The Travelling Circus - Part I

“It'll all be alright, I promise you, I know how it all ends and I know that it'll all be alright. Trust me.”

She let out an inward sigh, trying to suppress the irritation which she could feel manifesting itself across her face. It was stupid to get upset. It was stupid to listen at all to the ramblings of a mad man on the bus but unlike the dull eyed children around her she couldn't help but pay attention to him as the rest sat staring blankly into steamed over windows at the vague blurs of light which seemed to make up the world beyond their steel and glass casing.

She pitied him, the self-appointed preacher; he was obviously ill to some degree at least given his attempts to preach... something to the commuters on an early morning bus. Sane people didn't do that. Normal people didn't do that. And when they did it was her role, or at least the role they all placed upon her with even the slightest of indifferent glances, to either cower in fear or to well up with a soft pity for the unfortunate soul. The assumptions annoyed her. Everything annoyed her in fact and even if she'd wanted to she wouldn't have been able to explain why. She was old, most people weren't, that was enough of a reason to make hate the default emotion in her mind. Why not, after all? Unlike him she really did know, she knew that it wouldn't be alright and that trust was the first step towards disappointment, she'd learnt that through suffering and, perhaps, it hurt her a little to see a man lie so readily to himself and everyone else.

“You're loved, all of you, by me, by each other, by everyone, if you'll just understand it.”

The ragged Messiah was still going, his soft, level voice imposing itself on the suddenly silent bus, growing darker as an embarrassed fug lowered itself over the commuters and rendered his attempts at revelation a cold thing, an obvious lie. The lie gained prominence in her mind, his words drawing her deeper in but inspiring only anger and hate, not as fiery, passionate emotions but as icy, clinical ones. The hatred was consuming her with a methodical inevitability which she could almost feel spreading through her mind. She wanted to laugh at it, to guffaw in the knowledge of her own emotions but never to let go of them because she did hate him and it was something at least, a real feeling, something which would eventually pass and leave only that same empty apathy tinted with irritation which defined her entire life as a pensioner and a ghost amongst a society alien to her.

She wanted to punch the proselytizing figure, to grab and tear at his ageing outfit, to beat him as he lied to her and the rest of them. She didn't even want to stop him, just to hurt him, prove his lies by showing him reality as she lived it. But she was old. Old and weak and useless and implausible in her bubbling hatred.

He was coming towards her, shuffling down the length of the bus to her window seat near the back, she met his gaze as he did so and struggled to force every ounce of emotion into a glare which would force him to a halt, which would make him understand what she saw and the world she inhabited. But he just smiled, smiled and stopped to loom over her, the awkward eyes of the other passengers flicking across him, seemingly paralysed by their own natures, their own stereotypes, hard wired to inaction. She hated them too, for being weak, for the pity they now felt for her in their shamed minds.

He smiled down at her.

“You'll be alright, I'm not lying, you will.”

She could feel herself shaking with an impotent rage, scared to make eye contact with him, although it sickened her that she was. This liar, this worthless idiot, was controlling her, driving her into a corner and turning her hate into a pathetic thing, a helpless burning agony inside her with no cause and no release. But he wouldn't move, he wouldn't blink and she suddenly wished more than anything that she could run away from his torturously neutral presence. She choked back a sob, he smiled.

“You don't need to run, you don't need to ignore me, you're loved and I'm here.”

His voice seemed to harbour a soft threat, it was coated with a benign power which left her frozen, he was scum, sub-human, a liar and a cheat and a madman and a cruel, mocking bully. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, her sobs breaking through and filling the suddenly concrete silence of the bus. And still no one moved, still no one paid any notice, they just silently pitied the broken old lady scared of the malign figure of the preacher. She knew they pitied her, she knew they sensed fear and weakness in her and even more she knew that they couldn't believe her to be anything else. The hatred was all that kept her from falling into their expectations and she clung to it, feeling the patheticness of her resistance. And he just smiled and stared.

“They do care, they're just lonely, like you; don't hate them for being like you, for being human.”

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, hers tearful and red, his almost unnaturally soft, filled with a superior kindness which hurt as she clung to the certainty of his nature as a liar and a deceiver. She turned her eyes down towards her own lap and clawingly reached out for the bell; she'd get off at the next stop and hide in apathy again. He'd be forgotten, in time.