The six-month period from October to March is not a friendly time in Warsaw. A person wakes up to the rain and the roar of the engine, and falls asleep to the roar of the engine and the rain. Returning from work by public transportation is almost the worst part of the day, losing in this contest only to returning from work in one’s own car. The situation is not improved by finishing duties at night. I have already gotten used to soaked shoes, the smell of vodka and puckered pants on the subway, so the return itself has already become an automatic activity. I usually don’t pay attention to who is on the bus with me, whether the driver sobered up this time before getting behind the wheel, or whether there is an adult sitting on a bench at the bus stop who, despite making the decision to get drunk on his own in this weather, may need help.
This time, however, the return was a bit different. The bus to the Politechnika Metro station was usually buzzing with life (if a few drunk and trying not to puke partygoers transferring to the subway towards the center and two already puked-up homeless people can be called buzzing with life), whereas this day it was completely empty. I prudently decided, switching the return from automatic to manual mode, to sit in the last seats, so that if I had any doubts about the intentions of passengers from the next stops, I would have a moment to react accordingly. Whether by grabbing a hammer to break the glass, or recalling the last moments of relative calm that particular day. The passengers, however, were not coming. The next stops stayed behind, and the bus seemed to speed up. Probably even the driver understood that today’s rain was best left as soon as possible in the memories of the past day.
After several minutes, finally, the wheels of the bus began to roll over the Lazienki Bridge.
After a while, I wonder if it was not because of the objective calm and the absence of anyone in the vehicle, my alertness was lulled to sleep. When the half of the bridge was behind us, along with the November panorama of a miniature of the great metropolis, about halfway through the bus appeared, as it still seems to me, two people. I myself don’t know from which stop I was no longer alone, as I am still firmly convinced that I did not hear the hissing mechanism of the door opening. Both travelers were wearing black hoodies, so they were not Legia Warsaw fans, returning from a match in the direction of Prague. Besides, if there had been any match that day, I would have been concerned about how many more people would get on the bus, rather than who the two sole co-passengers were. The people sitting in front of me were not talking. They did not look back, nor did they look at each other. They did not even look at the approaching other side of the Vistula River beyond. They sat and seemed to stare dully ahead. Nor did I manage to notice any phone, book, newspaper, or even the shape of headphones bending the shapely hood from the inside.
The brain, which is quick to adapt to sudden changes, reacted as needed - it again tried to flip me into the familiar automatic mode. I felt myself slowly drifting off into a state where I was no longer counting the time to return, thinking only of what I would do once I was home. The final push into automatic, however, was interrupted by the momentary shutdown of all the lighting in the bus. I’m sure you’re familiar with the experience, mostly from riding the subway. Darkness falls over the entire compartment, you recall Glukhovsky and start staring at the walls of the unlit tunnel. When your eye is almost used to the darkness, and is almost ready to see something in that tunnel - a blinding light and back to everyday life. It was the same here, too. The sudden darkness blinded me, and before I had time to see what was happening to the silhouettes sitting in front of me, my eyes were hit by a light. It was not, however, a bus lights. I no longer saw the mayor’s election spots before the next local elections. I didn’t see the cars standing in traffic next to the busway, or the receding skyline of Warsaw’s city.
The lights I saw in front of me looked like four giant floodlights, similar to those that illuminate the turf during an evening game. Despite the pain of staring straight into the lights, I continued to do so. I couldn’t lower my gaze or close my eyelids. My body was like paralyzed, but after a few seconds I managed to feel that I was still inside a moving vehicle. I could hear the rain and the roar of the engine. I could smell the sour odor of wet mustiness and my own perfume. In addition to this, I also felt a slight warm breath on both cheeks at once. At some point, sometime in the 10th second of the whole incident, the light increased in intensity to a frightening level. I felt my eyes stop being able to withstand it. First a sharp pain in my irises, then a hellish pressure at the very bottom of my eye sockets. I didn’t know whether tears were streaming down my face or fragments of the vitreous body of my own eyes. Suddenly it went completely dark, and the pain subsided. Something began to rub the melting eyes from my face, making a sickening slurping sound. Two pairs of dry, tiny lips touched my cheeks and sucked in everything on them. As soon as I regained control of my hands, I immediately swung at them, but nothing stood in front of me. Nor could I see the silhouettes sitting in front of me. Nor the cars standing in traffic next to the bus. Nor even the skyline of a miniature of a large city being far behind me. I couldn’t see anything. The only things left with me were the roar of the engines and the rain.