Aisle of Lost Things
By Tazarion Keels
Chapter 1: John
I wake up with my head pounding. My vision is blurry and so far all I can see are blurry lights. My vision becomes less distorted and clearer. I groan as I sit up in my seat. Wait, a seat? I look around to see where I am. Let’s see: rows of seats on the right side of the hallway and rows of seats on the left. All facing forward. Weird. Actually the two things that are really weird are how bright this hallway is and the fact that it feels like it’s vibrating. Oh wait, my vision is starting to clear up now and it’s not a hallway. It’s a bus. I’m on a bus with flashing lights outside. Ok let’s just scratch out the imagery I said before about the hallway because that didn’t make any sense.
But being on the bus is kinda odd too. The flashing lights outside for example. The only thing I can compare it to is when you have a train going through a long tunnel with bright lights on the tunnel walls,but to the person inside, it looks like there are lights flashing on the outside of the train. But this is also a little different from that. The flashing lights aren’t one color like a train tunnel would have. There are multiple colors flashing. Maybe I am in a tunnel with multicolored lights or something and apparently, besides me and the driver, there is no one else on this bus.
I look down at my clothes and see I’m wearing a gray jumpsuit. The name tag says John. Wait, my name is John? And why wouldn’t I know that? Shouldn’t I know my own name? Crap, that’s not good. I start checking my pockets, no items or an ID or anything to connect to who I am. I sigh and look down at the path between the seat rows where the driver of the bus is. I start walking towards it. Maybe I should just ask the driver to let me off at the next stop. I’ll go to a local hospital and see if someone can check me for a head injury or something. I keep walking down the path.
I get to the first four passenger seats and then I see her. A blonde girl curled up in a seat sleeping. Guess it’s not just me and the driver on this bus. I’m about to let her keep sleeping but then I see she’s wearing the same gray jumpsuit as I am. Maybe we work at the same job or something and I just hit my head and forgot. So maybe talking to her would help jog my memory. I look at her name tag. It spells out the name Jane.
“Huh, ok Jane,” I mutter to myself. “Um, I don’t actually know if you hate being woken up or not but I kinda have to wake you up. Um, please don’t hit me.”
shake her gently and she groans a little. I keep shaking her until her eyes flutter open. I jump back as she jumps up. I guard my face in case I was possibly right about her hitting me.
“Um hi,” I say.
“Hi…,” she says back with a stunned expression.
I slowly lower my hands down. “Hi,” I repeat again. But hey, we seem off to a good start.
“Umm, who are you?” And there go my hopes of her jogging my memory.
“Well, Jane,” I say. “I was kinda hoping you could tell me.”
She stares at me. “Who’s Jane?” I point to her name tag. She looks down at it. “No,” she says. “This isn’t….” Her words trails off as her eyes go wide looking down at her clothes. “Why am I wearing this!” she exclaims. Oh crap. She asks, “And why is my head so foggy?” Crap crap. She continues to ask questions. “Ugh, how did I get here?” Crap. Crap. Crap. And then she asks the best question of all: “Why can’t I remember my—”
“Name?” I ask.
She looks at me. “Yes,” she says.
I sigh. “I guess we’re both in the same boat, Jane. Or bus.”
“My name’s not Jane,” she says. “Or at least… I don’t think it is.”
“Well, I’d rather mine not be John,” I say, pointing to my name tag.
She sighs, “Why am I on a bus?”
I press my hands together in a praying position. “Ok you're asking questions that I have already asked myself. So let's just put them on hold because it doesn’t seem like either of us have the answers to them.”
She looks like she wants to protest, but resists. “So,” she starts speaking again. "Both of us are on this run-down bus, wearing the same clothes, and have memory loss?”
“Yep.” I nod with agreement. Then I pause. "Wait, what do you mean run-down?”
She looks over the seats and points around the bus. I look at everything, realizing she’s right. Saying this bus was run down is an understatement. The windows are cracked, the aisle is muddy, and the seats are torn. And the scratches aren’t small; they are deep enough to see the inside of the seats. How did I not see any of this? Guess my vision is still clearing up. “Huh you’re right, I’m kinda surprised this bus is still running.”
The girl sits up more. "So you don’t remember anything?”
I shake my head. “I thought you might know something because we were wearing the same clothes.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Hmm, did you have another idea?”
I shrug. “Besides going to the driver to ask to pull over to the next stop to go to a hospital.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What good would that do?”
“Uh, check to see if there was a concussion or something.”
Her face straightens up. “Oh, I like that plan. Well, let's go to the driver.”
I start going back to the original plan: talking to the driver. The blond girl starts walking behind me. We walk slowly over trash down the aisle. Examining the scratches on the seats and the broken windows. Seriously, how is this bus still running? And why would any passenger (including myself and the new girl) ever get on it? Especially when those scratches on the seats look way more like claw marks.
“Uh,” the girl whispers. “Maybe you should be the one to talk to the driver and I’ll wait back here.”
“What?”
But she looks pretty determined to stay right where she is. And honestly I can’t blame her. If this is what the bus is like, I’d hate to be the person to talk to the driver. Which is something I'm thinking of as I am about to do just that. I keep walking until I get to the front of the bus. The driver won’t even turn his head. He just keeps facing forward. He has sandy brown, curly hair and he’s a Caucasian male. His clothes are a wreck just like the bus. Dirty and torn.
But I can make out what the clothes probably looked like before they were in this condition. A jean jacket with a white t-shirt underneath. Typical blue jean pants and an old music device on his belt. I think that someone from the 80s would call it a Walkman. I clear my throat as I stand next to him in his seat.
“Hello?” I say, but he doesn’t say anything back. He keeps facing forward while muttering something. I say hello again, this time a little louder. “Um, me and my friend? We want to get off at the next stop.” But he still doesn’t answer. I shake him a little bit, but he doesn’t respond. But honestly, it doesn’t feel like he's all the way there if you know what I mean.
The girl comes up behind me and whispers, “What’s going on? Is he going to let us off at the next stop?”
I shake my head and whisper back, “He’s not responding. I’m not sure if he's even aware that I’m here. He just keeps muttering underneath his breath.”
She looks at me while furrowing her eyebrows at me. “Muttering what?”
I listen closely to what the bus driver is saying. All I can make out is go north.
“He just keeps saying to ‘go north’.”
“North where?” She asks.
I sigh because I don’t know the answer and this is becoming frustrating. The girl throws her hands up in the air, blows out her breath and looks outside the broken windows.
“What is this bus even moving through?” she asks.
"I don’t know, honestly,” I say back to her. “I thought it might be a tunnel or something.” I turn back to the bus driver. He still looks dazed. Out of boredom, I start looking over the controls of the bus. Even though some things are broken and scratched, I can still see that these controls don’t look like the kind you would see on a public bus. Everything looks like high tech controls you would see in a rocket. There are a few things that look out of place. A few ripped cords and bent pipes.
“What the…?” I mutter to myself.
The girl yelps behind me and I turn back to see her still looking outside the window. “What?” I ask her.
She whispers back to me but doesn't keep her eyes from looking outside, “I thought I saw something.”
“Like what?” I ask. "Like a bird?”
She slowly glances back out the window to see if it was one. In a flash, a big shadowy figure with wings flies by and claws at the windows. The girl jumps back.
“What the heck was that!”she yells. I don’t have an answer. But I’m pretty sure I did see wings and they weren’t small. Whatever it was, it was definitely bigger than a normal-sized bird. Suddenly the bus shudders for a second, as if something had landed on top of it.
“I think it’s on the roof…” We both look at the ceiling of the bus as the creature starts banging on the roof, trying to pry its way in. We can hear it walking on the roof to the edge of the bus, so we follow the noise.
“What the heck is that?” the girl whispers.
“Maybe it’s a very big bird,” I guess nervously.
The girl shakes her head. “Birds don’t move like that.” We keep inching down the bus to where we hear the creature crawling to the edge of the roof. It stops when it reaches the edge. We freeze while looking up. We’re now waiting in place to see what will come through. It bursts through the roof, the creature hitting the aisle too fast for us to see it.
We both leap to opposite sides of the bus and duck underneath the seats. Trying our best to hide from it. We can see the creature’s feet. It’s growling and sniffing as if it’s trying to smell us. We both clamp our hands over our mouths so it can’t hear us breathing. It’s walking on all fours slowly down the aisle. It’s making a sound like it's cackling. I can’t fully see what it looks like, but I can make out a few things about its physical appearance. It has brown fur and skinny limbs. The limbs in the front are arms with small hands at the end. Its back legs are like a falcon with talons. As it crawls more, I can see something else. Maybe feathers?
I look across from me where the girl is hiding under the seats on her side of the bus. She looks like she wants to scream but stays as quiet as she possibly can. It sniffs in her direction and I accidentally muffle a loud “no!” It pauses and stops sniffing toward the girl’s direction and starts sniffing toward mine. I can see its jaws as it continues sniffing in my direction. I pray it will leave me alone.
After a few seconds, it continues its way crawling down the aisle. I sigh in relief and suddenly something wraps around my leg and pulls me out from underneath the seat. I’m now in the aisle looking down at the thing that pulled my leg. It’s a tail. A tail that belongs to the creature standing on top of me. I look up, eyes wide, staring at the creature that is now bearing its teeth at me.
A five-foot tall brown monkey, with red eyes, brown fur, arms like a monkey, legs and wings of a falcon. It's as if someone tore apart the body parts of a monkey and a giant bird and stitched them together to make this thing. Its tail is still clinging to my leg. It pins me down and screeches at my face. Its breath smells like rotten meat. I’m still struggling against its grip and trying to think of ways to fight back. Suddenly something flies and hits the creature in the back of the head. It stops and looks over its shoulder. I look in between its legs and see the girl standing in front of the bus where the controls are. She has her right arm in an outward throwing position. The creature bears its teeth, lets go of me and crawls fast to her. She panics and she goes to try to grab another broken pipe from the bus driver's controls. She can’t make it in time, so she ducks as it slashes at her head. She runs towards my direction and I get to my feet.
“Is that a flying monkey!” she yells.
“Uh huh…” I’m too freaked out to give a real response.
It turns around, looks at us again and starts crawling slowly our way.
"I think it’s looking for a comeback,” I say.
“Uh huh," the girl agrees. I slowly picked up the pipe the girl had thrown before.
“Ok, I really want to get off this bus,” the girl says.
“Agreed,” I say. I keep my eyes focused on the creature as it continues crawling our way. “Ok, it definitely wants us, especially since you threw a pipe at its head.”
"Hey, I was trying to save you,” she hisses back.
“Point is,” I continue to say. “He won’t go for the bus driver.”
She pauses. “Ok, I get it. We just need to get to the front door.”
“Right. ” I nod. “Ok, I’ll get its attention. You duck under the seats and crawl to the front while it’s focusing on me. Get the door open and we’ll just jump off the bus.”
She nods. “Ready. Set. Go!” She ducks under the seats and starts crawling. I bang the pipe in front of the flying monkey, antagonizing it. As we planned, it starts focusing on me and the girl makes her way crawling to the front underneath the seats. I start backing up as the creature slowly creeps towards me. The girl manages to get to the front and starts messing with the controls to try to get the side door open. I need to keep the creature from turning and seeing her. I poke it hard in the shoulder and it hisses at me. It looks at me in a way that means I pushed it too far. It pounces on me and I put both hands on opposite ends of the pipe in a blocking position to keep it from biting my face off. Its paws in the front are gripping the middle, pushing against me while its head is freely nipping at my face. I keep avoiding its teeth while blocking it. The girl is having difficulty trying to open the door. The controls are busted, so she starts trying to pry the door open using another broken pipe from the controls. I’m still struggling with the flying monkey. While it grips the pipe I am using to defend myself, it also starts whipping its tail at my feet. I jump a few times, avoiding the tail, but when I try to put my feet back on the ground from the last jump, I stumble and it’s able to knock me over, pinning me to the ground. The pipe is still in between us, but now the creature is pushing it down against my neck. I grunt.
The girl manages to get the door open and shouts to me, “I got it!”
The flying monkey loosens its grip on the pipe as it looks over its shoulder, focusing on the girl's outburst. This gives me a chance to gain back control over the pipe and quickly whack the side of its head with the butt of the pipe, knocking it to my left side as I quickly get up and run to the front of the bus where the girl is standing.
“Ok, I knocked it out for a second,” I say, while catching my breath. “But I don't know how long that's gonna last.”
“Um… yeah,” the girl says. “But we may have a new problem.” She points to the outside of the bus where she has pried the doors open. I stick my head out the door to see that there isn’t a road. Obviously, our original plan was to jump out onto the road from a moving bus, but there isn’t one. We are in the air. I look on the sides of the bus on the outside and see that it has wings that I can imagine seeing on a spacecraft. What the…? Is this even a bus?
“How are we supposed to get off!” I say to the girl, trying my best to yell over the roaring wind from outside.
“I don't know!” she yells back to me. “Maybe we jump?”
“And how do we make sure we land safely on the ground?” I ask her.
She purses her lips, trying to think of an option. She then looks back in the bus and taps my shoulder persistently, trying to draw my attention to what she’s looking at.
The flying monkey is starting to get up. We both tense up.
“Ok,” she says, trying to sound calm. "We’ve got two options: we can stay on here or jump and pray we don't injure ourselves too badly.”
The creature sees us and screeches while running towards us.
“I vote jumping,” I decide.
“Definitely,” she agrees. We both jump off the flying bus into the air while free-falling. We can hear the creature’s screeching die out as the bus flies away. It’s no longer a problem. What is a problem is that we are now falling through the air without a parachute. We’re screaming through the air, panicking. The wind is whipping at my face, making it hard for me to see anything below us. My eyes are watering as we are hurtling to earth. But I'm able to make out a small image of something blue. It’s sparkling a bit. A few more seconds later I’m close enough to see it better. It’s water.
I call over to the girl and tell her to aim for the water. She sees it and nods. I have a vague memory of learning that it's important to get into a diving position to break the tension of the water's surface. We are close enough, so I’m doing my best to extend my arms out while putting my hands together. I am straightening my body as well. She sees what I’m doing and nods. She copies my movement. We both prepare to brace for impact. Three, two, one. We break the water's surface and sink into the water. I swim to the surface and come up for air.
I can’t see the girl. I look around, trying to see where in the water she landed. I wipe the water out of my face. I can’t see her. Then I see something rising out of the water. It’s the top of someone's head. I swim quickly toward it, thinking it's the girl. She pops her head out of the water and I notice that her hair isn’t blond, but black. Her eyes are now above the water. They look like the eyes of a child. A little girl.
“Um, hi,” I say to her. But then the rest of her head comes up and shows her mouth. Her teeth aren't normal. They’re all sharpened to a point. She hisses at me, making me swim backward. She keeps rising more out of the water, showing that from the neck up, her head looks like a seven-year-old girl. But from the neck down, her body is a ten-foot-tall fish. She has long arms with talons for hands.
“You have to be kidding me,” I say, right before turning and swimming away. It hisses and chases me. I keep swimming as fast as I can. I am trying to move as much as I can while wearing this jumpsuit. My arms are getting tired. I can see some trees in front of me. Land. I just need to manage to get there. But she's gaining on me. I can see the land more and more as I get closer. My arms start hurting from swimming. I start moving slower and the creature is so close behind me that the sound of its hissing becomes louder and louder. Between fighting a flying monkey, jumping off a bus and free-falling in the air, then landing in water only to have to swim away from another horrific creature, I have no energy left.
As I close my eyes, ready for the creature to pounce on me from behind, I hear a loud thunk and the sound of the creature screeching in pain right above my head. Then the sound of a familiar female voice telling me to move. I open my eyes to see the girl from the bus standing on the beach up ahead. She's getting ready to throw another rock. Man, she’s got a good arm.
“Swim!” she screams at me.
“What does it look like I’m doing!” I yell back.
She keeps chucking rocks from the beach, causing the creature to slow down to avoid getting hit, and it’s giving me enough time to get to shore. I crawl to where the girl is standing, trying to catch my breath. I look back at the creature to see it retreating back the other way. I look up at the girl, seeing how grateful she looks because her arm was clearly getting tired. She falls back on her butt and sits down on the sand. We both look at each other with the same thought in mind: recap.
We are both drenched from swimming in the water, so we need to wring out our clothes. The island we’re on has big oak trees, so we find one and stand back-to-back under the tree on opposite sides, giving each other privacy while we wring out our clothes.
I sigh. “Ok, let's go over what we know so far. A: We both woke up on a bus—.”
“A flying bus," the girl corrects me.
“Right, a flying bus. And have no idea how we got there.”
“B,” the girl starts off while she continues to wring out her clothes. “The bus was being driven by a guy who seemed to have a few screws loose.”
“C,” I continue. “We were attacked by a flying monkey like something out of a fairytale.”
"Speaking of fairy tales,” the girl says as the conversation shifts back to her. “We were then chased to shore by the messed-up version of a mermaid.”
“You call that a mermaid?” I ask her.
“What would you call her?” she asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I mean, when I think of a mermaid I think of a pretty girl with a fish tail for legs, wearing a seashell bikini. She seemed more like a fusion of a siren and a harpy.”
“What the heck does it matter?” she snaps at me from her side of the tree.
"Ok, ok, jeez,” I say. “No need to get snippy, Jane.”
She sighs. “I have no memory of who I am. I jumped out of the moving bus and had to deal with not one but two monsters. Tell me how I do not have the right to be snippy? And stop calling me Jane!”
“Hey!” I yell back. “You’re not the only one who’s been having a hard time. In case you forgot, I was the one who those monsters were attacking! And anyways, if not Jane, what else do you want me to call you? It’s not like you have any other names.”
“I- well…” She pauses for a second. “Ok, fine! Just call me Jane or whatever. And what about you, huh? Are you gonna go by John or what?”
I mean, it did say that on my uniform. It’s probably not my actual name but I guess at least for now… “Yeah sure, I guess I’ll go by John for now.”
She sighs. “Great. Hey, you done drying your clothes?”
I look down, realizing I’m still wringing them out as I’m talking to her. They are now completely dry. Wrinkled but dry. “Um yeah, they’re done.”
“Good. Let’s go find some help.”
We put our clothes on and start walking into the forest. I keep hearing thunder; I look up at the sky, but it's clear. I shrug it off. I also can hear animal sounds from all around us. From what I'm gathering, there are a few birds chirping, some wolves, and maybe a few snakes hissing in the trees. Although, considering the flying monkey and that nightmare creature that was supposed to be a mermaid, I have a feeling these animals aren’t really animals.
We have been walking for hours. Once in a while, I can still hear thunder in the sky, but like before, I can’t see any sign of a storm. Jane is walking in front of me, ducking past every branch that’s in front of her. I clear my throat.
“So, Jane....” She squints back at how I said her name, knowing that I am teasing her about how she’s come to terms with it.
“What?” she grumbles in response.
“Who do you think we’ll find to help us in a place like this?”
“Ugh!” She groans in frustration “I don’t know. Maybe there are people here. Like the Amazon rainforest has some villages.”
“Yeah, but this doesn’t look like the Amazon rainforest," I say.
“Ok.”
“We’ve been walking for hours and haven’t seen anyone.”
“Ok.”
“I’m just saying, you’ve been kinda leading the way for, like, a while now, and it doesn’t seem like you know where you’re—.”
“Ok!” she exclaims, while throwing her hands up in frustration. She stops walking and turns around face to me. “So what’s your big idea?”
“Uh….”
“Well?” She crosses her arms, waiting for an answer.
I look up at the sky and continue hearing the sound of thunder but no sign of a storm. The sun is setting. “Maybe we should just find a place to sleep," I say.
Jane sighs. “Fine. Let’s just find wood to make a fire.”
I nod. We find a place in the woods to set up camp, or at least our version of camp. We do have wood to make a fire, but we don't have the usual things someone would have on a camping trip. Instead of sleeping bags, we have the ground. Instead of a tent or some form of shelter, we have shade from a tree. And instead of marshmallows and hot dogs, we find weird fruit that we hope is edible. The sun has completely set and the stars have come out. We sit on opposite sides of the fire. We haven’t talked for a while until…
“Wanna play a game?” Jane asks.
I look at her. “Sure.”
She pokes at the fire wood with a stick she finds on the ground. “We ask each other questions about what we think our old lives were like.”
“Ok.” It gives us a way to pass the time at least.
“Ok, so what do you think your childhood was like?” she asks.
“Um, normal I guess?” I’m trying to think. “Maybe I grew up in a townhouse with my parents. Mmm, had a dog maybe? Named Max?”
“Max? Really?”
“What?” I protest. “It's a dog name.”
“It's a common dog name,” she says. “It’s boring.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. What would you have picked?”
She thinks for a moment. “Six.”
“What?”
“Six,” she repeats again. “I would name my dog Six.”
“That makes no sense,” I say with disbelief. “That’s not even a dog name."
“Exactly! It's unique and not boring. Unlike the one you chose.” She smiles, clearly pleased with herself.
“Fine,” I say to her. “Your turn. What do you think your childhood was like?”
She thinks about it for a moment. “I think I was… responsible, mature for my age, and probably adored by my parents.”
“Yeah, no.”
“What?”
I smile and shrug. “I don't think that's what your childhood was like.”
She glares at me but then forces a smile. “Ok, John. Tell me, what do you think my childhood was like?”
I look up and tap my chin with my finger to make it look like I'm thinking. “I bet as a kid you tried to be mature but you were probably more bossy. You probably annoyed your parents to no end.”
“What—.”
“And,” I continue. “I think if you did name your dog Six, he probably peed on your bed without you knowing, out of resentment.”
As I speak, Jane makes a series of expressions, some baffled and others offended.
“Ok, none of those things happened!” she exclaims.
I hold up my hands. “Hey, I'm kidding. I'm sure your dog didn't pee on your bed.”
She glares. “Your turn again.”
I smile, pleased with myself.
“What do you think your life was like before you lost your memory?” she asks.
“Hmmm,” I say. “I probably lived in my own apartment with a good job. Most likely my dream job. Maybe I have a fiancée and we’re planning our wedding.”
Jane laughs out loud and then quickly tries to cover mouth.
“What?” I say defensively.
“An apartment and a fiancée?” She asks while giggling. “How old do you think you are?”
“I don't know," I admit. “Maybe like 25 or 27.”
“Uh-uh,” she says, shaking her head. “Try 16, no older than 17.”
“What?” I protest, but then I look her up and down. She does look young. Like high school-young. And I guess if I’m honest, my voice does sound like I probably am too. “Hmm ok, fine. So maybe I’m younger than I think.”
“Uh huh,” she snorts.
“Just ask me a new question," I say.
She thinks for a second as she looks at the fire. “Do you think we’ll just be trapped here and never get back home?’
I look at her, a little surprised by her question. All joking aside, I can see she really is worried about being trapped here.
“No,” I say to her. “We aren’t going to be trapped here. We’ll find a way out.”