Stranger

I wasn’t a fan of the dark.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of it per se, perhaps just wary of the things hidden out of sight, lurking under the cover of darkness. Watching. Waiting. Like how people weren’t scared of the ocean, but rather the perilous things concealed within its shadowy depths.

I didn’t mind the walk to the bus stop, even though the streetlights were blown out and the alleyways were shrouded in an inky black cloak. Because at least the streets were empty. I could feel that they were empty.

My watch buzzed. Reminder: Meds.

“Right,” I muttered to myself. I forgot them too often to keep count. I had three alarms set, each one causing an incessant vibration to course through my arm. Two white pills were swallowed dry. Take with food… I never remembered that part.

The street was quiet and deserted. I couldn’t help but think that silence was perhaps another thing people should be afraid of. The suffocating, ever-present silence that set every nerve ending in your body alight, made every sound take the appearance of a skulking ghoul in your mind, watching with eyes like menacing embers – The remnants of a fatal inferno, slowly extinguishing in a forgotten corner of your subconscious.

I pushed a pair of earbuds into my ears, turning the volume up to maximum. The sound of Nirvana blasted loudly enough to rattle my skull and stab into my eardrums.

In the distance, a pair of headlights stretched across the abandoned street. The bus wheels squealed their disapproval as the driver made a last-minute stop, barely catching sight of me beneath the burnt-out streetlights. The man probably would have missed me if I didn’t take the bus at the same time every night. 1:28 am. The numbers appeared on my watch in a flash of red as my second alarm went off.

I wasn’t a fan of the bus, either.

I understood why the lights were turned off. It was almost half-past one in the morning. Any rational person would try to nap on the long ride home, and any rational driver would hate the distraction of blinding lights in their peripherals.

But this darkness was different.

This darkness wasn’t empty.

I could feel it at the back of my neck, a nagging itch, a puff of phantom air, like a mosquito landing on my skin or a loose hair brushing against the nape of my neck. Eyes. Much like those of the ghosts slinking across the frayed edges of my consciousness, these eyes were like knives against my skin, except the blade did nothing more than… just… barely… touch me, the cool kiss of metal promising something much worse, promising nightmares becoming reality, if I turned around.

So I didn’t.

But I didn’t need to.

I knew whose eyes they were.

There had only ever been one other person riding this route with me. A stranger, sinking into the furthest, darkest corner of the near-abandoned bus, long limbs pulled in as to make himself disappear completely. I had only caught glimpses of him, only caught whiffs of him. A dirty black sweater. Long, stringy dark hair. The smell of something earthy and slightly rancid.

The stranger never met my eyes, but as soon as I faced the front of the bus, that feeling returned –- That creeping foreboding signalling a tenebrous stare, a ghoulish gaze unrelenting in its intensity, as if the man it belonged to longed to take me apart, to tear flesh from bone and peel away the sinew, searching every piece of me, deciphering me without a single word passing in the stale air between us.

1:30. My third alarm went off. Had I taken my meds? I was feeling anxious, so perhaps I’d forgotten. I took one pill instead of two. I’d be half-right or half-wrong, either way avoiding the more dire consequences of forgetting altogether.

The dim city lights raced by the bus windows, extending trails of neon colours through the fogged-up glass, lightly dotted with residual raindrops. Speckled light shifted across the rows of seats, sickly beams stretching and receding increasingly slowly, streetlights becoming farther and farther apart as the neighbourhoods became seedier, the houses squat and decrepit.

The glass was cool against my skin as I let my head fall against the bus window, ignoring the incessant rattling against my skull. Radiohead formed the soundtrack to rapidly blurring buildings passing by in a haze of black and neon. The bus seats were oily and scratchy, but I was tired enough to curl into them nonetheless.

Working at the hospital was draining. I could feel the exhaustion of a twelve-hour shift seeping into of my muscles. I rubbed absently at the back of my neck, hoping to chase away the phantom fingers curling against the base of my skull. Heavy eyelids dropped without my permission, creating a darkness far more comforting than that of shadowy rows of cobalt seats and graffitied ads.

“You’re on this bus a lot.”

The sound of a hushed voice jerked me awake. I blinked frantically, digging my palms into my eye sockets, rubbing at my tired, stinging eyes. I must have fallen asleep, must have dreamt that someone spoke to me…

I turned the music down, glancing around the empty bus – the too-empty bus. The far corner was unoccupied. A few crumpled, torn plastic bags bursting with haphazard items reflected the flash of headlights streaking across the windows, but their owner was nowhere to be found.

I smelled him before I saw him, the familiar stench of stale body odour and something sweet, like rotting flowers. If I had never smelled death before, I might have imagined it would be reminiscent of that.

Nevertheless, the sight of a hooded figure slumped into the seat behind me sent my heart leaping into my throat.

“Fuck!” I jumped, blood pounding in my ears impossibly loudly. My whole body prickled, frigid needles piercing me from the inside before releasing microscopic spiders, sending them scuttling beneath my skin.

“You’re on this bus a lot.” The voice was quiet. Low. Devoid of emotion. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” the stranger added. An afterthought.

“What? I-” I let out a slow breath, attempting to calm my electrified nerves. “I guess so. Yeah.” I didn’t point out that the same went for him.

Feeble beams of yellowy headlights sliced across the stranger’s face, briefly illuminating the man’s haunting features. They were the sort of features that should have belonged to a tragic aristocrat from a distant age, painstakingly echoed onto canvas and hung in the eerie, cobwebbed halls of an empty manor. Gathering dust. Somehow beautiful in their neglect.

“What’s your deal?” The man folded his arms on the seat next to me, his head slowly dropping onto them. His movements were calm and lethargic, syrupy. Long dark hair spilled onto his forearms and over the back of the seat. The way the light reflected off the saturated strands made me inch closer to the window.

“What’s my… deal?” I echoed. The stranger’s head tilted upwards, his dark eyes ominous grottos containing unknown perils.

“Yeah. Why are you on the bus at…” He peeked at my arm, at the neon numbers displayed on my watch. “1:47 am?”

I briefly wondered if those unsettling eyes had blinked even once since trapping me.

“I- uh. My job. I work late.”

Desperate for a distraction, I jammed my earbuds back into my ears. My playlist was on a loop. I’d already heard this song twice today.

“You’re not gonna ask me anything?”

My music was so loud that I almost missed the stranger’s question. I pulled out one earbud yet again.

“What?”

Two slow blinks. They did nothing to soften the intensity of the man’s gaze.

“The polite thing to do would be to ask me something about myself, too.”

“The polite…” I couldn’t help but frown slightly at the words. The itch at the back of my neck had returned. I shifted, my mouth suddenly unbearably dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth when I swallowed. “I don’t- um…”

“I’m Aaron.”

“Okay…”

There was a beat of silence before I caught myself. “I- I’m Katie,” I added, tone guarded and somewhat clipped. I shot Aaron a tight-lipped smile, the kind of smile I offered the chatty addicts outside the hospital or my high friends telling me about their newest revolutionary idea.

“It’s nice to meet you, Katie.” The slow half-smile stretching Aaron’s lips made me feel like I was missing something, like Aaron was sharing an inside joke with himself. One I should have been in on.

I suppressed a shudder as I purposefully turned away from him. There was a thin heat growing beneath my skin, reaching to caress the chill passing along its surface. I couldn’t help but glance back at Aaron, just to find that his position hadn’t changed, his head still resting atop his folded arms on the back of the seat next to me. Just… watching me.

“You still haven’t asked me a question.”

I blew air through my lips, shaking my head as I wracked my brain for something to say. Maybe if I asked him the question he so desperately seemed to want, then he’d finally take the hint and give me some space.

“Uhh… what’s your deal, Aaron? What keeps you up until 2 am?”

“If I told you I was a stripper, would you believe me?”

The not-answer came quickly. I blinked, turning the words over.

“I’m fucking with you.” Aaron wasn’t smiling. He adjusted his position, his head now facing forwards instead of towards me. A greasy strand of hair fell in front of his eyes. He spoke softly, words trailing off between partially-formed thoughts. “I’m sort of… between gigs at the moment... I just took this bus after the bar once by accident… and saw you here… so I started taking it every night… to see you again.”

My blood turned to ice, frigid snakes slithering through the tunnels of my veins.

The tense silence was punctuated by the sound of squealing tires stopping for a red light, bathing the bus in crimson. Aaron smiled, modestly crooked teeth appearing bloodstained. Unnerving.

“I’m fucking with you again, Katie,” Aaron whispered.

I cleared my throat softly.

“Oh. Right. Funny.”

The gentle puttering of the bus engine mingled with the tinny, distorted sound of my forgotten music. Aaron’s short bark of mirthless laughter cut through them both.

“Maybe I sell drugs by the clubs…” Aaron moved so quickly I almost missed it. I blinked and he was already in the seat directly in front of me, eyes black in the rich red light. There was nothing comforting about their darkness.

“Or maybe… I have nowhere to go so I ride public transit until it stops running.” Restless fingers drummed against the seat. “Or I’m an insomniac. Wait, no. I’m not even human so I don’t need to sleep.” The corner of Aaron’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “Would you believe any of that?”

My brows drew together in a soft frown, my lethargic brain attempting to make sense of Aaron’s train of thought.

“Are you… do you always just lie about things?”

“Mostly, yeah,” Aaron said. His gaze slid towards the passing houses outside, glassy eyes reflecting boarded-up windows and graffitied walls, crumbling structures and rusty discarded items littering cramped yards. Aaron’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “You can pretend to be whoever you want if you don’t mind lying.”

A surge of emotion made my breath catch, a thin heat rising to my face. I’d done that a lot in my youth, lied about anything and everything, desperate to be anyone other than Katie Lemieux, the girl who came to school with poorly hidden bruises and no lunch, who never had the money to go on school field trips or sports tournaments. I’d even gone so far as to have the school bus drop me off at an address four blocks away so no one would have to see what kind of neighbourhood I really came from.

My voice was gentle as I asked: “So who are you pretending to be right now, Aaron?”

This time, Aaron’s smile could almost pass as genuine. Appreciative.

“Good question.”

His fingers’ drumming continued, picking up speed until it was a rapid metronome, forming the rhythm for a frantic melody running through Aaron’s mind.

“Such a good question, in fact, that I’ll give you a truthful answer to your last one. Or a hint to it, I guess.” Aaron shifted excitedly, his head lifting for the first time since he’d switched seats. His eyes held a glimmer of mischief, of fiendish delight. “One of the things I told you was true. The rest were mostly lies but… one of them was true.”

Centipedes crawled up my neck as I recalled Aaron’s previous answers. So I started taking it every night… To see you again… The intrigued, expectant look in Aaron’s eyes made me recoil slightly, pressing my back against the rough seats. A hesitant laugh passed my lips.

“It’s that you’re a stripper, right?” My voice sounded thin. Empty.

Aaron’s laugh was even emptier, a deep, dark well that extended downwards for eternity.

“You got me.”

I anticipated Aaron’s next move before he even went for it, countering it smoothly by sliding into the seat closest to the aisle, knowing Aaron would attempt to occupy it. The way his lips pressed together in a soft pout made it clear that I’d guessed correctly. But after a few seconds of hesitation, Aaron hopped over the backrest, dropping into my newly vacant seat. The rush of air accompanying his movements almost made me gag. The smell reminded me of a graveyard, dirt and floral decay mingling with something rotten, somehow embodying Death more accurately than the stench of decomposing flesh.

Aaron was watching me a little too closely, like how my ex used to look at me before deciding to make a move. I shifted uncomfortably, willing myself to tear my eyes away from Aaron, avoid getting sucked into that haunting gaze. Aaron’s head cocked to the side, a teasing smile playing on his porcelain features. The innocence of the gesture was marred by the mildly threatening aura clinging to him, seeping from his pores like last night’s whiskey.

That’s it, I thought sharply.

I jerked the cord, a red light appearing at the front of the bus, signalling the driver to stop.

“This isn’t your stop.”

Aaron stared up at me as I got to my feet, putting one of my earbuds back into my ears.

“I’m - uh… I’m visiting a friend…” I lied, my tongue tripping over the words. My heart was beating impossibly fast. Images of shadowy figures and deep black eyes watching from the darkness assaulted my mind, appearing in the corners of my vision. I didn’t care that it would be a long walk home; I simply couldn’t stand to be stuck on a bus with Aaron any longer.

“Oh. Have fun.” The artificial lightness of Aaron’s tone did nothing to soothe the undercurrent of disappointment permeating his words.

The bus squealed to a halt, doors rattling as they opened. The blast of fresh air that awaited me was much appreciated, a salve spreading across the raw, bruising borders of my mind.

“See you around, Katie Lemieux.”

A low, velvety voice echoed across the empty street as the bus doors shuddered closed.

I stood beneath the flickering streetlight, watching the bus’ rear red lights recede, fading into the distance until they formed the likeness of a pair of eyes, a menacing crimson gaze. A lurking demon. A skulking figure, shrouded in darkness.

The streetlights hummed and dimmed.

The eyes lingered.

And I realized I’d never given Aaron my full name.