Stimp, the Prophet Man

Visions: On the Bus

God on the bus

This is episode 4 in a storytelling experiment. Read each episode as a standalone chapter, or start at the beginning. Enjoy!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

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-Recap-

Stimp wakes up in the hospital after being hit by a car. He’s hurt, he’s blind, and he’s hearing voices. God is talking to him, and he has an offer. Stimp’s sight, for God’s words. Go to the church near the park where he sleeps and deliver a message. It sounds easy enough, right?

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Visions

God didn’t talk to Stimp in the hospital, not after his eyes were opened. In fact, there wasn’t a sentence uttered to him while he finished out the rest of his stay, not by God or anyone else. Doctors and nurses filed in and out, shuffling papers and saying words, but not to him. He had bruised ribs and a fractured wrist. The rest of him was intact. His brain had been shaken around by the impact of the car, but it was only a minor concussion.

The day he was released, they gave him a bus pass and a prescription for some meds. Pain killers of the opiate variety.

“Don’t sell this to anyone please.”

Stimp wondered if they said that to all their patients.

“What makes you think I’d give out my goodies?” he said smiling up at her.

The nurse didn’t laugh as he edged out of the borrowed wheelchair, just turned and walked back through the automatic doors. He stood there, adjusting to life on his feet again, amazed at how easily they turned him back to the world after his close call. He was a man reborn, brought back from the edge, but the busy world kept on turning without a second glance.

He turned his back to the cement building and limped to the main road, holding his arm up, a middle finger outstretched to the hospital behind him. He got to the bus stop, the covered bench empty and cold, and sat down. His ribs hurt like hell. He could barely breathe without shuddering from the pain. Sleeping on the ground was going to be impossible. He would have to stay sober for a while. See if he could get a bed at the shelter for a few weeks.

They had given him his stuff back, divvied it up like an old jail clerk does for the felon before he hits the streets and gets back to it. He had his coat and backpack, but most of the belongings in them were gone, likely scattered by the force of the SUV plunging into him. He guessed they didn’t bother picking up a homeless guy’s things out of the middle of the road, not when he was laid out dying. The vultures would have descended in that part of town anyway.

Wonder which lucky bastard got my stuff.

He thought of Three then, and dug through his coat pockets. The brown bag was gone. There was only a pack of cigarettes, the ones Juniper had gifted him. He smoked one and planned a return to Three’s apartment that afternoon. Maybe he could trade some pills for another hit. Stimp lit a second cigarette and smoked half before he heard the screeching blue bus pull around the corner. He stubbed the embers out on the concrete in an ashy swipe, then tucked it back into the pack. 

He took the steps slowly, feeling the soft squish around his ribs and hip as he climbed. The bus was warm and quiet, a stark contrast to the white walled hospital with its’ lights buzzing, the beep of machines, the routine of pokes and prods into the night, all with the well wished, Get Some Rest, tacked on to the interruption of sleep.

Stimp found a seat and sat back as softly as he could. The bus bumped forward into motion, two doors wheezing shut as he held his breath, then coughed. A lightning bolt of pain surged through him. He closed his eyes to envision the drug store on the corner where he could pick up his pain killers. When he opened them, he saw he wasn’t alone. There was a middle aged black woman in a brown wool coat. On her head, she wore a large white winter hat.

It was early spring and the day was cool, but not cold enough for wool. Not cold enough for that hat by a long shot. A strange blue-grey cloud, thin as mist in the rising sun of early morning emanated from her, and he sensed a bubbling motion like waters—like many waters—rushing around—no—within her.

He closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. The cloud was gone. There was just the woman in her seat, waiting to get to where she was going. But she was sitting sideways on the edge of the seat, her legs in the aisle. She stared at him. Her eyes were brown and strange. She had beautiful lips that didn’t smile. He looked away.

“Stimp.”

She said his name and he whipped his head back, fighting to recognize her. She was turned around in her seat now, shifting impossibly without sound between his glances, her long piano playing fingers now gripped over the top of the gray leather, dripping down the back side of the seat. The image of her shimmered in desert haze, and he had that sense of water in motion again. A river.

“Me?” He pointed at himself like a character in an old cartoon.

She nodded, still not smiling, and he wondered how a woman dressed like that could know his name. His street name.

“You remember our deal?”

“I don’t think I know you,” he said and turned to face the front. Faces passed through his mind faster than the white road strips that appeared and then whooshed beneath the bus tires. Was she a dealer? Someone he’d made a promise to?

She leaned, and he looked up toward the driver, urging the guy to turn around. The man glanced back in the mirror, and Stimp waited for him to say something. Tell the woman to get back into her seat. But he turned his eyes lazily to the road in front of them.

“I gave you your eyes,” she hissed, the yelled whisper echoing to the back of the bus.

Stimp swallowed hard, his heart pulsing in his stomach, and her mouth curved slightly at the fear in him.

“I—I didn’t recognize you in that hat. I remember.”

She nodded. The bus slowed to a stop, and she stood up, the frame of her edging higher and higher, until she almost touched the ceiling. Stimp stared up at her, his mouth open a little. She waited at the steps, gazing at the empty bus stop for a second, then looked at him. She winked. 

“Don’t forget.”

“But I don’t know what to s—,“ he started to yell at her, but she had already disappeared down the steps. The bus driver stared at him in the rear view mirror.

“You okay buddy?”

Stimp stood and tried to open the window to tell her that he didn’t have a message to give, but the sidewalk stood empty and still. A brown paper bag, crumpled and grease stained rolled by, an urban tumbleweed.

“I need you to sit down,” the bus driver said.

Stimp sat and stared straight ahead, watching the patterns in the gray leather seat, waiting for his eyes to flicker and betray him, convince him that the woman hadn’t been real, that it was all a hallucination, and not a vision like the ones given to the prophets of old.