, drawing out his words carefully as if he were talking to a startled animal.

“What do you mean?” Jay was almost offended that Chip didn’t believe her.

“Like… You’ve said it before that your mind has a tendency to wander… and you’ve had a few incidents before,” Chip continued to speak slowly, pausing every few words as if he were trying to judge how Jay was going to react, “And with the dream you had and how dark it is outside, it’s possible that your mind was just playing tricks on you.”

Jay shivered, a part of her knew that Chip had a point.  There were a few incidents in the past where Jay had the paranoia that she was being stalked or that someone had broken into her house in the middle of the night when it was nothing.  Her nightmares had a tendency to seep into the thoughts of her everyday life and make her waking nighttime absolutely hellish.

But the fear that she had felt… The feeling of the eyes burning into the back of her neck… that couldn’t have been fake.

“I’m sure I saw someone out there,” Jay tried, although she wasn’t so confident as she spoke.  Her voice trembled slightly and she had a hard time keeping her breathing steady.

“Can you see them out the window?” 

Jay craned her neck to look behind her at where she saw the figure.  The reflection of the lights inside the bus made it impossible to see anything else outside except her own terrified reflection in the glass.  It was pitch black outside.  The streetlights barely provided any sort of light at all.  And it didn’t help that the windows were slightly tinted which prevented Jay from even seeing the light of the bus stop.

“It’s too dark,” Jay admitted, rubbing her thigh with her other hand.

“Has the bus started driving yet?” Chip did his best to keep his voice level, but he sounded worried.  Jay had been friends with him long enough to be able to tell when he was trying to stay strong for someone else.

“No…” Jay tried to lean to the side to see if she might be able to make out the bus driver from behind the glass, but she couldn’t see anything.  The bus had just been rumbling quietly at the stop for what seemed like way too long.  She had to run to catch the bus sometimes but now it was just sitting here waiting, as if the bus driver was on break or something.  “No, it’s just idling.”

“Why?” Chip asked incredulously.

“I don’t know, Chip.  Maybe he’s waiting for more passengers or something,” Jay snapped, knowing that she had no right to be pissy at Chip, but she was scared and stressed and she didn’t know why the bus driver was being weird any more than Chip did.  She didn’t know why they were just sitting here at the bus stop for who knows how long for who knows why.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Chip placated, sighing softly on his end .  His voice buzzed slightly and cut out from the shoddy service in the city.

Jay sighed as well, reaching up with her other hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, “No… I’m sorry, I’m just stressed.  It’s been a long day man.” She squeezed her eyes shut, leaning her head down so that she could press her forehead briefly to the seat in front of her, taking a long, deep breath.  She frowned and growled softly.

“I get it, I get it,” Chip clicked his tongue and hummed softly, “But hey, you get Wednesday’s off right?” He sounded a little more upbeat although it sounded like he was putting on a front.

“Yeah…” Jay muttered, unsure why Chip was even bringing this up at the moment .  Why did it matter when she worked?

“Great, so when you get home you can just sleep all this off and sleep in tomorrow, won’t that be nice?” He was once again putting on that weird peppy voice that he only used when he was trying to cheer Jay up.  It never usually worked very well but she appreciated the effort.

Sleeping in her own bed sounded pretty nice right about now.

“Yeah… yeah you’re right…” She had to admit that the idea of sleeping all of this off and getting to lay in bed all day tomorrow sounded pretty good.  She was ready to curl up in bed underneath her blankets and wind down somewhere comfortable and where she knew was safe.  Maybe she should’ve just gotten a ride from Chip in the first place, then she could’ve spent the night at his place where she would definitely be safe.

“All we need to worry about now is getting you home safe, right?”  Chip’s voice crackled through the phone.

“Yeah…”

“Hey, how about—”

Jay lurched forward as the bus suddenly started to move, the breaks hissing as they released.  She made a noise of surprise and pure relief, cutting Chip off in the middle of his sentence.

“We have liftoff!” Jay said, unable to hide the relief in her voice as the tires squealed against the pavement as the bus pulled away from the stop, hitting every pothole on the way .   She didn’t even care about the bumpy state of the road, she was just more thrilled that the bus doors were closed and they were on the move.  She almost wanted to cry with relief, hoping that she was in the home stretch now.

“Thank Christ,” Chip exclaimed, “I was running out of ways to waste time.”

“Should just be about a fifteen-minute drive and then I’m home free,” Jay said.  The new bus stop was a lot further away from her work but it was a little closer to her apartment.  Although it was out of the way, it was still just a few blocks closer to where she needed to be which should hopefully cut the travel time a little bit.

“Did you catch the bus number?”

Jay swallowed thickly and shook her head even though she knew that Chip wouldn’t be able to see her, “No, like I said there was no time… I just wanted to get on and get the hell off that street.”

Chip swore softly under his breath, shifting on his side of the phone, “Thought I could maybe track the route online…”

Jay looked around and shifted her weight slightly in her seat, rubbing the fabric of her pants.  “It looks like an older model anyway, it’s probably all analog.”  Everything in the bus looked at least a decade old and even older from all the wear and tear of riders getting on and off all day.  The screen at the front of the bus above the driver station flickered and buzzed loud enough that Jay could hear it from the back of the bus.

“What do you mean?” Chip asked slowly, his tone shifting slightly, “An older model?”

“It looked kinda like an older bus that I’m not used to, but I don’t know I’m not a bus expert,” Jay shrugged and leaned back in her seat, glancing around nervously, making sure that she was really the only one on the bus.

“That’s… That’s a little odd,” Chip admitted, sounding a little suspicious.

“It still took my bus pass just fine, I figured that it’s just cause they moved the stop, another company might be picking up the slack on the line,” Jay tapped her foot nervously, speaking as calmly as she could, her tongue feeling like it was tied in knots.  No matter what she tried to convince herself, she couldn’t fully shake the incessant anxiety that hummed in the center of her chest.  It almost still felt like she was being watched.

“If you say so… I’m still a babe in the woods when it comes to buses,” Chip laughed at his own joke and then paused for a few seconds, hesitating a little bit .  “Hey, can I ask you a question?  I don’t want to sound like a dick though.”

“Sure, ask away, I’m down to talk about anything right now…” Jay really just wanted to get her mind off of everything that was happening.

“Why did you never get a car?  Not that everyone needs one, it’s just—”

“The dealer wouldn’t sell it to me… they wanted me to have another person sign the documents but there’s no way that I’m asking either of my parents for that,” Jay admitted, looking down at her lap in shame, “I wasn’t making enough money at the time.”

“Oh…” Chip paused for a few seconds, “You know there are people selling cars for pretty cheap online or around town, and you’re making a bit more money now, so surely you could try again and be able to sign it yourself.”

“I know, I know, it’s just… It’s too much responsibility,” Jay slid her tongue over her lips and frowned.  She wasn’t a big fan of driving either.  She liked to leave the car situation to Chip and let him take her around town if she really needed to get somewhere fast.  She wasn’t a big fan of driving herself, especially not in the cities.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know… there’s the whole process of looking for cars and making sure you’re not gonna get some rust bucket that the brakes are going to go out within the first week of buying, and besides…” Jay paused and heaved a deep sigh , “I don’t like driving in the city… It scares me… I don’t trust myself behind the wheel, not with how spacey I can get sometimes.”

“And yet you don’t take rides?” Chip asked, and Jay could practically see him rolling his eyes through the screen.

“I don’t wanna feel like I’m taking advantage of people.  I already don’t have a car, I don’t want to be a mooch, too.”

“You’re not mooching when I offer.”

“I’m mooching when I accept.”

Chip had the audacity to laugh at that, chuckling slightly in that infuriating way that he always laughed.  Jay couldn’t help but sigh, her lips twitched into a small smile.

“You’re a real headcase, Jay,” Chip muttered, heaving a sigh as well.

“I won’t deny it.”

“You see anything you recognize outside?” Chip asked, changing the subject to something a little more productive.

Jay turned her head to look out the window, fidgeting quietly with the hem of her shirt and trying to make out any of the shapes or lights passing by the bus window.  It felt like the bus was going pretty fast for going down the city streets.  Jay should’ve been paying more attention outside the bus to make sure that she didn’t accidentally miss her stop.  She already had enough bus troubles for one day, and she didn’t want to cause any more trouble.

The windows of the bus were so tinted that it was hard to really see what was going on outside the bus and the city was notoriously bad for fixing any of the streetlights that went out, so not only were the windows tinted, but it was dark outside as well.  Dark enough that Jay couldn’t make out any more than the cracks of sky between each of the buildings.  No street names, no landmarks, nothing that would help her identify where she was or how close she was to the apartment. 

“I can’t really tell… It’s dark out, not many street lights,” Jay muttered and then swore under her breath.  Why did it have to get so dark this time of year, and why couldn’t the city spend all the money that they paid in taxes to fix the streetlights.

She heard Chip swear as well from the other line.

Jay pulled her phone away from her face for a few moments to check the time, wanting to see how long it had been which might give her some indication of when she should get off the bus.

“Crap… I just noticed my phone’s at twenty-two percent,” Jay muttered, feeling her heart sink into her stomach.  She stared at the red blinking battery percentage at the top of her screen with dread building in her chest.

Chip swore again, “You think it might be enough to last the rest of the way back?”

Jay hesitated and stared at her phone screen for a few seconds, fear dawning on her face . 

“I don’t know how long that is… I think the bus is taking a different route back.”

For a few moments, neither of them said anything.  The silence was almost palpable and thick enough to cut with a knife.  Jay stared at the phone in her hands, the buzzing of Chip’s audio crackling in her ears, and the rumbling of the bus as it chugged along down the street were the only things that she could hear.

“I think I really screwed up here…” Jay muttered, slouching her shoulders as she stared hopelessly out the window, unsure where she even was or how far away from home she was.

“No, no, no, it’s gonna be okay,” Chip insisted , though Jay could hear his voice shaking slightly as he struggled to maintain his composure, “Maybe you can request a stop, and when the bus stops, you can ask the driver for advice.  You’ve got money, right?”

“Yeah… Yeah, that’s a good idea, one sec,” Jay reached up and pulled on the cord trailing in front of all of the windows.  There was a loud ding that reverberated through the entire bus signaling that she had requested a stop.

“Great, now just stay put,” Chip said, taking a deep breath loud enough that Jay could hear through the phone.

“What if I’m all the way across town?” Jay asked, worry causing her to choke up a little bit, her throat thick.

“Easy, I’ll come pick you up,” Chip insisted, “And I won’t be taking a no on this one.”

Jay hissed through her teeth and leaned forward again so that her forehead pressed against the hardback of the seat in front of her.  “I’m so stupid, I should have just taken you up on it in the first place.” She thumped her forehead into the back of the seat, frustrated at herself and scared about how she was going to get home in this situation.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry about that, okay?” Chip tried to reassure her, jumping quickly to try to ease her anxiety, “Beating yourself up isn’t going to help you get home tonight.”

Jay sighed but she had to agree that Chip was right.  At least the bus was beginning to slow to a stop.  Jay felt the driver turn towards the curb at the next bus stop, the rumbling of the engine getting louder as the brakes began to squeak.

“Okay, it’s slowing down,” Jay said, tapping her foot on the ground.

“Good, when you get off, we’ll try to figure out where you’re at and I’ll come pick you up.  Forget the driver, you’ve been through enough tonight,” Chip told her sternly, not leaving any room for her to argue.

“Okay, sounds good… We can do this,” Jay muttered, trying to convince herself and hype herself up to stand.

“You’re right we can.”

The bus finally came to a stop and Jay lurched forward with the pressure from the sudden halt.  The engine idled softly and the door creaked open so loudly that Jay heard it ringing in her ears.

Jay’s heart stopped.

“Let’s do this, that sounded like the door?” Chip said from the other line, his voice crackling and buzzing against her ear, he was trying to be peppy again, doing his best to stretch his tone into that excited, almost customer service-sounding voice, “That was the door, right?”

Although Jay couldn’t see the bus stop through the dark tinted windows, Jay felt that same sensation of eyes boring into her, burning into her chest and causing her heart to skip a beat.  She sucked in a painful gasp of air, lungs squeezing tightly as it suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe.  

She said nothing, unable to even squeak out a single word.  She felt that presence again, that figure, those eyes.  She felt the eyes watching her like a hawk ready to scoop her up.

“Jay?  You okay?” Chip asked worriedly.  His voice cut out slightly and Jay could only hear the sound of static .

The hair on her arms stood on end and Jay felt like she was going to suffocate in dry air.  All the oxygen seemed to seep out of the bus as soon as it had opened the doors and Jay was left gasping for whatever was left.  She still said nothing to Chip, unable to force the words out of her throat.

“Jay, answer me, please!”

Jay felt her heart sink as the bus suddenly dipped with oncoming weight and the bus squealed almost like it was in pain.  Jay shivered, the air in the room dropping a few degrees, enough that she could suddenly see her breath when she exhaled.  The windows clouded with condensation.

And there was that creaking noise again.  That odd, groaning noise, like the sound of old wood creaking with strain.  The sound grated on Jay’s ears, filling her with fear unlike she had ever experienced before.

Then she saw the figure pass between the open doors.

The tall, old figure of what appeared to be a woman, although Jay never looked her in the eyes.  As soon as she got a glimpse of the familiar form, she looked down at her lap, fear causing her entire body to freeze up like she had just been put on pause.  She felt burning eyes glaring into her very soul as the figure crept down the middle aisle of the bus ever so slowly.  Jay felt sweat beading against the back of her neck and for a few moments, she couldn’t breathe.

The sounds of footsteps got closer, Jay almost dropped her phone as the figure approached, getting closer and closer and closer.

And then it walked past her, continuing down the aisle to the back of the bus.

“Jesus Christ, Jay, can you—”

“It’s her…” Jay blurted , her voice hoarse and ever so quiet.  She had to force the words out of her throat and she still felt like her lungs were a pair of balloons that were going to pop.

Chip let out a heavy sigh and sounded a bit more than slightly irritated.

“You just scared the piss out of me dude,” Chip said, irritation filling his voice, “What the hell happened?  Are you still on the bus?”

Jay didn’t even think that she would be able to move if she tried.  Where else would she be except the bus?  There was nowhere to go.  There was nowhere for her to move without those predatory eyes watching her every twitch and movement.

“Chip… she just got on,” Jay insisted, stressing her words as if Chip was supposed to know what she was talking about.

“What?”

“The woman from my dream.  It’s her.  She just got on and walked over to the back seats,” Jay said, her voice tight and high-pitched as she did her best to keep it as quiet as possible.  She risked leaning forward a little bit, hunching her shoulders and trying to duck down between the seats to hide herself as if the woman hadn’t already seen her.

“Jay, listen to me right now.  I know you’re freaked out, but that was just a dream, okay?” Chip tried to reassure her, speaking quickly and frantically but trying to keep himself calm as well .

“It’s her, it’s her, it’s her,” Jay repeated, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her forehead against the back of the seat in front of her.  “It’s her, it’s her.” She tried to keep her voice as quiet as possible, forcing every word out of her lips as if she were choking.  She panted heavily, struggling with every breath.

“Okay, okay,” Chip placated, “What makes you think it’s her?  You didn’t even see her in the dream.”

Jay kept her gaze trained forward, not wanting to even risk turning around and getting a glimpse of the woman.

“I felt her…” Jay said, and she could still feel the burning sensation of eyes on the back of her neck, “I just know.  She’s too tall.”

“Listen, Jay, I don’t want to invalidate your experience right now but you’re not thinking straight,” Chip insisted, speaking slowly and calmly, “Take a second to breathe, okay?  Breathe.  In, out.”

Jay did as Chip instructed, sucking in a deep breath as much as she could, her breath shaking.  Then she let it out slowly, just as shakily.

“Okay, good, keep breathing and focus on my voice.  You don’t need to reply to me just yet, just breathe.”

Jay said nothing, focusing on breathing and trying to get her heart rate to settle into something more normal.  Her heart pounded aggressively against her chest, almost painfully.  Jay hissed through her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, hunching her shoulders and trying to make herself as small as possible.  It was her.  It had to be her.  There was no one else that it could be.

“Here’s what you’re gonna do.  First, you’re gonna stay as calm as you can, panicking won’t help right now.  Second, you’re gonna request a stop again, get out next time, and I’ll come pick you up,” Chip told her, keeping his voice as calm as he possibly could , “It’s all gonna be fine, I promise.”

Jay nodded to herself, shaking so badly she could barely move without the risk of dropping her phone.  She sucked in one breath after the other, in and out, in and out.  She wanted to cry.

“You okay, Jay?”

When she felt like she had calmed herself down enough to at least get herself out of her frozen position, Jay reached up and yanked on the wire next to the window.  The bus dinged loudly and Jay flinched as if she’d been slapped.

Jay took another deep breath, wiping away her forming tears and doing her best not to freeze up again.  She wheezed slightly, bouncing her leg.

“It’s gonna stop soon, right?  It’s just a big loop,” Jay muttered, trying to regain her composure, “Worst comes to worst, it’ll just drop me off where I got on, right?  It’s gonna be okay.”  It didn’t feel like it was going to be okay, but she hoped that saying it might make a difference.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Chip said, trying to lighten her up .

“She’s still behind me,” Jay said.  Not once had she felt the boring eyes shift to a different target.  It was like a hole was being melted into her back from where the woman was staring at her.  It was starting to burn.

“She’s probably harmless, whoever she is,” Chip insisted, his voice crackling with static, “Leave her be… A woman alone on a bus this time of night, I bet she’s as paranoid as you right now.”

Jay fidgeted silently, forcing herself to keep breathing so she didn’t pass out.  “I wanna look… but I know I’m not meant to.”

“What?”

“Like… In the dream, I knew if I looked at her something terrible would happen… but I need to see her.”

“Jesus Christ, Jay, it was just a dream.”

“I swear to god, Chip, it was this bus, this exact bus.  Why isn’t it slowing down?” Jay looked out the window, trying to make out any sort of buildings or landmarks through the darkness.  All she saw was the sky and the darkness passing by at the same rate that the bus had been driving before.

“You’re freaking yourself out again, you always do this Jay,” Chip’s voice was strained, but he was doing his best to keep his composure as well.

Jay looked down at her phone, continuing to bounce her leg nervously.  She fidgeted and shifted in her seat.  She needed to look.  She needed to see what her tormentor looked like.  She knew deep in the back of her mind that something bad was going to happen, something bad always happened.  Jay knew that she shouldn’t look.

But she needed to.

Even if something went wrong.  Even if it was really a mistake.  She needed to know.

“I’m on eighteen percent… I know what I’m gonna do,” Jay stared at the blinking battery percentage on her phone, glaring down at it with more fear in her eyes than she had ever felt before.  She stared at her reflection on the screen of the phone and took a deep breath.

“Jay, please don’t do anything crazy—”

“I’m gonna be subtle…” Jay said quietly, leaning closer to her phone and hunching her shoulders as if that might help hide what she was about to do from the constant observation.  She shivered and took a deep breath.  “I’m gonna act like I’m taking a selfie and get a picture of her.”

“C’mon Jay…” Chip said disapprovingly.  He groaned softly and let out a sigh.  Jay just shook her head.

“Shh…” She whispered, “It’ll be quick.”

Collecting all the confidence that she could muster, Jay leaned back in the chair, forcing herself to sit up straight despite how badly she wanted to crouch down and hide under the seats.  She lifted her arm with her phone in hand, the camera selected to the front face.  Jay barely even looked at the phone as she angled it backward so it would not only get her in the frame but would mostly get a picture of the woman behind her.

Her thumb hovered over the shutter button for a few seconds and then she took the picture and quickly brought her arm down as soon as she heard it click.

Jay trembled as she stared down at her phone, once again hovering over the tiny thumbnail of the photo in the corner of the screen.  Jay swallowed thickly.  She needed to look.  She needed to see.  It would eat at her if she didn’t know.  

Maybe this photo would tell her that she was wrong, that she was just being paranoid for no reason, that it was just a normal old lady sitting behind her on the bus trying to get home just as much as she was.

But maybe it would just confirm her fears.

“Jay?” Chip’s voice buzzed through the phone and Jay realized that she had just been staring at the camera.  She clicked the small image to enlarge it.

As soon as Jay’s eyes traveled from the faint silhouette of her curly hair in the photo to the distorted image of the woman behind her.  Jay’s heart stopped.

“No… No…” Jay muttered, staring with wide eyes at the picture on her phone, “I shouldn’t have done that… Oh god, Chip, I shouldn't have done that.”

The picture almost looked like it was run through some kind of weird radioactive material , the edges of it grainy and warped, a few glitches obvious in the way the camera seemed to tear and crack.   It centered around the woman behind her.  The tall, warped figure that had been stalking her this entire night.

The woman’s face was grotesque as if it had been stretched and pulled by some sort of photo editing software, the eyes shielded by tendrils of some sort of black substance that may have been hair or something else.  

It barely looked humanoid, definitely not human, with long disproportionate arms and a long torso.  The head was stretched almost to a point, warped and indented on one side.  Its skin looked like it was melting, sloughing off the skull in heavy, thick wrinkles that drooped down the face, causing even more static on the camera.

“Did she see you?” Chip asked worriedly, although there was only so much that he could do over the phone.

Although the eyes were obscured in the photo by distortion and odd forms, Jay could still feel the heat of its eyes boring right into the back of Jay’s skull.

“She was looking at me…” Jay hunched her shoulders and ducked down again although the damage had already been done.  “She’s looking right at me… There’s something wrong with her face…” Jay felt tears bubbling up in the back of her throat and she whimpered pathetically.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Chip asked incredulously like he couldn’t believe anything that Jay was saying right now.

“It’s like… it’s too long… Like they stretched it… I can’t see her eyes,” Jay muttered, still staring down at the picture on her phone which was resting in her lap.  She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the photo.

“You took a picture?” 

“Yeah…” Jay muttered, swallowing thickly and trying to keep herself from bursting into tears.

“Send it to me,” Chip demanded, his voice serious.

“What?”

“I can tell you how much of this is in your head.”

Jay stared at the photo.  She didn’t say anything for a few moments as her eyes blurred around the distorted, warped photo of the figure behind her.  Tears welled in the corners of her eyes and she found that she was having a hard time breathing again.

“I… I don’t think I should…” Jay whispered into the phone.  Her hands shook as she clutched the phone.

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t supposed to look at her…”

Chip took only a few seconds to process what Jay had just said before his patience finally seemed to run thin.

“God, Jay, are you having another episode?” Chip snapped, his voice cutting through the speaker of her phone loud and clear, enough that it made Jay flinch.

“No, Chip, this is real!”

“Jesus Christ, dude.  You had a scary dream and got lost on the bus, that’s it, okay?  That’s it,” Chip insisted, his voice sounding more and more irritated as he continued, “I’m sorry that I’m getting heated but I wouldn’t get heated if I didn’t care.  So just send me the picture and I’ll tell you what’s really there, okay?  Okay.”

Jay flinched away from the phone, pulling it away from her and finally tearing her eyes from the picture.  Jay blinked away tears, breathing heavily and trying to keep her composure.

She heard Chip take a few deep breaths as well, regaining his composure after snapping.  He sighed.

“Jay?”

Jay swallowed thickly, her entire body shaking so badly she could barely hold the phone properly.

“Okay…” She said quietly, resting her elbows on her knees as she pulled up her and Chip’s direct messages.  She tapped on the photo and clicked send before she could chicken out, a little scared of making Chip angry again.

“Okay, see, it’s just—” Chip paused, most likely opening the message, “Oh.”

Jay fumbled, her voice cracking and shaking as she spoke, “I’m sorry!  I shouldn’t have done that… I shouldn’t have done that… Oh god.”

“I… Uhm…” Chip stumbled over his words, clearly trying to think of something to say that would calm Jay down while also trying to keep himself calm as well.  “Did you… Do something to this photo?”

“Chip… I think something terrible is going to happen,” Jay whispered desperately, her voice breaking.

“That uh… that thing with the face.  The lighting's not great back there, it could just be shadows…” Chip tried to reason although he didn’t sound too confident, “Stuff looks weird this time of night.  Maybe she’s just looking because you’re the only other person on the bus?”

Jay didn’t believe that.  She rubbed her face, pulling in panicked breaths of air, her breath puffing in front of her face.

“I need to get off this bus, Chip,” Jay growled desperately, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she felt like it was going to burst through her ribs.  She panted desperately and leaned back in the chair, tears stinging in the corners of her eyes.

“Try pulling the cord a few more times.  Maybe there was a malfunction or something, the driver might’ve just missed it last time,” Chip told her, his voice shaking slightly, just enough that Jay probably wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been friends with Chip so long.

Jay reached up and pulled the stop cord a few more times, the small bell ringing loudly throughout the entire bus, signaling that she had pulled for a stop.  Jay shivered, shifting in her seat to find a position that might put her out of view of the figure behind her.

“She’s been following me… I don't know how long but she was in my dream, she was there at the bus stop, she’s here …” Jay found herself rambling , the words spilling from her lips too fast for her to even think about what she was saying, “And now I’ve—we’ve—seen her face.”

“I don’t think it’s helpful to talk about that… okay?  We’ve just gotta focus—”

“I can’t see out the window,” Jay sobbed, “It’s so dark out there, Chip.  I should be able to see something , right?  There’s gotta be something out there.”

Jay heard a sudden crash, and she yelped, nearly jumping right out of her seat at the noise.  She almost instinctively looked behind her before freezing up as she remembered the situation.

“Did you hear that?” Jay forced out, her voice rising in pitch.

“Yeah… that was on my end…” Chip said slowly, doing his best to stay calm.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke.  Jay panted heavily, shifting her weight in her seat as she tried not to faint.  Her throat ached from the strain of holding back tears.

“I’m gonna get up and check… Stay on the line, okay?” 

Jay said nothing, she nodded although she knew that Chip wouldn’t be able to see.  From the speaker of her phone, Jay could hear the sound of his footsteps and something rustling as he probably made his way through his apartment.  The bus continued to hum and rumble as it bounced over various potholes in the road.

Jay rubbed her thighs nervously and felt her stomach churn with dangerous flips of nausea.  She swallowed thickly and wished that she had some water or something.

“Chip… What’s happening?” Jay whimpered.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, just the washing machine or something.  I…” Chip trailed off.

“Chip? What’s going on?” Jay asked frantically, shoving the phone against her ear as if that would help her hear any sort of minuscule sound coming from his end.

“It’s the back door… There’s a crack on the glass…” Chip muttered, sounding flabbergasted.

“Like a bird flew into it or something?” Jay supplied, hoping that maybe that’s all it was.

“A bird?” Chip asked, almost laughing at that before he caught himself, “No… A bald eagle maybe.  It looks like someone hit it with a hammer.”

Chip lived on the fourth floor of his apartment with just a back door that led out onto a small deck.

“Oh god…” Jay moaned in fear, “Oh god, no, no, no.” She pulled at her hair with her other hand, hunching over her knees as hot tears burned the corners of her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Chip asked quickly.

“I knew I shouldn’t have sent it to you,” Jay couldn’t stop the tears from falling this time.  She felt hot tears sting against her face as they fell and her breath hitched as she cried.

“What?”

“You’ve seen her face, Chip… Just like I did… You’re not supposed to look at her face.”

The image of the figure was burned into the back of Jay’s mind.  She could still visualize those warped, distorted features and the sagging skin, the tall, looming figure that seemed almost too big for the size of the bus. 

Jay heard that same creaking sound as before .  Like old rotting wood under strain.

“Take another picture,” Chip instructed.

“What?  No!”

“If we’ve already seen her face, what does it matter, right?” Chip said, trying his best to be casual about it, “If we’re going to take this line of thinking to its logical conclusion.”

“But why?” Jay asked, not understanding where Chip was coming from, “I don’t understand.”

Chip paused for a few seconds.  Jay heard him take a deep breath in and out, and then when he spoke again, his voice was shaking.

“I… I want to know for sure she’s still there on the bus with you,” Chip admitted, his voice trembling as he struggled to get the words out.

“The bus hasn’t stopped, Chip…” Jay told him, staring mournfully out the window as the bus rumbled and continued down the street.

“I know… Just take the picture… Please, Jay.”

“Okay…”

Jay shut her eyes for a few seconds and then braced herself to take another picture.  She raised her arm up high enough that she could get a view of the back of the bus over her head and then pressed down on the shutter button without thinking about it for too long.

Then she placed her phone in her lap and clicked on the small thumbnail photo to pull it up on the screen.

The figure was closer now.

Jay’s breath caught in her throat and it felt very hard to breathe for a few seconds.

“Jay?”

“She’s getting closer…”

Chip made a noise of confusion, “Closer?”

“She’s moved down a couple seats now,” Jay told him, unable to hide the shake in her voice.

Jay quickly sent the photo to Chip, her fingers numb with fear as she trembled.

“Jesus Christ…” Chip muttered.

“Get out of the apartment, Chip, you’re not safe there,” Jay begged, sniffling and frantically scrubbing at her face with her hands.

“What… What is up with her face?  Jesus… Does she have eyes?”

Jay reached up and pulled down on the cord near the window a few more times, the bell dinging each time she yanked it down far enough for it to register.  She could hear that strange creaking sound again and Jay let out an audible whimper, sobbing as quietly as she could.

“Why isn’t he stopping,” Jay cried, putting her face in her hands.

“I don’t know anymore…” Chip swore under his breath.

Jay looked down at her phone in her lap.  “Oh god…”

“What?”

“Fourteen percent charge…”

“It’s okay, we can get through this.  I’m pretty sure we can get through this, okay?  We’ve just gotta stay calm,” Chip said, doing his best to reassure Jay despite how scared he was as well . 

Jay felt the burning sensation on the back of her neck again and she could pretty much feel the woman breathing down her back.  It burned like Jay had just leaned up against a boiler.

“I can’t…” Jay sobbed, tears spilling down her cheeks, “I’m so sorry, Chip but I can’t … I can feel her again, just like in my dream.  I can feel her eyes on me… they’re like hot coals.”  She was unable to muffle her sobbing anymore, breaking down into tears as they poured down her face.  She hunched over and put her face in her hands, barely holding onto the phone anymore.

“I… I think I’m gonna die tonight, Chip,” Jay whimpered, her voice shaking, “I think maybe we’re both gonna die…”

“Don’t talk like that, okay?” Chip snapped, his voice starting to sound a bit more panicked, “Just don’t, we’re gonna figure this out, we can—”

Chip suddenly cut himself off as the sound of three loud slams reverberated from his side of the phone.  Jay flinched at the noise and ducked forward, letting out a quiet sob that she tried to muffle behind her palm.  Chip hissed and swore under his breath.

“Jesus Christ,” Chip muttered.

“Oh my god,” Jay sobbed.  She pressed the phone closer to her ear as she heard the sound of Chip beginning to run.

“Okay, okay, I’m grabbing a baseball bat and locking myself in the living room,” Chip told her, Jay sniffled and pressed her forehead against the back of the seat in front of her again, listening to the sound of the engine humming as the wheels bumped along the road.  “I’m gonna put you on hold.”

“No!” Jay almost shouted, barely able to keep her voice low enough that hopefully the figure wouldn’t hear, although she was sure that it didn’t matter at that point.

“I need to call the cops right now, Jay,” Chip said, “And when they get here, I’m gonna get them to come help you, too.”

“They won’t get here in time!” Jay tried to insist, but Chip had already put the call on hold.  She listened to the sound of the phone beeping, breathing heavily and barely able to suck enough oxygen into her lungs before she was sobbing again.

The bus continued to rumble down the road, and Jay felt the vibrations go all the way through her skull.

“No, no, no, no, no…” Jay moaned, rubbing her thighs as she froze in her seat, hearing that same creaking sound that she’d been hearing this entire time.  She’d started to associate it with the figure moving closer and closer since the only time that she had ever heard it was before the creature got closer.

“I just wanna get off… I just wanna go home…” Jay sobbed to herself, covering her mouth with one hand to muffle the tears that continued to stream down her face and the shaky, gasping breaths that she was barely able to inhale and exhale.  “I wanna get off… I wanna go home.”

The phone suddenly beeped and Chip was back.  Jay heard him swear loudly, his voice sounding even more panicked than before.  He let out a faint, terrified sigh.

“Chip?” Jay asked nervously, almost feeling a flash of hope that maybe he had some good news to share with her.  The back of her neck burned with the eyes of that thing staring at her.  Jay shifted uncomfortably.

“This is bad, man… This is really bad…” Chip muttered, his voice shaking.  Jay had never heard his voice shake like that.  “I couldn’t get through to the police… There was just some weird sound on the line like—”

“Like creaking…” Jay interrupted, knowing what he was going to say before he even needed to say it.

“Yeah!  And I think—”

Chip was cut off by the sound of glass shattering in the background, Chip shouted loudly and swore and Jay bit down on the inside of her mouth to keep from whimpering.  She heard the sound of Chip moving around and then him mumbling to himself.

“I think… I think someone’s in the house…” Chip whispered.

Jay heard that same creaking noise, louder and longer, over and over from behind her.  Jay tried pulling on the cord by the window again, yanking on it as hard as she could as that same dinging sound echoed through the bus, almost drowning out the sound of the creaking.  The low, steady groan, the sound of creaking like an old house settling or rotten wood right before it was about to break.

“I can’t take this anymore,” Jay sobbed, wiping her face on the back of her hand, “I’m gonna go straight to the driver.”

Jay hooked her fingers around the back of the seat in front of her and used whatever strength she had left in her fear to pull herself up to her feet.  She pretty much ran down the center aisle, tripping over her feet and stumbling as the bus went over pothole after pothole on the horribly paved streets of the city.  She grabbed onto one of the railings to keep herself from falling.

“Hello?” Jay shouted at the divider that separated the driver from the rest of the bus, “Are you in there?”

She pounded her fist against the glass hoping that maybe the bus driver would take notice and then maybe she could get off this hellscape of a bus.  She just wanted to go home.  She just wanted to see Chip again.  She wanted to do more than just hear his voice over the phone, she wanted to be able to sit in his arms and have him tell her that all of this was just another bad dream and that everything was okay.

He was her grip on reality, and Jay was starting to lose that.

“Why aren't you listening to me?  Why won’t you listen?” Jay sobbed, pressing her face against the frosted glass as if that might help her see through.

“Jay, what’s happening?” Chip said, although his voice sounded grainy and far away, filtered through a few layers of static.

“I can’t see him…” Jay sobbed, dragging her fingers down the outside of the glass, her heart pounded in her chest, and she tried knocking again.  “The glass is frosting over.”  She pounded her fist again.

The sound of knocking reverberated in her ears, and she realized that she was also hearing it from the other end of the phone, the sound of knocking at a wooden door.  Pounding hard against the door to Chip’s apartment.

“It’s… It’s right outside,” Chip whispered, his voice cutting out from all the static.

Jay heard that creaking noise again, but this time she could also hear it coming from Chip’s end of the phone as well .  Jay’s breath hitched and she felt like she was going to faint, the bus around her spinning.  The eyes burned on the back of her head and Jay could feel the sweat running down her back.  Her breath steamed against the frosted glass.

She turned, keeping her eyes towards the floor and holding onto the railing with one hand.

“I can see her…” Jay muttered, staring at the blackened, distorted figure that had been stalking her.  She refused to look up any farther , staring at it as it hovered ominously in the middle aisle, watching Jay closely.   “She’s standing in the aisle… Looking at me…” 

Jay looked up, it didn’t matter if she looked at the thing anymore, she had already seen its face enough that night.  What else would looking at it do to her at this point?

It wasn’t just the picture that distorted the figure’s face , but it seemed like when Jay looked at it, her entire vision blurred around the edges, making it hard for her to look anywhere else but at the woman’s face.  Everything else was too blurry, and Jay’s vision spun as she stared at the dark, shadowed face, the odd tendrils that covered half of its face like hair. 

The skin was sagging, almost like it was beginning to fall from the skull, an odd melted hole that could have possibly been a mouth at one point twisted and moved as if it was trying to speak.  The figure towered well above Jay, high enough that it seemed like it shouldn’t even be able to fit inside the bus.  Its proportions seemed wrong like it was stretching up into the ceiling and far above the top of the bus, but it was still inside the cabin just fine.

“Her face…” Jay muttered, knees shaking bad enough that she was having a hard time keeping herself standing, “There’s something wrong with her face, Chip.”

It was impossible to read the expression on the woman’s face, it was like there was nothing there to even read, but at the same time, Jay knew that it was looking at her.  The eyes felt like hot coals against her skin, traveling up and down her form like a predator looking up at its prey.  Jay shivered and cowered away, tears filling her eyes as the strange entity watched her.  

It didn’t move any more than the odd swaying along with the movement and rumbling of the bus.  The engine was so loud up front near the driver and Jay could barely hear anything over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.  She panted heavily, swallowing greedy gulps of air like she had never learned how to breathe before.

Chip was silent on the other end of the line although Jay could still hear her phone buzzing with the signal of an ongoing call.  She could only hear the bus rumbling.

“Chip?” Jay asked nervously, feeling her breath catch in her throat and her heart pounding.  

The silence seemed to stretch for hours.

Then, faintly, and thick with static, Jay heard the sound of Chip’s voice cutting through the buzzing.

“You were right… Jay…” His voice clipped awkwardly when he said her name.  It sounded like every word he spoke was forced out of his throat, his tone jumping strangely and the inflections of his words off.  It sounded like he was speaking through a voice changer, but it was so distinctly Chip that Jay made no mistake. “You shouldn’t have looked at her face…”

Jay felt her heart drop.  She heard the creaking sound and saw the figure begin to move, disproportionate limbs swinging awkwardly like branches of a tree swaying in the wind.  It moved unnaturally, like something like that was never meant to move and the sound it made so close was almost deafening.  Creaking wood , creaking joints moving into action with a speed that Jay never could have imagined it could move with.

Jay didn’t even have time to scream.

Her phone hit the floor and she heard the sound of beeping as the call disconnected.