Oh no!

A red bus trudges down a wet road carrying worn and weary passengers. I stoically sit on a dirty seat listening to jazz through impossibly tangled earbuds. It's a fairly calm commute until a man sitting behind me explodes into a fit of tormented moaning.

"Oh, Noooooooo!" he exclaims.

He cries and moans and screams for the rest of the trip.

"OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Some passengers glare at him with puzzled expressions hoping to determine the source of the man's anguish. But the reasons for his outburst are inscrutable.

I'm afraid to turn around and look at him as I might provoke a hail of bullets.

I silently and subtly reach for pepper spray in my briefcase realizing this will prove inadequate in countering a raging psychotic.

With great relief, I finally reach my stop in the parking deck of a shopping mall and escape the bus. I climb into the relative safety of my car and drive the rest of the way home.

I'll never know what triggered the man's meltdown. I empathize with his anguish even though I choose to express my inner darkness more subtly.

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