The Long Return
Early afternoon sunlight was filtered by grey clouds as it tried to shine upon the Hamwick bus depot. Coffee cups and sandwich packets, surrounding but not quite making it into the bin, added a splash of colour to the otherwise tarmac-grey series of stops and parking spaces. Out-of-date routes and timetables lured travellers onto the wrong stops, and sometimes even the wrong services. They were like sirens-of-old tempting sailors onto the rocks, only with less salty spray and more weekend adjustments.
Up and down the depot ancient wall writings told of legendary services from mythic history. There was the 32B, which followed the 32 route but with fewer stops and a more frequent service, the the 31A which braved the Hunningwood Shopping Centre every Bank Holiday Monday, and the 24T which, due to a misprinted route map, did a day-long loop of the bus depot. No-one had ever seen those services running of course, but still the stories persisted among those who visited the depot. They were the heroes of a bygone age, living on in the wall-mounted words of their descendants which told tales of their grand exploits.
These days, however, there were far fewer mythical champions or legendary journeys; the battle drum had been overtaken by the humdrum, and the quiet commute reigned in dominance over the great bus adventures. No longer could the bus service expect exact change, removing the romance of desperate wallet-sifting, and gone was the time of the conductor. No mere mortal would stand in vigil on the bus in modern times. They had fallen into the realms of the everyday future.
But there was still allowed the fire of the bus's great dynasty to burn a little longer.
A rumbling of diesel combustion shook the ground between four enormous rubber tyres. Hardy but worn after countless miles of travel, across terrain ranging from asphalt, to concrete to cobbles, they rolled and crunched along the paved entrance of the bus depot and crushed many a plastic bottle as they went. Familiar ground was a welcome relief to those vulcanised adventure discs, promising replenished air pressure, removal of stones that hid between treads, and of course the ecstasy of respite. For those final tens of metres the wheels turned on aching axles. Suspension bore its load and burden valiantly to the very end. Windows numb from rattling maintained their watch and their posture for a few moments more. As one bus the party of components rolled into stop 4, and the end of their journey, to the triumphant song of squeaking brakes. The diesel beast calmed itself into a slumber.
With a hissing of pneumatic pistons both doors on the bus slid open, allowing bright light and fresh air into the chamber of seating. Dull-eyed nomads felt it brush against their faces and rouse them from the fugue of travel, bringing memories of home and past times to remind them of who they were. Lifting bags from the foot-well and coats from seats the nomads began to rise in a groggy burble of motion.
"Hamwick Bus Depot. Last stop, please depart." Called the voice of authority from the front of the bus. Blue shirt-sleeves were just visible from the sacred booth. "Thank you for travelling with Delaya Buses."
Owen let out a sigh of relief. Tension he'd held for so long that he'd forgotten it was there started to melt away from his limbs. In the sudden absence of the bus's vibrations he felt utterly at peace and almost numb, although that could equally have been from sitting still for such a long time. Finally, it was time to get up and go home.
With a curt nod of mutual respect, Owen bade goodbye to the psychedelic, patterned fabric of the seat in front of him, the coloured print of which had served as a companion for the eons of travel. Certainly Owen and the fabric had had their differences at first; each one had been defensive about what little space they had, and their attitudes towards dark teas could scarcely have been further apart. Over the course of their seemingly endless drive through lands unknown, however, their bond had grown strong. He would never forget the supported afforded to him by the fabric during their troubles at the roundabout with no exit, nor would the fabric lose sight of Owen's restraint when lavatories had seemed a dream that might never come true. But some friendships needed to be left behind. Owen knew that. As seasoned travellers he and the fabric had both understood that there could only be one end to their story, but it was bittersweet in the instant none-the-less.
In hands that had grown bored from inactivity, Owen grasped the array of polyester and jute handles that supported the bags of his spoils, the treasures he'd acquired on his interminable quest away from home. He charged his legs with moving like they did in the old days, and stiffened joints did their best to remember what motion was. Only a slight stumble away from the seats gave evidence to his seized-up struggle, and then two short strides took him to the door in the mid-section of the bus.
Owen drew a deep breath in through both nostrils, filling them with the scents of wet pavement and diesel fumes. This was the smell of home.
He closed his eyes with cathartic pleasure as foot met solid ground once again. This displeased the driver waiting to embark, who used one of her many practiced withering looks to express distaste.
"Hello again, Hamwick." Owen muttered. Hamwick didn't reply, as is typical of a mid-size town. The noble village always takes the time to greet returning residents, but with scale comes coldness and distance. Owen didn't mind; he was just pleased to be back.
"Excuse me please, sir. You're blocking the door." The new driver said, employing her sternest voice that didn't technically breach the limits of professionalism. In her own head she had already jabbed him in the ribs with her boot.
The sound of her voice, speaking in familiar tones and dialect, was music to Owen's ears. Aggressive, impatient music, like the sound of a violinist dashing towards a toilet, but music all the same.
"Of course, friend! Anything for another local." Owen said with unintentional nationalism.
The bus driver said nothing, not even a sarcastic 'thank you', and boarded the vessel.
Despite being exhausted from his journeying and burdened by his bags, nothing could dampen Owen's spirits when he was back in his home town. Everything was just as he remembered it, from the sequential numbering of the bus stops to the positioning of the bus timetables. There was no change in the colour of the seats where commuters waited, nor any difference in the height of the kerbs. Barely able to contain his excitement at how much or little any non-bus stop environments might have changed, Owen set off immediately on weary legs to complete the final stretch of his journey.
"I remember this..." He murmured to himself as he passed the ticket office on the way out. It was exactly as it had been when he'd left for his journey, save for its relative desolation. He recalled throngs of people queueing up, chatting idly to their compatriots, and making the depot a hub of activity. Every seat was occupied by eager passengers awaiting the thrill of their joy-ride to wherever the route may take them. Members of the Delaya Bus Appreciation Society had lined the windows and attempted to spot their favourite buses and drivers. Even the lavatories had been a popular attraction. Now, however, there were scant few potential riders clutching their paper tickets. A single attendant sat bored behind his window, presumably pining for the good old days when he'd been handing out raw, unrefined joy in the form of single or return tickets.
From his pocket he produced the very ticket that he'd purchased so long ago and stared into it nostalgically. If he'd only known then what he knew now, would he have set out all the same? It was an almost impossible question to answer. The man he'd been when he stood at the ticket office a whole five hours ago was a stranger now. All the things he'd seen and all the places he'd been since then – the bus, the high street, the clothes shop – had transformed him irreversibly.
In the glass window Owen caught a glimpse of his own reflection.
"You're a haggard old man now, Owen." He told himself. "Was it all worth it? Spending the prime of your life out there in the wilderness rather than here with the people who love you?" He looked down at his feet. "Or maybe 'loved'. Will they still remember me? Will they have moved on?" His feet gave him no answers, but simply carried him away from the depot.
Garibaldisham Road welcomed Owen onto its eager pavements, sending automobile fanfares past in both directions as a celebration of his return. He smiled at each one, receiving nary a glance back from the dedicated drivers but knowing that they were all out in honour of his arrival. Not all roads had been this friendly on his travels, however. Unbidden a memory of the treacherous Vamondale High Street came rushing into Owen's mind.
The weather had been remarkably similar to that which he was currently experiencing, although it had been illuminated by late morning sunlight rather than the reddening beams of the afternoon. He had still been a rookie traveller back then, wearing an optimistic expression on his youthful cheeks and carrying no suspicions in his heart. Everything about the high street had been suffused with exotic beauty, from the foreign architecture to the peculiar dress of the locals. Hanging baskets held floral mysteries, the bins were marked with symbols of unknown governance, and even the pedestrian crossings were controlled by unfamiliar technologies. One store-front grabbed Owen's attention immediately as he'd walked onto the high street from the bus stop. Arcane tinctures and remedies had been arranged in window displays by local apothecaries and witch-doctors, promising fast relief from a variety of bodily pains or his money back. He'd almost fallen for their trick, too, getting as far as browsing the price before his survival instincts kicked in. To get his money back he would have to return to the store, and to return to the store he'd have to still be in Vamondale. Even recalling the event sent waves of horror rushing up from Owen's stomach, reliving the realisation that they were trying to make him trap himself in their town forever; as long as he had the pills he would never be able to leave, and as long as he didn't leave he would feel the pain of longing to be home. A pain that required pills. The perfect snare.
In that one moment he felt the veil of novelty fall away in favour of harsh reality. The hanging baskets seemed to be full of grasping poisonous vines that would ensnare and devour him. Each one of the bins could have been hiding a squatting local, ready to strike with their primitive spear of sharpened umbrella tips. The pedestrian crossing would likely seek to lure him into the road before signalling the traffic to run him down. Threats were everywhere. Only his explorer's nous would keep him safe.
Owen took a left at the end of Garibaldisham Road, another luxury which he realised he'd missed on his long pilgrimage. The Vamondale shamans had somehow ensorcelled their high street to make every turn a right, something with which Owen had been forced to cope, since the only alternative was to remain trapped there forever in a tide of savages. Now that he was back home, the sharpness of a right-angled left turn was like drawing breath after a year underwater. His bags swung out around him as he turned, pulling him slightly off-balance, but he held it together and just avoided skidding dangerously into the grassy verge. Those bags were another of his journey's crowning achievements; lesser explorers would have fallen when thin, plastic handles began to burrow deep into the hand's flesh, but not Owen. He had been prepared for the parasitic bags that baited shoppers with promises of containing goods and then fused themselves with the fingers, feeding well on soft skin. His own fingers were clamped around handles of jute and polyester, safer, domesticated variants of the original plastic parasites, that he'd taken with him from home. They were a team, a dedicated unit, and a partnership. 'This is a bag for life' the label had said, and Owen could not contest that their rapport would last until either he or the handle snapped from age.
The bags for life had stood by Owen for the entirety of his adventure. From Hamwick Bus Depot to the Big Roundabout to the Lights That Always Seem to Take Too Long and on to Vamondale their actions had lent credence to their claims of undying fealty. From the outset they'd dutifully carried Owen's bottle of water and small selection of fruit, necessary provisions for such an expedition, without incident or complaint at their servile lot, and when the adventure grew tougher they proved what they were made of. The interior labels stating 100% Jute and 100% Polyester respectively had also played a part in that, but that didn't detract from the honourable showing each bag had made of itself.
Their first trial came after Owen had been lured in by the stylus sirens, prominently displayed on a hanging rack in the stationery shop. A prismatic display of colour choices, compounded by the vast array of nib and ink types, were entirely irresistible to him, and he found himself dancing to their song of calligraphic fulfilment almost immediately. Jute and Polyester had tried to dissuade him, to hold him back from the shores of madness with reminders that he already had dozens of writing implements in his desk drawers, but the pull of the pen was overwhelming. Under the spell of the biro and the gel glitter pen, Owen had drifted in a stationer's fugue, selecting every item that caught his eye and cradling them clumsily in his arms. Jute and Polyester could only watch as pen after pen left the racks and made their way into his haphazard collection, holding their master like a marionette.
It took until Owen was standing in front of the checkout to finally break free of their enchantment. Quite bewildered he found himself in an entirely foreign place, with blister-packed stationery beeping past a barcode scanner to land in a pile by the till. A cold sweat started to form on the back of his neck. Back in Hamwick he would have felt confident enough to endure the embarrassment of changing his mind at this late stage. Amid polite smiles and nervous laughter he would have explained that he'd got carried away, or not noticed how many items had ended up in his basket. But Vamondale was not Hamwick. It was a lawless wilderness where shamans of town-planning could distort geometry and witch-doctors could bind souls to the town with only a pill. To upset a checkout worker now might spell death, or at least a stern look and a chat with the manager. It was too much of a risk to take.
Silently Owen accepted his fate and allowed the sirens, the pen tricksters, to accumulate a staggering bill for him to settle; a fitting reminder of his follies. Once they'd had their fun and caused their first mischief, and after Owen had paid for their crimes, he stared down at his shameful purchases. He'd been duped, played like a fiddle, and now everyone would know it when he left the checkout. Either they would swarm over his arms like they had in the shop, or they would sit in a branded bag, marking him as one of their obeisant peons. Every other bad actor in Vamondale, a place that Owen was rapidly deciding to be deeply perilous, would know that he was a target. An easy victim. Or so Owen had thought, before the Polyester bag had swooped in to take control. In one smooth motion it had guided his free hand over the pile, and opened its own polyester maw to contain what Owen sought to see no longer.
Owen's loyal companion easily consumed the traitorous pens, hiding them within its opaque polyester shell. No-one needed to know that he'd been duped, or how deeply that duping had taken him. He could still try to blend in as a savvy consumer, if not a local.
"Thank you." He'd mouthed to the bag as they left the shop.
"No problem, buddy." Its polyester folds had seemed to say.
Walking now along Biscottorama Street, the pens in his bag clattering lightly against one another, Owen could feel every infinitesimal part of his soles. They were taken entirely by a dull ache, one which had formed over the near infinity of his time away from Hamwick.
"Not far to go now, old friends." He told them. "You'll be out of those shoes and rested before you know it."
Both feet gave a familiar throb of acknowledgement. Owen had felt such a dull, pulsing ache in his feet many times, especially on his expedition. None stuck in his mind as clearly as The Penitent's Path.
Time had worn on in Vamondale, the sun traversing foreign skies behind its cloak of clouds. Wanderlust and excitement had given way to weary acceptance of his surroundings and wariness of Vamondale's inherent evil, and Owen had spent longer than he cared to remember wrestling with the men's clothing rack. As a visitor to the land, he had expected to face some issues with translations and interpreting the local customs. Indeed, upon browsing the first garment that caught his eye, a deep green pair of boot-cut jeans, he was thoroughly bewildered by the primitive symbols and sigils that emblazoned the label. Applying the traveller's nous that he had been forced to develop over the course of this and many other adventures, Owen had made a good showing of initial translation, determining that the garment in question was to be washed at no warmer than forty degrees, could not withstand the ravages of a tumble-dryer filled with bricks, and had no place being ironed between two gradually closing walls. There was a sense of pride in his achievement; he'd managed to forge a method of understanding the barbaric language that the Vamondale clothiers favoured, bringing him one step closer to grasping their culture and finding what he wanted. The remaining labels and tags, however, were more artistic in nature, showing splashes of colour and tribal symbols alongside runic words that Owen didn't quite understand. 'Reg waist' was the only one that stood out as half-way understandable, representing a grim parody of the language that he knew from back home in Hamwick.
Carefully he’d replaced the green jeans, reasoning that any garment with such strict laundering requirements wasn’t worth the effort, and continued perusing the racks. Armed with a better understanding of Vamondale's hieroglyphic language Owen had thought that the task would be a simple one, but once again the horrors and shocks of foreign life overtook him. Just as each land was its own kingdom and each kingdom had its own currency, each one of the garments that Owen lifted had its own unique method of conveying information on price, size, material, and viscosity. Distress swept like a forest fire across the barren grasslands of Owen's tired mind, filling every cavity of his consciousness with the thick black smoke of incomprehensibility.
Over and over in his hands he turned the next pair of jeans in an effort to reveal their secrets, searching from turn-up to gusset for any sign of a label or a tag. Finally he found it tucked neatly into the back pocket, some kind of sick joke on the part of the local shelf-replenishment executives no doubt. Finding the label clarified nothing, however. A totally new array of colours and shapes shouted at him, each one both deafening and incomprehensible. Scrutinising it closely for upwards of several seconds finally brought Owen to the understanding that these were a thirty-seven inch waist with a twenty-eight inch leg; totally the wrong fit. Moving on to a further pair brought an equally drawn-out struggle for data that resulted in a tag being found on the inside of the back of the knee. This pair was a medium waist with a seventy centimetre leg, and it pulled a thick duvet of numb hopelessness down onto Owen's head.
Onwards he searched the rail, finding ten-dog waists, four-hundred-and-eleven micro-nautical mile legs, and not a single pair of jeans that was willing to be put into a standard washing machine cycle.
By the time he finally found a pair of jeans to match his own measurements, Owen's feet were protesting in no uncertain terms about the length of time for which they had borne his weight. It was a sure sign to him that his adventure should be drawn to a close, and that he should make good his escape.
That was when he saw The Penitent’s Path, as he came to know it; a serpentine passage formed of ribbon-tape between brass vertical poles which led, after countless twists and turns, towards the checkout. It would be a concerted effort to complete that hike at the best of times, requiring an overnight stop at turn twelve perhaps. But worse than the extreme distance between Owen and the checkout was how every inch of it was filled by mournful, shuffling souls.
In Hamwick, the civilised world as he was coming to think of it, there was a saying. 'Always have enough tills staffed so that customers can buy their goods without a very long wait' it went, and Owen had always sworn by its unshakable truth. In fairness, it was a saying he'd mostly heard from the manager of the department store he'd worked at as a student, but that did nothing to undermine its profundity.
Vamondale had evidently never heard such a saying, and any local wisdom aligning to it had apparently been thoroughly quashed. Despite running along the full width of the store and being equipped with no fewer than six tills, there was a paltry one member of staff working the checkouts. In an effort not to let that poor management decision affect their mood, that same staff member was also taking life quite at their own pace. From his position at the rear of the queue, which extended seemingly infinitely in front of him, Owen could just about see idle conversation being made through the fog of extreme distance. There was no urgency in the staff’s movement. There was no sign of backup arriving. There was only the chain of corralled shoppers clutching their purchases-to-be and shuffling along infrequently.
Owen’s feet re-doubled their efforts to beg for mercy. As the pleas for respite shrieked their way up the nerves in his legs he could do nothing but deny the request and ask them to hold on. Both the left and the right had served him admirably to that point, and he knew that he was making a huge request to make them bear the burden through such an arduous line, but there could be no turning back. Not after the literary ordeal of deciphering a hundred labels. The entire purpose of this expedition had been to purchase new leg-wear, and now all that kept Owen from owning it was a test of stamina and willpower. He was determined not to let Vamondale get the better of him.
In intervals which were clearly too infrequent to be healthy the denizens of the queue shuffled forwards along the path, making progress which was surely less than the space occupied by a single person each time. From where was this room coming? Owen wondered interminably about it for want of anything else to occupy his mind. Perhaps the Vamondale savages were cramming tighter together for warmth, or trying to press their way forwards with the pressure of human bodies. It could easily have been the case that shoppers on the path were collapsing where they stood, and space was being made gradually as their bodies were pushed to one side. An eternity of daydreaming on the subject passed as Owen rounded the first turn.
Squinting to see the checkout on the horizon, Owen had caught sudden sight of another uniformed shape moving behind the desk. Both his stomach and his feet risked a flutter of excitement. Whoever it was, their potential saviour, had moved past the existing assistant and towards some of the other tills. Even the queuing locals took an interest as the mysterious figure fiddled with one of the computers, making motions that could very easily be interpreted as logging on or preparing to make a transaction. But those motions carried on for too long. Hope had started to ebb by the end of the first minute, and by the third it had drained away completely to leave a void that only impotent frustration could fill. The late-arriving monster of a second staff-member must have been able to see the extent of the queue, but still they had insisted on performing some kind of inane task in full view of everyone. They were knowingly generating an unfair quantity of false hope. It was just one more in a long series of betrayals that Owen had experienced at the hands of Vamondale.
Regret had then started to whisper from the corners of Owen's mind. Largely it reminded him of the folly he'd shown by tying his laces extra tight that morning, a mistake he was now unable to rectify without looking a bit peculiar. But it also told him that he should never have tried to buy jeans here, and it lectured him on how easy it would have been to recognise that the queue was too long and just walk away. He’d already invested so much time into the exercise though. To abandon it now would be to accept a second journey into Vamondale, and to restart the queue from the back on that occasion. There was no other way but forwards, at the pace dictated by Vamondale’s agents of chaos.
“I’m sorry, feet. We’ll get through this together.” He muttered towards the contents of his shoes, as they shuffled forwards again. “This queue, it seems, is the price of penitence.”
After much more time than was either necessary or justifiable the second assistant looked up from their monitor and towards the queue. Another droplet of hope trickled over the optimism-parched crowd as he put on a customer service smile.
“We apologise for the wait” Owen heard him begin, producing a sheet of paper from a sub-desk printer as he spoke. ‘We apologise for the wait’ Owen read with mounting despair as the second torturer stuck the sign to the front of the desk and walked away. His statement had been both the beginning and the end. There was no ‘but please come to till 2’ as a follow-up. The Penitent’s Path took a little more away from the queue.
That moment marked the edge of a black hole in Owen’s memory of the expedition’s darkest hour. Fragmented snippets came back here and there of throbbing soles, the weight of polyester, and the interminable waiting in an infinite queue. At some stage he was convinced that he’d moved backwards, the one assistant having presumably undone a transaction in their ineptitude and added someone to the front of the line, but Owen later reasoned that his fractured memory was playing tricks. Certainty only returned with a vision of suddenly standing in front of the till and of jute loyally opening up to contain the hard-won jeans. Thanks spilled from Owen towards his dutiful bags and valiant, bruised feet. On a solemn promise he swore to get them home and ease the burden.
Bourbondale Avenue finally stretched away from the exhausted traveller and his beleaguered companions, bringing with it to the door to number one six five. The ever-present pressure of pocket-lurking keys disappeared from a slightly sweaty thigh and the doorway yielded. He was back at last. The long return was over.
“Is that you back, Owen?” A beautiful and hauntingly familiar voice asked from inside. Distant recollections pushed through the fog and came back to Owen. He knew the voice well, loved it even.
“Dee? Yes, yes I’m back. I’m finally back.” Owen replied. Her face appeared from the living room.
“Did you get everything in the end? Some shirts and new jeans?”
“Um…” Owen started. “…it was all a bit perilous for shirts. I only just made it back with jeans.” He finished, as Dee took the bags from him.
“So I see. And half a kilo of pens too. I’ll add them to the collection. Another shaman, I guess?” She said with a raised eyebrow. Owen nodded sheepishly. “Well, whatever curses or peril the shops held, at least you can throw those old holey jeans away at last. And you didn’t even take that long. Five hours is good time.”
Owen wanted to explain just how mistaken she was, but knew that Dee would never be made to understand. He merely nodded in deference to the new fraternity he shared with polyester, jute and his own feet, then shrugged.
“It felt a lot longer to us.” He said wearily. “It felt a lot longer to us.”
Up and down the depot ancient wall writings told of legendary services from mythic history. There was the 32B, which followed the 32 route but with fewer stops and a more frequent service, the the 31A which braved the Hunningwood Shopping Centre every Bank Holiday Monday, and the 24T which, due to a misprinted route map, did a day-long loop of the bus depot. No-one had ever seen those services running of course, but still the stories persisted among those who visited the depot. They were the heroes of a bygone age, living on in the wall-mounted words of their descendants which told tales of their grand exploits.
These days, however, there were far fewer mythical champions or legendary journeys; the battle drum had been overtaken by the humdrum, and the quiet commute reigned in dominance over the great bus adventures. No longer could the bus service expect exact change, removing the romance of desperate wallet-sifting, and gone was the time of the conductor. No mere mortal would stand in vigil on the bus in modern times. They had fallen into the realms of the everyday future.
But there was still allowed the fire of the bus's great dynasty to burn a little longer.
A rumbling of diesel combustion shook the ground between four enormous rubber tyres. Hardy but worn after countless miles of travel, across terrain ranging from asphalt, to concrete to cobbles, they rolled and crunched along the paved entrance of the bus depot and crushed many a plastic bottle as they went. Familiar ground was a welcome relief to those vulcanised adventure discs, promising replenished air pressure, removal of stones that hid between treads, and of course the ecstasy of respite. For those final tens of metres the wheels turned on aching axles. Suspension bore its load and burden valiantly to the very end. Windows numb from rattling maintained their watch and their posture for a few moments more. As one bus the party of components rolled into stop 4, and the end of their journey, to the triumphant song of squeaking brakes. The diesel beast calmed itself into a slumber.
With a hissing of pneumatic pistons both doors on the bus slid open, allowing bright light and fresh air into the chamber of seating. Dull-eyed nomads felt it brush against their faces and rouse them from the fugue of travel, bringing memories of home and past times to remind them of who they were. Lifting bags from the foot-well and coats from seats the nomads began to rise in a groggy burble of motion.
"Hamwick Bus Depot. Last stop, please depart." Called the voice of authority from the front of the bus. Blue shirt-sleeves were just visible from the sacred booth. "Thank you for travelling with Delaya Buses."
Owen let out a sigh of relief. Tension he'd held for so long that he'd forgotten it was there started to melt away from his limbs. In the sudden absence of the bus's vibrations he felt utterly at peace and almost numb, although that could equally have been from sitting still for such a long time. Finally, it was time to get up and go home.
With a curt nod of mutual respect, Owen bade goodbye to the psychedelic, patterned fabric of the seat in front of him, the coloured print of which had served as a companion for the eons of travel. Certainly Owen and the fabric had had their differences at first; each one had been defensive about what little space they had, and their attitudes towards dark teas could scarcely have been further apart. Over the course of their seemingly endless drive through lands unknown, however, their bond had grown strong. He would never forget the supported afforded to him by the fabric during their troubles at the roundabout with no exit, nor would the fabric lose sight of Owen's restraint when lavatories had seemed a dream that might never come true. But some friendships needed to be left behind. Owen knew that. As seasoned travellers he and the fabric had both understood that there could only be one end to their story, but it was bittersweet in the instant none-the-less.
In hands that had grown bored from inactivity, Owen grasped the array of polyester and jute handles that supported the bags of his spoils, the treasures he'd acquired on his interminable quest away from home. He charged his legs with moving like they did in the old days, and stiffened joints did their best to remember what motion was. Only a slight stumble away from the seats gave evidence to his seized-up struggle, and then two short strides took him to the door in the mid-section of the bus.
Owen drew a deep breath in through both nostrils, filling them with the scents of wet pavement and diesel fumes. This was the smell of home.
He closed his eyes with cathartic pleasure as foot met solid ground once again. This displeased the driver waiting to embark, who used one of her many practiced withering looks to express distaste.
"Hello again, Hamwick." Owen muttered. Hamwick didn't reply, as is typical of a mid-size town. The noble village always takes the time to greet returning residents, but with scale comes coldness and distance. Owen didn't mind; he was just pleased to be back.
"Excuse me please, sir. You're blocking the door." The new driver said, employing her sternest voice that didn't technically breach the limits of professionalism. In her own head she had already jabbed him in the ribs with her boot.
The sound of her voice, speaking in familiar tones and dialect, was music to Owen's ears. Aggressive, impatient music, like the sound of a violinist dashing towards a toilet, but music all the same.
"Of course, friend! Anything for another local." Owen said with unintentional nationalism.
The bus driver said nothing, not even a sarcastic 'thank you', and boarded the vessel.
Despite being exhausted from his journeying and burdened by his bags, nothing could dampen Owen's spirits when he was back in his home town. Everything was just as he remembered it, from the sequential numbering of the bus stops to the positioning of the bus timetables. There was no change in the colour of the seats where commuters waited, nor any difference in the height of the kerbs. Barely able to contain his excitement at how much or little any non-bus stop environments might have changed, Owen set off immediately on weary legs to complete the final stretch of his journey.
"I remember this..." He murmured to himself as he passed the ticket office on the way out. It was exactly as it had been when he'd left for his journey, save for its relative desolation. He recalled throngs of people queueing up, chatting idly to their compatriots, and making the depot a hub of activity. Every seat was occupied by eager passengers awaiting the thrill of their joy-ride to wherever the route may take them. Members of the Delaya Bus Appreciation Society had lined the windows and attempted to spot their favourite buses and drivers. Even the lavatories had been a popular attraction. Now, however, there were scant few potential riders clutching their paper tickets. A single attendant sat bored behind his window, presumably pining for the good old days when he'd been handing out raw, unrefined joy in the form of single or return tickets.
From his pocket he produced the very ticket that he'd purchased so long ago and stared into it nostalgically. If he'd only known then what he knew now, would he have set out all the same? It was an almost impossible question to answer. The man he'd been when he stood at the ticket office a whole five hours ago was a stranger now. All the things he'd seen and all the places he'd been since then – the bus, the high street, the clothes shop – had transformed him irreversibly.
In the glass window Owen caught a glimpse of his own reflection.
"You're a haggard old man now, Owen." He told himself. "Was it all worth it? Spending the prime of your life out there in the wilderness rather than here with the people who love you?" He looked down at his feet. "Or maybe 'loved'. Will they still remember me? Will they have moved on?" His feet gave him no answers, but simply carried him away from the depot.
Garibaldisham Road welcomed Owen onto its eager pavements, sending automobile fanfares past in both directions as a celebration of his return. He smiled at each one, receiving nary a glance back from the dedicated drivers but knowing that they were all out in honour of his arrival. Not all roads had been this friendly on his travels, however. Unbidden a memory of the treacherous Vamondale High Street came rushing into Owen's mind.
The weather had been remarkably similar to that which he was currently experiencing, although it had been illuminated by late morning sunlight rather than the reddening beams of the afternoon. He had still been a rookie traveller back then, wearing an optimistic expression on his youthful cheeks and carrying no suspicions in his heart. Everything about the high street had been suffused with exotic beauty, from the foreign architecture to the peculiar dress of the locals. Hanging baskets held floral mysteries, the bins were marked with symbols of unknown governance, and even the pedestrian crossings were controlled by unfamiliar technologies. One store-front grabbed Owen's attention immediately as he'd walked onto the high street from the bus stop. Arcane tinctures and remedies had been arranged in window displays by local apothecaries and witch-doctors, promising fast relief from a variety of bodily pains or his money back. He'd almost fallen for their trick, too, getting as far as browsing the price before his survival instincts kicked in. To get his money back he would have to return to the store, and to return to the store he'd have to still be in Vamondale. Even recalling the event sent waves of horror rushing up from Owen's stomach, reliving the realisation that they were trying to make him trap himself in their town forever; as long as he had the pills he would never be able to leave, and as long as he didn't leave he would feel the pain of longing to be home. A pain that required pills. The perfect snare.
In that one moment he felt the veil of novelty fall away in favour of harsh reality. The hanging baskets seemed to be full of grasping poisonous vines that would ensnare and devour him. Each one of the bins could have been hiding a squatting local, ready to strike with their primitive spear of sharpened umbrella tips. The pedestrian crossing would likely seek to lure him into the road before signalling the traffic to run him down. Threats were everywhere. Only his explorer's nous would keep him safe.
Owen took a left at the end of Garibaldisham Road, another luxury which he realised he'd missed on his long pilgrimage. The Vamondale shamans had somehow ensorcelled their high street to make every turn a right, something with which Owen had been forced to cope, since the only alternative was to remain trapped there forever in a tide of savages. Now that he was back home, the sharpness of a right-angled left turn was like drawing breath after a year underwater. His bags swung out around him as he turned, pulling him slightly off-balance, but he held it together and just avoided skidding dangerously into the grassy verge. Those bags were another of his journey's crowning achievements; lesser explorers would have fallen when thin, plastic handles began to burrow deep into the hand's flesh, but not Owen. He had been prepared for the parasitic bags that baited shoppers with promises of containing goods and then fused themselves with the fingers, feeding well on soft skin. His own fingers were clamped around handles of jute and polyester, safer, domesticated variants of the original plastic parasites, that he'd taken with him from home. They were a team, a dedicated unit, and a partnership. 'This is a bag for life' the label had said, and Owen could not contest that their rapport would last until either he or the handle snapped from age.
The bags for life had stood by Owen for the entirety of his adventure. From Hamwick Bus Depot to the Big Roundabout to the Lights That Always Seem to Take Too Long and on to Vamondale their actions had lent credence to their claims of undying fealty. From the outset they'd dutifully carried Owen's bottle of water and small selection of fruit, necessary provisions for such an expedition, without incident or complaint at their servile lot, and when the adventure grew tougher they proved what they were made of. The interior labels stating 100% Jute and 100% Polyester respectively had also played a part in that, but that didn't detract from the honourable showing each bag had made of itself.
Their first trial came after Owen had been lured in by the stylus sirens, prominently displayed on a hanging rack in the stationery shop. A prismatic display of colour choices, compounded by the vast array of nib and ink types, were entirely irresistible to him, and he found himself dancing to their song of calligraphic fulfilment almost immediately. Jute and Polyester had tried to dissuade him, to hold him back from the shores of madness with reminders that he already had dozens of writing implements in his desk drawers, but the pull of the pen was overwhelming. Under the spell of the biro and the gel glitter pen, Owen had drifted in a stationer's fugue, selecting every item that caught his eye and cradling them clumsily in his arms. Jute and Polyester could only watch as pen after pen left the racks and made their way into his haphazard collection, holding their master like a marionette.
It took until Owen was standing in front of the checkout to finally break free of their enchantment. Quite bewildered he found himself in an entirely foreign place, with blister-packed stationery beeping past a barcode scanner to land in a pile by the till. A cold sweat started to form on the back of his neck. Back in Hamwick he would have felt confident enough to endure the embarrassment of changing his mind at this late stage. Amid polite smiles and nervous laughter he would have explained that he'd got carried away, or not noticed how many items had ended up in his basket. But Vamondale was not Hamwick. It was a lawless wilderness where shamans of town-planning could distort geometry and witch-doctors could bind souls to the town with only a pill. To upset a checkout worker now might spell death, or at least a stern look and a chat with the manager. It was too much of a risk to take.
Silently Owen accepted his fate and allowed the sirens, the pen tricksters, to accumulate a staggering bill for him to settle; a fitting reminder of his follies. Once they'd had their fun and caused their first mischief, and after Owen had paid for their crimes, he stared down at his shameful purchases. He'd been duped, played like a fiddle, and now everyone would know it when he left the checkout. Either they would swarm over his arms like they had in the shop, or they would sit in a branded bag, marking him as one of their obeisant peons. Every other bad actor in Vamondale, a place that Owen was rapidly deciding to be deeply perilous, would know that he was a target. An easy victim. Or so Owen had thought, before the Polyester bag had swooped in to take control. In one smooth motion it had guided his free hand over the pile, and opened its own polyester maw to contain what Owen sought to see no longer.
Owen's loyal companion easily consumed the traitorous pens, hiding them within its opaque polyester shell. No-one needed to know that he'd been duped, or how deeply that duping had taken him. He could still try to blend in as a savvy consumer, if not a local.
"Thank you." He'd mouthed to the bag as they left the shop.
"No problem, buddy." Its polyester folds had seemed to say.
Walking now along Biscottorama Street, the pens in his bag clattering lightly against one another, Owen could feel every infinitesimal part of his soles. They were taken entirely by a dull ache, one which had formed over the near infinity of his time away from Hamwick.
"Not far to go now, old friends." He told them. "You'll be out of those shoes and rested before you know it."
Both feet gave a familiar throb of acknowledgement. Owen had felt such a dull, pulsing ache in his feet many times, especially on his expedition. None stuck in his mind as clearly as The Penitent's Path.
Time had worn on in Vamondale, the sun traversing foreign skies behind its cloak of clouds. Wanderlust and excitement had given way to weary acceptance of his surroundings and wariness of Vamondale's inherent evil, and Owen had spent longer than he cared to remember wrestling with the men's clothing rack. As a visitor to the land, he had expected to face some issues with translations and interpreting the local customs. Indeed, upon browsing the first garment that caught his eye, a deep green pair of boot-cut jeans, he was thoroughly bewildered by the primitive symbols and sigils that emblazoned the label. Applying the traveller's nous that he had been forced to develop over the course of this and many other adventures, Owen had made a good showing of initial translation, determining that the garment in question was to be washed at no warmer than forty degrees, could not withstand the ravages of a tumble-dryer filled with bricks, and had no place being ironed between two gradually closing walls. There was a sense of pride in his achievement; he'd managed to forge a method of understanding the barbaric language that the Vamondale clothiers favoured, bringing him one step closer to grasping their culture and finding what he wanted. The remaining labels and tags, however, were more artistic in nature, showing splashes of colour and tribal symbols alongside runic words that Owen didn't quite understand. 'Reg waist' was the only one that stood out as half-way understandable, representing a grim parody of the language that he knew from back home in Hamwick.
Carefully he’d replaced the green jeans, reasoning that any garment with such strict laundering requirements wasn’t worth the effort, and continued perusing the racks. Armed with a better understanding of Vamondale's hieroglyphic language Owen had thought that the task would be a simple one, but once again the horrors and shocks of foreign life overtook him. Just as each land was its own kingdom and each kingdom had its own currency, each one of the garments that Owen lifted had its own unique method of conveying information on price, size, material, and viscosity. Distress swept like a forest fire across the barren grasslands of Owen's tired mind, filling every cavity of his consciousness with the thick black smoke of incomprehensibility.
Over and over in his hands he turned the next pair of jeans in an effort to reveal their secrets, searching from turn-up to gusset for any sign of a label or a tag. Finally he found it tucked neatly into the back pocket, some kind of sick joke on the part of the local shelf-replenishment executives no doubt. Finding the label clarified nothing, however. A totally new array of colours and shapes shouted at him, each one both deafening and incomprehensible. Scrutinising it closely for upwards of several seconds finally brought Owen to the understanding that these were a thirty-seven inch waist with a twenty-eight inch leg; totally the wrong fit. Moving on to a further pair brought an equally drawn-out struggle for data that resulted in a tag being found on the inside of the back of the knee. This pair was a medium waist with a seventy centimetre leg, and it pulled a thick duvet of numb hopelessness down onto Owen's head.
Onwards he searched the rail, finding ten-dog waists, four-hundred-and-eleven micro-nautical mile legs, and not a single pair of jeans that was willing to be put into a standard washing machine cycle.
By the time he finally found a pair of jeans to match his own measurements, Owen's feet were protesting in no uncertain terms about the length of time for which they had borne his weight. It was a sure sign to him that his adventure should be drawn to a close, and that he should make good his escape.
That was when he saw The Penitent’s Path, as he came to know it; a serpentine passage formed of ribbon-tape between brass vertical poles which led, after countless twists and turns, towards the checkout. It would be a concerted effort to complete that hike at the best of times, requiring an overnight stop at turn twelve perhaps. But worse than the extreme distance between Owen and the checkout was how every inch of it was filled by mournful, shuffling souls.
In Hamwick, the civilised world as he was coming to think of it, there was a saying. 'Always have enough tills staffed so that customers can buy their goods without a very long wait' it went, and Owen had always sworn by its unshakable truth. In fairness, it was a saying he'd mostly heard from the manager of the department store he'd worked at as a student, but that did nothing to undermine its profundity.
Vamondale had evidently never heard such a saying, and any local wisdom aligning to it had apparently been thoroughly quashed. Despite running along the full width of the store and being equipped with no fewer than six tills, there was a paltry one member of staff working the checkouts. In an effort not to let that poor management decision affect their mood, that same staff member was also taking life quite at their own pace. From his position at the rear of the queue, which extended seemingly infinitely in front of him, Owen could just about see idle conversation being made through the fog of extreme distance. There was no urgency in the staff’s movement. There was no sign of backup arriving. There was only the chain of corralled shoppers clutching their purchases-to-be and shuffling along infrequently.
Owen’s feet re-doubled their efforts to beg for mercy. As the pleas for respite shrieked their way up the nerves in his legs he could do nothing but deny the request and ask them to hold on. Both the left and the right had served him admirably to that point, and he knew that he was making a huge request to make them bear the burden through such an arduous line, but there could be no turning back. Not after the literary ordeal of deciphering a hundred labels. The entire purpose of this expedition had been to purchase new leg-wear, and now all that kept Owen from owning it was a test of stamina and willpower. He was determined not to let Vamondale get the better of him.
In intervals which were clearly too infrequent to be healthy the denizens of the queue shuffled forwards along the path, making progress which was surely less than the space occupied by a single person each time. From where was this room coming? Owen wondered interminably about it for want of anything else to occupy his mind. Perhaps the Vamondale savages were cramming tighter together for warmth, or trying to press their way forwards with the pressure of human bodies. It could easily have been the case that shoppers on the path were collapsing where they stood, and space was being made gradually as their bodies were pushed to one side. An eternity of daydreaming on the subject passed as Owen rounded the first turn.
Squinting to see the checkout on the horizon, Owen had caught sudden sight of another uniformed shape moving behind the desk. Both his stomach and his feet risked a flutter of excitement. Whoever it was, their potential saviour, had moved past the existing assistant and towards some of the other tills. Even the queuing locals took an interest as the mysterious figure fiddled with one of the computers, making motions that could very easily be interpreted as logging on or preparing to make a transaction. But those motions carried on for too long. Hope had started to ebb by the end of the first minute, and by the third it had drained away completely to leave a void that only impotent frustration could fill. The late-arriving monster of a second staff-member must have been able to see the extent of the queue, but still they had insisted on performing some kind of inane task in full view of everyone. They were knowingly generating an unfair quantity of false hope. It was just one more in a long series of betrayals that Owen had experienced at the hands of Vamondale.
Regret had then started to whisper from the corners of Owen's mind. Largely it reminded him of the folly he'd shown by tying his laces extra tight that morning, a mistake he was now unable to rectify without looking a bit peculiar. But it also told him that he should never have tried to buy jeans here, and it lectured him on how easy it would have been to recognise that the queue was too long and just walk away. He’d already invested so much time into the exercise though. To abandon it now would be to accept a second journey into Vamondale, and to restart the queue from the back on that occasion. There was no other way but forwards, at the pace dictated by Vamondale’s agents of chaos.
“I’m sorry, feet. We’ll get through this together.” He muttered towards the contents of his shoes, as they shuffled forwards again. “This queue, it seems, is the price of penitence.”
After much more time than was either necessary or justifiable the second assistant looked up from their monitor and towards the queue. Another droplet of hope trickled over the optimism-parched crowd as he put on a customer service smile.
“We apologise for the wait” Owen heard him begin, producing a sheet of paper from a sub-desk printer as he spoke. ‘We apologise for the wait’ Owen read with mounting despair as the second torturer stuck the sign to the front of the desk and walked away. His statement had been both the beginning and the end. There was no ‘but please come to till 2’ as a follow-up. The Penitent’s Path took a little more away from the queue.
That moment marked the edge of a black hole in Owen’s memory of the expedition’s darkest hour. Fragmented snippets came back here and there of throbbing soles, the weight of polyester, and the interminable waiting in an infinite queue. At some stage he was convinced that he’d moved backwards, the one assistant having presumably undone a transaction in their ineptitude and added someone to the front of the line, but Owen later reasoned that his fractured memory was playing tricks. Certainty only returned with a vision of suddenly standing in front of the till and of jute loyally opening up to contain the hard-won jeans. Thanks spilled from Owen towards his dutiful bags and valiant, bruised feet. On a solemn promise he swore to get them home and ease the burden.
Bourbondale Avenue finally stretched away from the exhausted traveller and his beleaguered companions, bringing with it to the door to number one six five. The ever-present pressure of pocket-lurking keys disappeared from a slightly sweaty thigh and the doorway yielded. He was back at last. The long return was over.
“Is that you back, Owen?” A beautiful and hauntingly familiar voice asked from inside. Distant recollections pushed through the fog and came back to Owen. He knew the voice well, loved it even.
“Dee? Yes, yes I’m back. I’m finally back.” Owen replied. Her face appeared from the living room.
“Did you get everything in the end? Some shirts and new jeans?”
“Um…” Owen started. “…it was all a bit perilous for shirts. I only just made it back with jeans.” He finished, as Dee took the bags from him.
“So I see. And half a kilo of pens too. I’ll add them to the collection. Another shaman, I guess?” She said with a raised eyebrow. Owen nodded sheepishly. “Well, whatever curses or peril the shops held, at least you can throw those old holey jeans away at last. And you didn’t even take that long. Five hours is good time.”
Owen wanted to explain just how mistaken she was, but knew that Dee would never be made to understand. He merely nodded in deference to the new fraternity he shared with polyester, jute and his own feet, then shrugged.
“It felt a lot longer to us.” He said wearily. “It felt a lot longer to us.”