[Matt Q]

THREE BUSES

We sit on a grass verge by a bus-stop in the countryside and wait for a bus that comes once an hour. While we wait we pick daisies and then thread them together through holes we make in their stalks with our fingernails. An hour passes. The bus arrives, and it’s full. We don’t want to stand – I have my varicose veins and you have your bad back – but we don’t want to wait. We get on and find that it is packed with cheese salesmen loaded down with their samples. This is my idea of heaven, but you have your allergies. We go back to the verge. We pluck more daisies and make chains that branch and join up again in ever more elaborate patterns. Another hour passes and the next bus comes. We climb on. The passengers are all sheep. We are about to pay for our tickets when you grab my arm. You have seen their zippers. Wolves, you whisper. We back away. There are no daisies left to pick, but you have a small tube of glue and I have a magnifying glass, so we set about restoring the daisies to their original positions on the verge. The next bus arrives. This time the occupants look normal and the bus seems only half full. Optical illusionists, the driver says in a conspiratorial whisper as we pay for our tickets, there’s a conference in the next village. We try each empty seat in turn, but they all turn out to be occupied. We can only see this from a certain angle and only from very close up, and this leads to a number of awkward encounters. We suspect the seats that appear full may actually be empty, but we prefer not to risk finding out. We decide to stand.
.

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a few typos fixed -- thanks Carl!

"The bus arrives. It’s full, and we don’t want to stand" -> "The bus arrives, and it’s full. We don’t want to stand ... " -> "

[Carl Copeland]

Loopy, lupine and luscious, Matt. But I only have time to flag two typos:

and the thread them together
from a from certain angle

Oh, and you might want to italicize “Wolves” as you do later with direct speech.

[Matt Q]

Thanks Carl.

I've fixed the typos. That's what comes of last minute fiddling before posting. I've italicised "Wolves" -- it was italicised in my Word document, and got lost in the cut-and-paste.

And great to see you critting in Fiction, and to see the Fiction board moving a bit.

Matt

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Matt—

An alternate title might be “Two Old Hippies in Hell.” I really like the dreamlike, Di Chirico quality of the piece, and the subtle undercurrent of cartoonish humor. Lots of fun.

Glenn

[John Riley]

Matt, I’ll argue with you that this is a great prose poem but I’m so over the deciding and arguing about what short prose works are. I’ve taken to telling editors if they want my prose pieces it’s up to them to decide where to put it.

It’s really good, Matt. I can see your wide reading in the genre and this work emerging from your mind and in your style. I have no nits. I see Carl caught some typos. That’s good. Other than that all I can say is I feel—know—that the absurdity here comes from experience. It isn’t an idea you came up with you thought might work—of course, you thought of it—I mean it’s clearly born in experience. It doesn’t matter specific experiences or when, but the absurdity here doesn’t read like a mere idea. That’s what I’ve argued about Beckett and even Pinter. There characters are no more mere mind games than Hamlet was.

I’m going on. I like it and hope you do.

[Matt Q]

Glenn and John,

Thanks!

Glenn,

Yikes, I seen them as as hippies! Not too much to do on at a county bus-stop. I guess they should be on their smart phones, but phone reception's not great out in the sticks

John,

I'm glad this worked for you. I wouldn't put up much of argument against it being a prose poem. I also think of it as a prose poem, but it's narrative enough that I figured it could be critiqued as very short fiction, so I thought I'd post it here. Things seemed to be moving a bit in Fiction for a change and I thought I'd add to that.

Thanks again both,

Matt

[Carl Copeland]

Matt, the second typo has been doctored but not cured. Other than that, this kind of deadpan absurdism is exactly my cup of tea, and I think it’s done brilliantly. Let us know when you publish it.

[Matt Q]

Thanks Carl!

And thanks for double-checking the typos. Turns out I can't even fix typos properly!

One thing I'm not completely sure about:

"this leads to a number of awkward encounters".

I tried to find a way to show this happening rather than just stating it, but couldn't find anything way to do that that I liked. Though maybe it works fine in the general form.

-Matt

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

I tried to find a way to show this happening rather than just stating it, but couldn't find anything way to do that that I liked.

You mean something like “Ouch! Get off! said a disembodied voice”? No, I think you’ve shown us plenty, and leaving us to imagine the “awkward encounters” is very funny in its own laconic way.