Anger management

After work, she boarded a bus, the burden of her oversized-in-a-typically-female-way bag weighing her down on one side and a folder filled with origami patterns on the other. She swiped her transport card and nearly fell over when the bus abruptly shifted forward. She lurched two more times, on her way to the first empty non-reserved seat nearest to the front.

The driver was in an angry mood.

Her default reaction was to pray that he would feel better. So she did.

Why was he so angry? Perhaps his girlfriend had just broken up with him.

"Maybe he isn't angry. Maybe he's hungover. Or he's well-done-over on the betelut. I've seen them take the curves in a similar fashion, then grin, exposing a red mouth and missing teeth. I doubt the missing teeth had anything to do with the betelnut. Or maybe, technically, they did. People have pretty bad teeth in this country. In general..." She had that conversation with herself, as she balanced her purse and folder on her lap, held on to the front seat to keep from falling over, mentally scolded the driver for his recklessness and the sore muscles it would result in -- not to mention the high risk of whiplash -- and wondered if it would be safe to pull out her netbook.

He really was angry. At least, he drove like he was. She could feel the anger... thick, slimy and smelly. Like that chòu dòufu she'd had when she joined the Buddhist nun for her vegeterian meal on Thursday.

So angry, he drove like he didn't care if that sunset was the last his passengers ever saw.

So angry, he drove like even if every ancestor of his had appeared on the dashboard, though Ghost Festival was well behind him, he wouldn't have stopped.

So angry, he drove like he'd just heard, on the shortwave*, that Alcatraz was 3.2 miles away, he was Eli and the bus was his Book. (*Incidentally, "Heard It On the Shortwave" would make a great title for a song [not to plagiarize, or anything]: of the bop-ish variety. Or, "The Shortwave": a nail-biting Alfred Hitchock-style suspense. Or both. You heard it here, first.)

She was glad when she saw her stop approaching and hoped she wouldn't ring too soon. She also hoped he wouldn't close the doors too soon.

She made a point of making it safely to the front, to swipe her card again, before exiting. This resulted in a slower-than-usual pace, which he seemed to notice.

He still took off like a maniac and just missed making her the unwilling filling in a door sandwich.

3 minutes, 47 seconds, 1 red light and 4 stops later, he arrived at the bus depot.

As the last passenger descended, not a second later, he pulled down the blind, sprung from his seat, and grabbed at his armpit.

To remove the stray fire ant that had seized him, there.