Harlan was not an unattractive man. Tall and thin, razor sharp blue eyes, long graceful fingers, smart face, and a sweetness that was not apparent until you knew him a very long time. His hair stuck straight up, but he often sported an ancient Sherlock Holmes hat. He always wore oversized overalls. Striped. Like a railroad man. He had three pairs of them, and they were in various states of disrepair. He cloaked himself in a long thin gray raincoat, and wore big thick boots, perpetually mud-covered. Harlan never shaved. Not once in his whole life. Drove his mother crazy, drove his girlfriends crazy, and the few times that he ever had a job, it drove his bosses crazy. Which I suspect is one the main reasons he never shaved. Harlan had a monumental vein of stubborn streaking through him, which he inherited from a long line of tall thin stubborn men with sharp blue eyes. So with the Sherlock Holmes hat, the mud crusty boots, and the burning bush of a beard, he looked sort of like a cross between a homeless psychotic ex-professor and an action figure from the Bible.

Harlan liked to play a game he invented on the Greyhound Bus. It was the one truly exciting activity in Harlan’s life. In fact his second most exciting activity was planning and fantasizing about playing the game.

Here’s how the game worked. Harlan would buy a round trip ticket to some place nearby: Chatterton, or Larderville, or Bucksworth. He would get on the bus after dark, and survey the passengers carefully. Harlan wanted a woman. In a skirt. Near the back of the bus. Alone. When he first started playing the game, Harlan used to choose the prettiest woman. But he found he had much better luck with large, older, homelier women. But the thing is, he never know what was going to happen. That’s why the game was so exciting.

When Harlan picked out his lady of the evening, he would approach her slowly, slide himself into the chair next to her, and softly sit. It was better if she was by the window and he was by the aisle, but it didn’t really matter. He’d smile at her, sweet as he could, and if she started conversation (which she rarely did) he’d talk to her, but he preferred if no words were spoken. Once he and the woman were settled in, and the bus was rolling along, Harlan would start inching his hand towards her, slow, oh so slow, so you’d never know it was moving unless you watched for a while.

The tension in Harlan grew every millimeter he got closer. His breath would shorten, blood racehorse, penis thicken and harden.

At a certain point she always became aware that his hand was coming. He loved feeling it, that instant when she knew his hand was coming. It was like a lightning bolt ripping through him, and it always shook him. In that moment of truth, all was revealed. They always did one of three things:

a) Slap his face;
b) Change seats;
c) Keep still and let him do whatever he wanted.

Harlan had very strict rules. If the woman slapped him, he immediately apologized and changed seats. If the woman moved away, well, that was all she wrote. If the woman kept still, he did whatever he wanted.

Harlan got slapped alot. By beautiful women. By unattractive women. Fat, skinny, tall, short, blond, brunette and red head. After he was slapped, he’d move to another seat, and sit there feeling the sting on his face. It hurt in a forbidden, delicious way, a reminder of the passion he’d gotten out of her. Like afterglow. Later he’d imagine the scene in his head as he masturbated.

Harlan had been thrown off a bus once. Right in the middle of nowhere. The woman had whispered something to the bus driver, who’d stopped the bus, walked back to where Harlan was sitting, and told him he could either get off the bus or be turned into the police at the next stop. Harlan got off the bus.

Most of the time the women changed seats and that was the end of it.

But many times women just sat there and let him do whatever he wanted. Some were paralyzed, and didn’t move at all. Some responded a little, like they were into it, but not really. A couple of them actually got crazy with him. Harlan had received oral pleasure several times. He had gotten on top of women and put himself into them. Women had straddled and put him into them. Some were gorgeous, some were plain, some were huge, some were tiny. Because the thing is, you never knew what was going to happen. You never knew.

Harlan bought a round trip ticket to Loder. It was Friday night and the bus was over half full. Perfect. He got on at the last second, so everyone who was going was already on. Harlan scrutinized the crowd. Quickly eliminated a young mom with a baby, a middle-aged woman in tight pants, and two sisters in their fifties. Narrowed his vision to a large woman in the front; a very attractive incredibly put-together Asian woman with a tight black bun on her head and a high necked sweater in the midsection of the bus; and a plain looking plumpishly gray fifties woman in a long shapeless skirt and a large red shapeless sweat shirt with University of Alabama across the front.

The choice was obvious.

Harlan sidled up to University of Alabama. She was sitting next to the window. Perfect. He slid his long frame into the chair. She looked at him demurely. He smiled as sweet a smile as he could. She did not smile back. Went back to reading her book. “Misery” by Stephen King. Perfect

The bus rumbled and ambled. Harlan was already energized and hypnotized. Waiting for the time to be just right. Started moving his hand. Slow. So slow. Harlan prided himself in how slow he could go. Glacial time. His tension ratcheted, a fraction of a cubic sliver of pleasure at a time, coal into diamond, the sweat breaking out in a clear thin line over his thin pink lip, heart throbbing so he thought everyone on the bus could hear it, struggling to keep his ragged breath controlled and even.

There. She felt him creeping. Her whole body stiffened and her breath vanished. Harlan quivered in rapture. Stiffened like a petrified tree. Would he be slapped, arrested, or sexed? The sheer unknown of it drove Harlan wild. He couldn’t wait to see what would happen, but at the same time he never wanted the moment to end. Time stopped, the instant infinite for Harlan and the stocky woman in the large shapeless red University of Alabama sweatshirt.

She stayed stock still. Harlan paused. Breathed. He wanted to give her the opportunity to stop one last time. When she remained unmoved, it signaled the beginning of Act II.

Harlan started moving again, with more urgency. He found that once they knew he was coming, he got better results if he moved with pace. Harlan was on her thigh in no time. The touch of her skirt rippled through Harlan’s pond. He had a good feeling about this one. This was going be good. He smiled. Yes. He moved his hand down her long skirt. He would be under it in a matter of moments. Ah, how delicate and tingly this is.

Then he reached her skin. Soft. She’d shaved her legs recently. Harlan liked that. Imagaining her in her little bachelorette apartment in her bachelorette bathtub, shaving her soft sweet bachelorette legs. Little did she imagine she’d be having them stroked by a stranger on the Greyhound bus. Her calf was large, the skin hanging loose on the leg. Harlan liked that. He reached her knee, big and round. Her legs were slightly parted. Harlin liked that. She was holding her breath. Very excited. He could tell. Harlan knew women, he prided himself in that. We’re goin’ in, he chuckled to himself, his penis leaping like a Mexican jumping bean.

Harlan landed on the fleshy oasis of her thigh. It was a warm moist land. Fertile. And it just got warmer and moister the further he went. He could feel her palpitating now, moistening by the minute.

Still she was unmoved and unmoving. Harlan saw himself lifting up her skirt, laying on top of her, moving her panties aside, putting his condom-encased self inside her, rocking her slowly at first, then harder and faster, her hands pulling him into her despite herself, until he detonated inside her. She would think about it later, not quite believing she had been so bold and daring.

Panties. Harlan reached her panties. His tongue involuntarily snaked out the corner of his mouth. He was right there. At the gate. He petted the outside of her panties, getting the lay of the land. He loved the cool smooth cotton. He could feel her squishy folds and her wet heat underneath.

Harlan hooked his long sensitive fingers under the edge of her panties. He was so close he could taste her. It was so good. He saw himself cupping her large breasts with his long sensitive fingers while he was slamming inside her. He would imagine that later when he was masturbating, Harlan thought to himself.

This was the second to last thought Harlan ever had. Next he heard the sound of a gun cocking close by his ear. This led to the last thought that Harlan ever had.

Harlan’s last thought was-

“Holy shit, I’m going to die right here on this Greyhound bus.”

He was right.

Harlan’s life did not flash before his eyes. He didn’t see the family dog or Molly his first girlfriend who kissed him under the bridge. Didn’t see his father beating the crap out of him once a week whether he needed it or not. Didn’t see himself losing his virginity to a prostitute who smelled like a decomposing animal. Didn’t see his mother bloody and beaten. Didn’t see her dead in her casket. He didn’t see anything. Harlan just died.

Unbeknownst to him, University of Alabama had reached into her purse and slow, slow, just as slow as Harlan, removed a pistol her father had given her on her thirtieth birthday. At the time she had been bitterly disappointed by the present, had gotten into a big fight with her dad about it. He’d shouted at her, stormed out of the house, and not spoken to her for a month. But now she was glad she had that gun. She saw herself thanking her dad for it later. She liked how it felt cocking the hammer of that gun. Powerful. She’d never felt more excited in her whole life. And when she pulled that trigger, her whole life finally made sense.

After she was cleared of murder charges, she became a folk hero, appearing in magazines, on television and radio. She developed the confidence she’d always lacked, stopped bingeing, and lost fifty pounds. She wrote a book about the Greyhound Incident, as it became known. In the process her agent fell madly in love with her. They married and adopted two children. Her story was made into a wildly successful movie starring a thin, fabulous-cheekboned actress, with large breasts, teeth and hair. She became an spokeswoman for battered women, raising millions of dollars for shelters all over America. She did in fact go to her father and thanked him. They hugged, and from that point forward, they became a loving father and daughter.

As for Harlan, his brains splattered all over that bus, spraying onto the perfectly put together Asian woman’s tight black bun, as she screamed bloody murder. This, combined with the terrifying eruption of the gun firing inside the tight confines of the bus, caused a passenger panic. The driver slammed on the breaks, the bus skidding across three lanes of traffic, miraculously missing a small sports car.

Harlan was blasted up out of his seat, landing in a heap in the aisle, dead before he hit the floor, with his erection still in tact. He was cremated. He hadn’t left a will, but that’s what his friends decided he would’ve wanted, because he’d mentioned it once in passing. His ashes were scattered at a hot spring halfway up a mountain he loved. By me.

The thing is, you never know what’s gonna happen. You just never know.