Next | Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Katie is mumbling under her breath. “Holy shit… holy shit…”

I feel her grip around me tighten.

The fights start to get worse, as the people who try to intervene start taking sides. Verbal insults begin to escalate into pushing, and eventually, more fighting.

People start shouting at everyone to get off the bus, or trying to get off themselves. Two guys push past Katie and me and slam into the back door.

It doesn’t open.

“What the fuck?!” one of them exclaims angrily, as he again tries to push it open.

People at the front are having similar problems.

It takes a minute for me to clue into what is happening.

“Yo!” I hear one of the teenagers yell. “He’s calling the fucking cops!”

Outside the bus, the bus driver has angrily and spitefully locked us all in a tomb of alcohol inspired violence and rage, while he proceeds to call the cops on the entire bus. The doors won’t open because he does not want them to open. We’ve been locked in like animals.

I can’t help but feel like I’m in Thunderdome all of a sudden.

The realization that we’re trapped makes people go ape shit—more than they already have. The fights continue between those already instigated, but suddenly no one is an onlooker anymore. People near the doors start to violent bash at the doors, trying to force them open. Women are screaming. Men are pulling at the emergency release latches on the windows, whose exteriors have long since frozen over in the sub-zero winter temperatures.

I see one man leaning on his back across two seats, kicking feverishly at a window. People are dashing in every direction, things are breaking, people are getting knocked over. One man is simply standing off to the side, literally punching everyone who comes into arms distance of himself.

As people are carelessly pushing past me, I realize that I am covering Katie, my back turned to the crowd, protecting her from all this craziness. For her part, Katie is holding on to me so tight I can feel her finger nails digging into me. Her head is buried in my chest.

Standing dead center in the bus is an incredibly dishevelled looking man, screaming non-stop at the top of his lungs. I can’t quite tell for sure in the chaos, but I’m pretty sure he’s pissing his pants as he screams.

Windows start falling off of the bus and metal and plastic crack and crumble as doors are forced open. Like rioting monkeys escaping a jungle orgy gone bad, people swarm out of every orifice of the bus.

As people are dashing past, I watch very clearly as one girl blatantly reaches out and grabs the purse of the passed out drunken mess nearby, and darts towards me, heading for the back exit nearby.

The drunk girl momentarily stirs, and mutters ever so quietly, “My purse…”

I’m terrible at confrontation. I hate getting involved. I really don’t like to put myself in any kind of vulnerable situation. I am literally a coward. And so I have no explanation for what I do next.

The thieving girl runs past Katie and myself, but before I realize it, I have grabbed the thieving girl by the arm as she passes.

“Hey!” she exclaims.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” I shout. I feel enraged at her. Ironic, considering all the shit that I’ve seen tonight.

I do not know the passed out drunken girl, and yet the thought of her being robbed is just too much for me to handle this New Year’s Eve.

I am about to call the teenage bitch a dirty thief. I’m about to snatch the purse back and give it back to the unconscious wino.

“Thief!” the now waking drunk girl calls. “Thief!” she calls louder now.

I’m about to tell the thieving slut that I better never catch her doing anything like this again, that she better clean up her act, that she should be ashamed of herself when, it happens: she spits in my face.

Her warm saliva hits me almost in the eye, and drools down my cheek. I barely flinch at all, too shocked I think to really act. She is staring at me with petrified eyes. Like when you realize that your feeble attempt to fight back has only made your attacker that much angrier, and worsened your situation.

I’m not proud of what I do next, but it’s what I do.

Spit still warm and wet, slowly running down my face, I clench my hand into a fist. I ball it up as tight as I can. I reach it back, almost in slow motion, and I let it fly forward, into the face of the thief. I punch the little bitch thief right in her cocky-ass face.

Yes, I hit a girl.

Next | Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

103 people like this post.
Unlike