Two men at a bus stop
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There is a bus stop on an empty street.
Waiting at the stop are two men. The first one, the one on the left, is tall and lanky, and is carrying a briefcase. The one on the right is shorter and a little portly. Not extremely portly, just a little.
They are both wearing suits. The tall man wears a black suit, and the shorter man wears a gray one.
"Hello," says the first man.
"Hello," says the second.
"Waiting for the bus?" the first man asks.
"I am." says the second. "Nice suit."
"You too."
"I have this strange feeling," says the second man.
"Oh?" answers the man in the black suit.
"I don't feel completely myself. I don't seem to remember anything," says the man in the gray suit. "I don't have any memories of this morning. There's a ring on my finger, so I assume I'm married. But I don't know what my wife looks like. And I know I'm at a bus stop. But I don't know what I'm waiting for."
"Well, the bus, of course," says the man in the black suit. "But I know what you mean. It's like we're not real, like we're in a picture."
"Right," says the second man. "It's like we're characters in a story."
"Well," says the first man, "it does feel a bit like that, but that's a little outlandish, don't you think? I mean we're here. We're standing here at this bus stop. It would be pretty strange if we were just characters in a story. Nothing's happening. You'd expect something to happen, something unexpected to appear from somewhere."
"That's true," agrees the second man, as a llama appears walking down the road towards the two men.
"Ha!" laughs the man in the black suit. "That's pretty unexpected! Hello llama!"
"Hello llama!" says the second man, also laughing.
"Hello," says the llama, who ambles past the two men and on down the road.
"Doesn't that just take the cake then," says the second man when the two men have finished laughing. "We're in a story. We're characters in a story."
"I guess so," says the first man. "Boy, I remember something like this happened to me before."
"Wow! What was it?" asks the second man excitedly.
"Well, when I was a kid, I lived in the country, and I had to walk three quarters of a mile down a dirt road every day from school. One day, I was walking down the road, and I saw something moving in the dirt up ahead. I ran up to look at it, and it was a bird. Its wings were broken, and it was bleeding quite a bit, just flapping there on the ground."
"Wow," says the second man.
"Right. Well, I was just a kid, you know? I didn't know what to do, or what had happened. There was nothing around for miles, and no cars ever drove down the road. I just stood there wondering what was happening, just like now, completely helpless."
The second man shakes his head slightly. "What did you do?"
"Well, as I said, I didn't know what to do. I just stood there, watching it move around, trying to fly or crawl away or do something. And, after a few minutes, it started moving slower and slower. I just stood there watching it, until it moved slower and slower, and then stopped moving. I watched it die. It was the first thing I'd ever actually seen die. I went home and never told anybody about it."
"Wow." says the second man sadly. "Did that really happen to you?"
"Nope." says the man in the black suit. "But I do remember it. Maybe it's just one of those flashbacks a character has in a story-- you know, where the flashback reflects the theme of the main story."
"Oh, right. Like one of the characters tells a story that has the same theme as the main story." says the man in the gray suit. "But that's a pretty depressing theme. And it doesn't really have anything to do with us here at the bus stop."
"True."
A minute or two passes. The bus doesn't come. The man in the gray suit takes out a hankerchief, wipes his forehead, and puts the hankerchief away.
"Man," says the second man, the man in the gray suit, "I hope this bus shows up soon."
"It won't," says the first man, "at least not for a while."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Think about it," says the man in the black suit. "The bus coming is probably the end of whatever story we're in. Something will happen, the bus will show up, and the story will end."
"Oh, yeah. Well, we should make something happen then!" says the second man excitedly. "You made that llama appear. I bet we can just say what will happen and then it will!" He takes a step out into the street and screams into the sky. "AND THEN A HUNDRED NAKED BEAUTIFUL NYMPHOMANIAC CHEERLEADERS SHOWED UP!"
Nothing happens.
"I don't think it's that kind of story," says the man in the black suit.
The second man steps back on the curb and sits down. A moment passes.
"Look," says the first man, the one in the black suit. "We're here, and we'll just have to deal with it. We may be powerless, we may be in an uncertain world. Heck, for all we know, the story's a tragedy, and one of us is about to die."
The second man stands up and takes a few steps backward. "You stay away from me!"
The first man sighs. "No, listen, I'm not going to kill anybody, I was just saying we don't know what's going to happen. It's fine, we're fine. All I'm saying is we should accept that we're here, and that we have to make the best of it. Anyway, no matter what, we must be here for a reason."
"What do you mean by that?" the second man settles down and looks at the first man.
"Well, I just mean that there's some reason we're here. There's got to be some reason we're here, in this story, in this book, or play, or movie, or whatever we're in. Somebody's writing about us for a reason, right? The fact that we exist means there's a reason we exist."
"Whoa." says the second man. "That's deep."
"I know," says the man in the black suit.
Another few seconds pass. The second man thinks. Then he looks up.
"Wait a minute!" he says. "What if the reason we're here is so you could say that?"
"I don't understand," says the first man.
"I just mean, what if the reason we're in this story is so you can say that there's a reason we're here? Like you said, we're in an uncertain world, we're wondering why we're here, and you just suggested there's a reason. You said that 'the fact we exist means there's a reason we exist.' Maybe that's the theme of the story."
"Interesting," says the first man. "But there's a problem."
"What's that?"
"The bus still hasn't shown up. If that was it, the story would be over, and we'd be in the bus and on our way," says the first man. "If we'd made our point, the bus would come and the story would be over, and it hasn't ended yet."
"Oh," says the second man, dejectedly. He sits back down, and thinks some more.
Another minute or two passes.
The second man looks up at the first. "Or," he says slowly, "it could be that the point of the story is that even if we know there's a reason we're waiting for a bus, some buses still don't come. It could be that the bus isn't coming. Sometimes, even though there's a good reason to wait, some buses still don't show." He pauses for a moment, looks down the road, and then back up at the first man. "It could be that, right?"
"Could be," says the man in the black suit. "Could be."
Mike Scramm is a naked nymphomaniac.