text: The hangover stank. It was the worst one in a culmination of bad ones, one so impossibly foul and rotten that there was no way to drink it off. Green to the gills and as a dry as a badger’s chuff. Unreasonably dehydrated, yet unable to keep down any liquids. It was in this sorry state I got onto the bus. You’d think the marathon of cigarettes would’ve taken away my sense of taste and smell, but all they’d done was dry around the taste bud, leaving it intact and ready to analyse the putrid, acrid rank that passed for my breath. I could smell myself, smell my fingers, each one yellowed, stained and honking so thoroughly of tar I imagined they were emitting cartoon stink lines. Cold sweat dripped down my back as my paranoid heart thundered off key to the march of some inhuman drum. I could smell these people. I could taste them. The stale body odour, the cheap aftershave, the violent perfume. It lingered and rolled into a triumvirate which also added cheap greasy food and fresh farts to the roster. I took my seat, as the sunlight blasted through the thick reinforced windows and dust burst from within the faded seat padding in a cascade of dead skin cells and anonymous fibres. I sucked it in through my flaring nostrils to stem the wave of terror that had gripped my scalp and muttered, ‘still alive.’ An aging female wart with an array of skintags sat across from me, berating and scolding what I took to be her fat grandson who had chocolate all over his hands, shirt and face. She was smacking and nipping the boy and seeming to get a kick out’ve his feeble and sticky protests to stop. I swallowed down some vomit which if spat out would’ve eaten away the upholstery on the chair in front. Two teenagers sat in the two seats in front, one in each and talked loudly of half forgotten football games and girls in their year they’d give it to. One of the pair, covered in what seemed to be a mosaic of acne and third degree burns craned his neck to see if anyone else was listening to him talking about sniffing his cousin’s knickers, when, as he twisted his neck, an evil looking spot burst from the tension and flecked his collar in residue of puss and blood. I could swear I heard it explode. My chances of recovery from this nightmare were now painfully slim. I put my sweating head into my stinking hands and ran my fingers through my hair. I felt like an ashtray, and spasms began to violently grip me around the spine as I shivered and quaked in this cesspit of anxiety and loathing. I promised God I would get my head together and sort myself out if He would only deliver me from this wretched place. I swore I’d change, as I watched clear fluids run from the little pervert’s neck and stain his shirt collar a translucent colour of orange. Suddenly, the bus driver stopped. The engine had failed and smoke was cascading from the front of the bus as he bade us wretches off the bus and onto the street. As I got off, I looked up and saw an off-license, it’s neon lights emitting a lonely but enchanting buzz, echoing me inside with all the warmth of a mother’s embrace. It was then, I concluded, that the Lord does certainly move in mysterious ways, as walked inside and stared into the fluorescent light.