The Crash

Whether waking from unknowable dreams, engaging in mild conversation to pass the time through the dark, rainy night, or generally grumbling about the ineptitude of foreign railways, in various ways, the passengers settled down in the face of a long journey. Several keep themselves to themselves.

Suddenly, they are all thrown into the present moment by a sickening BANG from somewhere nearby. It reverberates through the cheap, wooden seating, and up through their spines, clashing teeth together. Richard drops his book in shock at the loud bang, eyes darting around the bus briefly before they find a support pole, his hands shooting desperately forward, grasping, as if trying to stop a wedding ring from rolling into a storm drain. The cigarette goes flying out of Kurt's hand. He thinks 'Oh Fuck' and - it's funny the things that go through your mind at times like this - 'why is that fellow reading a book in Russian?'.

The coach lurches sharply to the left. Up at the front the driver is struggling vainly with the steering wheel. He appears to loose control, and there is an almost slow motion careen off to the side.

The bus topples, at least one set of wheels leaving the road. Passengers are in danger of being sent flying if they cannot hold on, whilst luggage and hats are thrown across the inside of the coach. The small world of the bus, now frantic and full of shouts and banging, starts to invert...

In that short moment Richard Pimms thinks "I didn't go through the last few years just to die in a bus crash in the arse end of darkest Europe!" Emmanuel accepts the crash as another example of his current misfortune. Cloaked in a comfortable blanket of disbelief Hal watches the bus tip onto its side with detatched fascination. The blanket is whipped away when the side of the vehicle impacts with the ground and Hal is sent flying into a chaotic melee of tumbling bodies and luggage.