The woman on the bus, and the world that exists among the stops.

I’m a truck driver. I’ve always been a truck driver, ever since my dad, a truck driver himself, lost his license because of a series of accidents he could never fully explain.<br><br>I’ve been on the road for almost thirty years, and I’ve seen my fair share of weirdness. The times when the GPS guides me through roads that don’t exist, the hitchhikers that disappear in the middle of the trip, the strange noises that come from inside the trailer during the night.<br><br>I had resigned myself to thinking that these things wouldn’t get any weirder than they already were. That was until everything changed, and the most inexplicable event of my career as a truck driver happened.<br><br>It started in a way that, looking back, makes a lot of sense. I was driving down a route I’d never seen before, but the GPS guided me through it with no problems and I didn’t think much of it. That was until I saw her.<br><br>She was walking down the middle of the road, around nine at night, and I almost ran her over. A very bad omen for a trucker, and something I’ve always been careful to avoid. The weirdest part was that she seemed to have come out of nowhere, and the road was completely straight for miles.<br><br>I stopped the truck right in front of her. I blew my horn, screamed at the window, and did everything I could to grab her attention but she didn’t respond. I was sure she was going to end my career, and possibly my life, until she finally looked up and I stopped the truck only a few feet away from her.<br><br>When I got out to check on her, she didn’t even look at me. She walked to the side of the truck, opened the door, and got in. There was something weird about the way she moved, like her joints didn’t quite work the same way ours did. But I didn’t say anything.<br><br>“Where you headed?” I asked.<br><br>She pointed towards the road ahead.<br><br>“Me too.” I replies. “You can come this far, but you have to get off eventually.”<br><br>She didn’t reply.<br><br>I shrugged and got back in the truck. It wasn’t weird, or at least not as weird as other hitchhikers I’d picked up. We were both silent until a couple of hours had passed, and she finally talked.<br><br>“Stop the truck, please.”<br><br>I looked to my right and saw her face for the first time. She was beautiful in a way I’d never seen before, like there was light coming from her skin and it illuminated everything around her. It’s not weird for women to feel attracted to me, I’m a good looking man if I say so myself, but this was different. I felt like her eyes were going through me, and I had the feeling that she knew everything about me.<br><br>“Sure” I said, clearing my throat and trying to compose myself. “Where are we stopping?”<br><br>“There’s a bus stop ahead. Stop there.”<br><br>I looked at the road, and there it was, as if it had appeared out of nowhere. A small bus stop, lit by a streetlight. There was no one in it, but as I stopped a few feet away, a bus appeared in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t slowing down, and I figured it was going to blow through the stop, but it stopped right behind me.<br><br>She opened the door and got out, walked towards the bus, and entered it. I stayed in the truck, dumbfounded, until the bus was gone.<br><br>I kept driving, trying to forget about the whole thing, but I couldn’t. It had been too strange, too out of the ordinary, and I couldn’t leave it behind. It was around three in the morning when I saw the same bus stop again, and I pulled over, against my better judgment.<br><br>The same woman was inside, sitting in the only seat of the small stop. When I approached her, she smiled.<br><br>“You know what this place is, don’t you?” She asked.<br><br>I didn’t, but I played along. I had to know what was going on. She stood up, took my hand, and guided me towards the road. The same bus was coming towards us, and this time I could read the writing on the side.<br><br>“Through Verses Route. From surreal to surreal.”<br><br>“There are worlds among worlds”, she said, without looking back at me. “And there are roads that exist between them. Routes that have their own laws, and work in their own ways.”<br><br>I didn’t have time to finish processing her words before the bus stopped in front of us, and she dragged me in.<br><br>The inside was empty, except for the driver, who was wearing a mask to conceal his face.<br><br>“Welcome to Through Verses Route.” He said, not looking back at us. “We stop in places that aren’t places, and we go through roads that aren’t roads. Buckle up.”<br><br>I looked around, and sure enough, the only seats were the two in the back. We sat there, and the bus started moving. I looked through the window, and I saw the road change. It was shifting and vibrating, like a heatwave on a hot day, and it made me feel sick to my stomach.<br><br>She took my hand, and I looked at her.<br><br>“You’ll get used to it.” She said.<br><br>“Who are you?” I asked her.<br><br>“I’m the woman on the bus.” She replied. “And you are the man who’s looking for answers.”<br><br>I thought about my entire life, and everything I’d seen on the road. All the mysteries, all the questions I had for the world. I had the feeling that this bus held some, if not all of the answers, and I decided to take a chance.<br><br>The bus stopped at the first stop, and I couldn’t see what was outside. The people who got in were like regular people, and only when I looked closer did I notice something was wrong. They had no faces, just blank slabs of skin where their features should have been.<br><br>They sat in the front seats, silent, and looked straight ahead. The woman squeezed my hand, and I didn’t say anything.<br><br>The bus kept moving, and it stopped only a couple of times. Each time, the people who got in were weirder than the last ones. There were people walking backwards, with their faces turned towards their backs. A blind man with milky white eyes who seemed to see right through me. Even a group of people merged into a single being, like they were Albany cats.<br><br>The woman squeezed my hand after each stop, and I started feeling like I was in a dream. It was too surreal to be real, too weird to be anything but a fantasy. I kept trying to wake up, until the bus finally stopped again, and this time she stood up.<br><br>We walked towards the door, past the throng of strange passengers, and she opened it. I expected to see a city, or a town, or at the very least another bus stop. Instead, I saw an ocean.<br><br>The waters were calm, and the moon reflected off them as if it was a mirror. I looked towards the horizon, and I saw a figure walking on the water.<br><br>She got off, and dragged me with her. I tried to complain, but she silenced me with a look. We walked on the water, and I felt like I was floating, until we reached the figure.<br><br>It was my father.<br><br>He looked exactly like I remembered him, and I felt my eyes water when I saw him. He smiled and hugged me, and I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: I felt at home.<br><br>We talked, and I finally had the answers to all the questions I’d accumulated over the years. He told me about the roads, the places among places, and what it meant to be a truck driver.<br><br>We talked for hours, and when the sun began to rise, the woman tapped my shoulder.<br><br>“I have to go.” I said.<br><br>“No, you don’t.” My father replied. “You have to keep moving. It was good to see you, but this is a journey you must continue on your own.”<br><br>I hugged him, and I cried, until the woman dragged me away.<br><br>We walked back towards the bus, but it wasn’t there. I looked around, and there was nothing but the ocean.<br><br>“When will I see him again?” I asked.<br><br>“When you see yourself.”<br><br>I didn’t get to ask anything else, because she disappeared in front of me. Everything went black, and I felt myself being lifted.<br><br>When I came to, I was in my truck, parked in the same bus stop where I first met her. It had all been a dream, and I knew it. But somehow, I knew that it hadn’t been, that it had been real.<br><br>I looked in the rearview mirror, and I brushed my hair aside. There was something there, something I’d never noticed before, something that looked like a face printed on the skin of my scalp.<br><br>I looked again, and it was gone. But I knew it was there, and I knew that, one day, I would see it again.<br><br>I started the truck, and I got back on the road. I had my answers, but I still had a long way to go.