The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 27
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

No Fare Today

The driver waved him onto the bus. It was half-full with fools. A few of them whispered into their phones but mostly they just sat there like dummies. All over them was a white dust, powder in all their crevices, so that they looked like a bunch of unfried chickens. In the windowed sunlight the dust hung slablike in the air.
          One girl in a window seat looked half-dead. He sat by her. Three streets later, at her stop, he pretended not to hear when she said, Excuse me, Excuse me, and eventually she had to sort of rub past him and move his knee with her hand to get out. He thought about going after her but decided it was better to stash the money instead.
          Two stops later he got off, put the stuff away safely in his apartment and headed back downtown.
          Everywhere there were sirens and flashing lights. Everyone was out on the street. If they were moving, they were moving away from where he was going. He steered away from cops—a million cops—and took the quietest streets he could find. He put a dopey expression on his face and if a cop looked at him he veered off, so it took a long time to get back there and when he did most of the shops had developed some protection: owners onsite, police, crowds, boarded windows. Loose sheets of paper plastered the streets, blown against curbs like snowdrifts. Every now and then one fluttered down to the ground, like a memo from God.
          Eventually he got into a jeweler’s through a back stairwell. No one had been here yet, maybe the owners had died today. No way to get into the safe, but he broke into the display cabinets and took the most expensive things he could find. Only what could fit into his pockets. How would it look to walk around right now with a briefcase or a sack? Already it was feeling unsafe.
          He walked a few blocks and caught a bus. The sun was going down. He didn’t spare a glance for the driver, just scoped out the options. Nobody looked like much, but a skinny young guy with nice shoes got off after four stops—the woman next to him hugged him as he left—and Louis followed. Indulgent, but why not? Today was like a holiday.
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