Existential Hide and Seek

                                                                    For John.

No one ever expects the road to go on forever, looking into the abyss I began to wonder if this road would ever end.  Seeing horizons appear and fade in the distance there was something very therapeutic about riding this bus.  Maybe it’s that my life is in the hands of a total stranger controlling a machine that could potentially murder anyone who stepped callously in front of them, or maybe it’s the rumbling of the engine that beat against my head as I let it rivet off the window.   Either way I was being escorted to my shitty little town in a shitty bus that somehow made me feel a bit more comfortable than normal. As I drifted I realised there have been only a few comforting things said in this existence 1, that the sun won’t die out for billions of years 2, lost socks aren’t a mystery- they’re usually just sucked up by the dryer and 3, there is no such thing as nothingness.  The latter always manages to make me feel a bit better when I’ve been bored or scared.   Even in the quietest moments I would try and listen out for the sounds of my breath, of a ticking clock, a slight breeze, or the murmur of air conditioning.  It runs a bit deeper than that as you would probably know.  It goes along the lines of even when we’re not here, something is still here, so even if I wasn’t in a room- with that logic, I would still be in the room- as there can never be nothing in that room.
Yes I realise these are tangents of a raving lunatic but I believe I’m quite sound in mind as I think this.  I’ve discovered the most existential of all discoveries, life before life.  I would constantly wonder if there were suppressed memories hiding in the back of my mind somewhere of a former me in the plague coughing my final breath as the diseased ridden fleas would bite at me till I bled and swelled up. 
Not allowing my mind to drift too often I hazed my eyes over the travelling time bomb of my transport. On the seat three in front of me was a man in his eighties, he smelt of piss and booze, and I wondered how anyone could live like that. Sitting in his piss soaked pants letting the soaked underwear crassly itch his skin, swigging of his Calsberg Extra strength while it comes out the other side instantaneously dripping down off his leg onto the floor. 
But it occurred to me- I could be that guy. Easily.  There was barely a few life choices between him and I.  Hell, give it a few years and a few hits of apathy I could be that pissed and uncaring way before he ever got that way- it started to sound more like a challenge than a terrifying future.   As I was watching and over analysing the old man he got up, shook the remaining piss of his leg and got off the bus at the edge of Granny Hall Lane.
Heading pass the tall tree that used to stand by Bute Avenue a little boy got on the bus, his hair looked like it had been cut with an uneven bowl by a mum too busy watching her soaps omnibus, squatted shoulders he hid himself between the free papers and disabled seats.  It was surreal seeing someone so shy- I was a thousand life times away from being shy.   By that I would roughly say ten years.  If it weren’t for a certain ex-girlfriend I might still by that boy.  I’d like to think that he would have eventually learned not to put so much gel in his hair- it’s never good when the back of your head looks liked someone has jizzed all over it.  The boy seemed to vanish in front of me, in his place was a comic strip, a British comic that seemed to forget to be funny and relate to his ambitions of being a mischievous boy; if only he had the courage.
As Finkle Street approached a scrawny kid got on the bus talking shit with his friends about how they were going to play hide and seek in the cemetery, making sure everyone on the bus heard, I looked out the window trying to faze him out- some people are just annoying to be around. He was one of those people.    My head felt like it was about to explode while he and all his friends talked so loudly but has we drove by the Wreck- that’s the local park for those not in the know- his friends left him and he was on his own.  Solemnly he hushed and shrivelled in his seat, losing wind like sails on a calm night at sea.  Seeing him muted, I felt bad for him, like his friends were his energy, leaving him with little or no purpose.
The bus broke down two stops from my house, but it was all up hill, I was too exhausted to walk. I decided to close my eyes until we started moving, but the bus stayed stationary.  The rumbling against the windowpane suddenly stopped, then silence.

The young boy and the teenager got up and checked the driver but he had gone, and suddenly I began to wonder just how long I had closed my eyes. 
“Maybe he went out to get help.”
“Didn’t anyone notice where he went?”
“I was asleep.”
“I was just day dreaming.”
“I didn’t know I needed to pay attention either.”
“Hey who just said maybe he went out to get help?”
“I thought it was you?”
“I thought it was him.”
“I thought it was you.”
The three of us got off the bus and we seemed to be in a place we all recognised but couldn’t put our finger on.  “I wonder why the old man got off before any of us.”
“Because that was his stop.”
“We’re all meant to get off at the same stop.”
“Maybe we never reached him.”
I thought to myself the possibilities of having my own selves walking toward a building that seemed no different to any other middle class home in the world, a fancy road that sneaked into the middle of nowhere in a middle of nowhere town. “So we just go home?”
No we don’t just go home, you go home if you want to. You go where you want to go, that’s what it’s always been like.    I didn’t say this of course.  That’s what I wanted to say but talking to yourself is just crazy. 
“So do we go in?”
“You can. I want to see what’s around.”
“You know what’s around.”
And I did, I had lived there for years but I think he wasn’t ready to go back in; childhood homes.  I loved it but too many memories, I wasn’t ready, there could be anything in there, anything I couldn’t like. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was meant to do, but as I opened it I thought to myself that the sun hadn’t died yet, so that was one thing.  Whenever I get unsure about things I retreat into thinking about those three things that bring me comfort.  The sun, it was still shining. I know it’s a dumb thing to comfort me, but if you think long and hard about it it’s nice to have that one thing consistent.  There when you’re somewhere familiar yet totally foreign, something that’s always there.  I watched the youngest of Us go in first. He opened the glass door to the front of the house- I found that a bit bizarre considering I never once used that door growing up.  I couldn’t see him anymore as it shut behind him, not hearing any noises; I assumed that he managed to get in okay. The teenager me seemed almost as anxious as the younger me to get in there but something was holding him back.
“It won’t be the same. Nothing ever is. We can’t just pretend like nothing’s changed just by opening a door.  Nothing will ever be the same again.”
“I don’t really know what to expect either. But I don’t think we have much choice, we could be going forward, going backwards, we could be going nowhere but if you don’t try to go somewhere then what’s left?”
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself with your ‘life experience’.”
“Nob head. I’m only trying to help.”
“I know you are. But try listen- if you can.  What if there isn’t anything behind the door? The young Us went and that’s fine. He always had a lot more faith than either of us.  And I don’t know about you but I certainly have a hell of a lot less faith than I used to.”
“You can’t make it about that.  You’ve just got to put it all aside- what if we go in together?”
“Hey- I’m okay. I got this.”
Instead of going through the glass door he went to the wooden entrance around the back of the house, the one we used so often and that seemed to be the gateway to my whole youth.   I looked through the glass panel where the younger me walked through but all I could see were beiges and greys, nothing of clarity.  I was hoping for a moment there I could sneak ahead and find out for sure.  I walked to the back of the house, the garage door was wide open but deserted, all what was there was my Dads old toolbox and a chest freezer with a lone bag of frozen peas.  Rain started heavily pouring down, so I sat atop the fridge freezer wondering if I was going to make a choice- wondering if by making no choice at all was in fact a choice.- I know, I know, it’s cheating.  You don’t understand though.  This is nerve wracking.  You don’t know what it’s like being faced with anything this consequential. What if I make the wrong decision? What if I go through the wrong door? What if I shouldn’t be at this house at all? What if I should have never left the bus.
As I beat my feet against the wood that held my Dad’s old tools I heard a- tap, knock, tap- the bus driver was there, hovering against the entrance in long black garments. The driver looked older than me, just slightly, with grey hair running across the front of his fringe. “Have you decided what you want to do?”
“Does everyone decide?”
He said not everyone. He even said that he hadn’t decided himself, well at least I think that’s what he said, it was more in his actions than the words he spoke.  But as he left there was a strange sense of urgency that I had to choose whether I would stay or if I should go.  It was a bad moment to realise I wasn’t as cool as Joe Strummer. 
The rain momentarily stopped chucking it down as I stepped outside.  Both doors seemed to be taken in the house, and all I had been busy doing was staring at my socks, one red and one blue.  It’s always comforting to know their buddies are in the bottom of a dryer somewhere keeping other company. 
The bus drove off and I thought that it was time to make a choice. Remembering old friends I headed to the cemetery for a game of hide and seek.  I wasn’t sure if it would mean I would be gone forever but I was feeling confident that there wouldn’t be nothing.  There is never such a thing as nothing.   I guess I always found that comforting.  I had walked for a while and I ended walking to the bus stop my younger self got on, at the bottom of the path were some faces I recognised, I figured one way or another I would be there with them, my friends. I had just watched every life before my life, and my life now will just be the life the will precede my next.  Be it an old man or bus driver, there’s usually always a next.