Several dozen buses were at a bus stop. They were waiting for passengers. There hadn't been a passenger for a long time, and one was due at least 23 minutes ago, according to the timetable. They sat in silence, watched by a single detatched house with eyes in it's two upper floor windows.
Typically, 3 passengers arrived at the same time.
As soon as one bus spotted them he raced up to let them on. But the other buses, no less eager, revved themselves up and hurried to do the same. A clamour of buses of various sizes surrounded the poor humans, honking their horns, waving with their windscreen wipers, and growling "Pick me! Pick me!"
The passengers huddled together on the tarmac, backs touching, trying not to panic. They had chunky legs and arms, but very small heads. The two women had shaved themselves bald, but the man had a tuft of green hair sticking up from his skull like grass.
The man was the first to make a decision. The noisy vehicles paused their racket and bouncing when he lifted one arm, pointed at an old, small orange bus, and said with a grin, "That one." The orange bus shook with excitement on it's suspension, and the rest of the buses waited to see what this meant. As the man strode purposefully towards his chosen transport, the rest of them launched back into shouting and honking when they realised that the two women were not going to make the same choice as the man. The two women now stood back to back, one looking at the man as he left them and the other looking around the mechanical crowd with an analytical eye.
The man got into the orange bus, and the silence entered as the doors shut behind him. He walked casually to the middle of the floor, in the middle of all the seats, and jumped into a hole. He stood on the outside tarmac, with the floor of the bus just below his waist. He reached down and grabbed two handles attached to the bus, one on either side of him. Then, like lifting a dress, he let out a smal grunt as he hoisted up the bus around him, and started walking down the road. The small and orange bus purred with satisfaction.
Back in the middle of what might have looked like a traffic jam, with sound levels matching the same description, the woman who had been watching the man turned to her less interested friend and shouted to be heard, "Trust him to take the cheap and easy option! Trust him! Lazy man..."
The other woman shouted back, "I don't blame him... I might have picked the same one if I wasn't going out for dinner tonight... Arh, this noise! ...I can't work out which colour will go best with my bag?"
"What about that classic London Red?" shouted the first woman, "Classic! You can't go wrong with those!"
"No, I can't be seen with a double decker at my time of life..." moaned her friend, "I know some of my workmates think you can pull it off at this age, but really... they're just kidding themselves..."
The first woman nodded, and looked around the mess of wheels. Her eyes tried to distinguish between the wipers, wheels and wonky headlights. She tried to hear herself think. She was sure she could even hear a car alarm going off in the background, but that might have just been her ears ringing.
Fifteen minutes later, the picky woman had got into a smart purple bus with white stripes, and carried it down the road. One passenger remained, and the gang of buses had only grown slightly tired of growling and revving and honking.
But the buses looked around when a new sound approached. It was the sound of a police siren. The lone woman looked through the gap now made by the vehicles, and saw a uniformed man had approached the crowd, carrying a police car on his head. He looked calm yet unimpressed. The buses quickly became still and quiet as he carefully put his car on the ground, and swaggered into the middle of the group. He stood next to the woman, who also remained silent.
"Now then," the policeman raised his voice just enough to be heard, but still quiet enough for all the buses to need to stay quiet to hear him, "There's been a report, you should know, of unsociable levels of noise in this area!"
The gang of buses, on a large, empty strip of tarmac, were near nothing except the bus stop and the house. In a matter of seconds, every pair of eyes and headlights except the policemans were making unfriendly sideways glances at the house. The house had very quickly seen some fascinating things in the sky, where it was looking intently, and trying to whistle with it's door.
"Now, now, then," continued the policeman, drawing the attention back to himself, "You should know I'm not going to blame anyone for the noise just yet. But. It appears this young lady needs a bus to travel with. Am I right, miss?" She nodded. "Yes, I thought so," he nodded back, "I would strongly suggest that you quietly decide between your- quietly! -decide between yourselves which bus she should take. She only needs one, you should know." His eyebrows raised and he looked around the crowd expectantly.
Three breaths later, the policeman and the woman had not moved, but were now completely alone.
"Well, then," he said, shaking his head with dissappointment, "It seems that transports just take passengers for granted these days. I'm ever so sorry, miss," he looked up at her, "I thought that at least one of them would be brave enough to volunteer, but peer pressure is a major issue for them. May I offer you a lift?"
The woman smiled. "Yes, thank you officer. That would be very kind. Very."
The officer held out his arms, and she jumped into them. Holding her in front of himself, he walked past his car and down the road. "Don't know what the world's coming to, you would think..." he began saying.
The police car looked at the house. The house looked back, and stuck it's rug out at the car. The car gasped at such rude manners, and the house chuckled to itself, clearly well entertained.
See another post in Comedy...
Image source: http://www.oxford-chiltern-bus-page.co.uk/010506.htm
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