It was just after 6 in the afternoon. And I was waiting for the bus. Going to work at 10 in the morning and leaving at 6 in the afternoon had been my new routine for the last 4 months. I was new in the city, thanks to my college best, Jimmy, who had managed to get into a new company that was quite good, in which, fortunately for me, they were requesting personnel.
After I graduated, Jimmy was the one who told his boss about me, got me an interview, and I successfully got the job.
Nowadays, I wish that interview had gone to hell.
Before the bus arrived, I was answering messages. He had agreed to have dinner and have a couple of beers with a girl from the office, he had missed work that day, so, like a gentleman, he had agreed to pick her up at her apartment.
When the white lights of the bus illuminated the stop, I boarded, paid my ticket, and took a seat in the back, right next to the window. Being Friday and being one of the last stops the bus made, there weren’t usually many people. At most, I could count 7 or 8 passengers including me. It was something I ignored and simply let pass as something typical of everyday life.
The bus continued its journey and we arrived at the next stop, it was there where, out of the corner of my eye, I could notice that another person had boarded, wearing black clothes and a black hat. The man paid his ticket, stopped for a moment in the middle of the aisle, and sat down in a seat in front.
[cell phone ringing]
Before I could fully focus my attention on that man, my cell phone started ringing, it was a call from Michelle, the girl I was going out with that night.
“David? Hello, I was just calling you to see if what happened tonight was still on” – She said, with a sweet and happy voice.
”Hey, of course, don’t doubt it,” – I exclaimed, in the most confident tone I could express – “I’m on the bus, and I think I’ll arrive in 20 or 30 minutes at most.”
“Perfect! Call… as soon as… you arrive and… from my building.”
[INTERFERENCE]
“Aaagh… Shit, well? Michelle?” – I shouted with some frustration into the phone. Without any type of response, apparently, the signal had failed or something had happened with the communication – “Shit, I hope he didn’t say anything important, I guess I’ll call him in a while to ask what he had said” – I said between teeth, as I finished putting my phone in my jacket.
As I positioned my eyes on the window, I could notice something out of the ordinary. I thought the loss of signal was strange, but… That wasn’t the only strange thing that happened. When I looked towards the front of the bus, I noticed that there were now two people wearing the same clothes. The same black trench coat and the same black top hat. It was as if that man from the previous stop had cloned himself. The person next to him could have sworn that he was totally different from the man in black just at the moment I had approached.
This produced a feeling of strangeness and fear in me, a feeling that is born when you know that something is not normal and is not right at all.
I looked down for a moment innocently and naively, trying to convince myself that it had been my mistake and that possibly there was a new fashion in town or something like that.
I got lost on my cell phone, looking at various posts on my social networks, waiting for everything to pass, to return to normal and soon to arrive at my destination, with that adorable girl who was waiting for me.
The bus at this point was about to pass a series of underground sections before reaching the next stop. Many times these sections were in complete darkness, although that was not a problem, thanks to all the lighting inside the bus. This would have been a relief for me, if it hadn’t been for the fact that, just before entering the tunnel, the lights abruptly went out… I couldn’t see absolutely anything, any trace of light had disappeared, and with it, part of my peace of mind was gone. missing.
As if it were a bad drug trip, it seemed that only I had noticed this. The rest of the people on board were absorbed in looking at the screen of their cell phones, as if the sudden blackout had meant nothing to them. Nothing, not a single expression, word or change in behavior in the rest of the passengers.
Feelings of claustrophobia and anxiety began to emerge in me. I was beginning to get scared and worried by the strangeness of the situation…
It was until, upon leaving the first section of the tunnel, and with the lights returning inside the bus, I noticed how, once again, that person in black had “cloned” himself for the second time, replacing a woman who, moments before, had been able to see well thanks to the light of your phone.
“What the hell was going on here?!” – I thought desperately – “I don’t understand. It’s one thing that I imagined seeing a person who wasn’t there and not realizing how they were dressed… But seeing how they disappear and become copies of someone else?… That’s a completely different story.” .
As if my thoughts were an open book, I began to feel a breeze in my right ear, a breeze that later or later, I identified as a breath.
“There are no copies boy…. “We are all one, We are all me…”
The blood seemed to leave my body and turn my skin much whiter than it was… Faced with those words, no words could emanate, much less produce any movement. As if the breath and words of that thing were a winter blizzard, I was completely petrified.
Thinking that the situation couldn’t get any worse, the bus passed through the second underground section. Again, the lights were gone.
Suddenly, from one moment to the next, a person was there for one second, and the next he was no longer there, he had become another copy of that man in black.
That stretch was eternal, as long as I ever thought it could be. It wasn’t at the end of this, that I once again felt like my soul was leaving my body. Of the 8 people we were on the bus, the man in black had taken possession of 4 of us, and I say take possession because I don’t know how to refer to what was happening, I didn’t even know if what I saw was real, the only thing that I knew and of which I was absolutely certain, was that I was afraid, afraid that that thing would climb among the rest of the people and reach where I was sitting.
[cell phone ringing]
The sound and vibration of my cell phone inside my jacket made me wake up from that trance of fear and anguish. As quickly as I could, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and answered.
“David, Sorry for hanging up on you a while ago, I think the signal is failing where I live, they have recently made repairs to the building, but whatever, I was telling you that as soon as–
“Michelle!” – I said with a more than notable anguish – ”Michelle! I-I think I’m in danger, I took my bus and I don’t know what the hell is happening b-but there is a man who is–
“Man?” – The same voice as before responded through the phone speaker – “We are not any man, we are not one, we are more, many more, and soon you will be one of us…” – He pronounced, with a tone that penetrated into what deepest in my soul, leaving me on the brink of tears and despair.
When I closed my eyes to accept my miserable fate, waiting for my life to end in that moment, I was left waiting to feel the horror itself. But… Nothing had happened. I opened my eyes and found myself in the same seat on the bus I was originally on. The rest of the “Human” passengers were exactly as my memory could remember them before that dark presence appeared on the bus. I felt like some kind of crazy and paranoid. Had he completely lost his mind? Had he fallen into schizophrenia at such a young age? Many questions ran through my head as the bus reached its final stop. My destiny.
When I got off the bus with the rest of the passengers, I felt the anxiety of wanting to look at the vehicle’s windows one last time. I must say that, it is something that, to this day, I firmly believe that I should never have done… When looking towards one of the bus windows, I could glimpse what seemed to be that man dressed in black, facing me, saying goodbye with a “Smile” from ear to ear. His crimson eyes were pointed directly at mine. The look he had was cold and devoid of any emotion. His mouth was something very similar, but when I saw it, I knew that that being, no matter how immutable he seemed, was about to laugh at me, because of how naive, stupid and unfortunate he was at that moment.
Although the description of that being may not seem like a big deal to you, nor does it justify the horror I describe, I have to tell you that that was not what stuck with me to this day. What really made my heart want to jump out of my chest was that with his free left hand, he raised his arm and showed me my face, as if it were some kind of cheap latex mask with traces of a gray trail coming from it. her… Seeing the bus start, and leave little by little, I felt as if… a very important part of me was leaving too, as if part of my essence was disappearing in the hands of that shadow…
If you’re wondering what my date was like after that event, I must say, I think it was a total disaster. I met Michelle at her apartment, apologized for how upset I may have sounded on the call, and asked her to forget what happened, hoping she wouldn’t think I was crazy. She accepted my apology and we continued with the dinner we had planned. Which triggered an avalanche of grimaces, gestures and disgust on her part, and it’s not that she was to blame for the disaster by any means, but from what I remember, I behaved in the coldest, most insensitive and apathetic way possible. . Or at least that’s how she described my behavior throughout the night.
The days have passed, and I don’t know or care how many days there have been exactly. I have continued going to work and changed my route back home. But I don’t think any of that matters now. By writing this, I must say that I have expressed the last bits of feelings and emotions that I can express, I have helped myself with literary resources from the internet to be able to write what I think I must have felt that day.
Another thing I would like to mention to you before I finish writing this is that even though I think no one else has noticed, I have begun to notice a kind of black spot that has been growing from the tips of my limbs. My legs and arms have both turned partially black, as has one of my irises, which has begun to take on a crimson tone, similar to that shadow. I must say, without fear of making mistakes and leaving aside the naive innocence I had. That I fear that soon, the words of that thing will soon make sense, soon I will stop being me and soon, I will become one, one only with that crimson eye shadow.