Here is another of those two-sentence stories with poetry added. (Read here for the first one and explanation of why I wrote it and got started on this idea.) I like doing this form of minuscule story. I can handle two sentences, I think, and it is fun.
Rain spotted the lenses of Isabella’s glasses, blurring her view of the dark slick highway, empty at this time of night except for two tiny headlights far out beyond the last building in this one-horse crossroads. The lights brightened, grew larger, and turned to red as the bus blew by without stopping, Isabella’s view of the dark slick highway blurred by tears behind the lenses of her rain-spotted glasses.
Why here? Why not here?
Arrive at a beginning
Or let it go by?
(Haiku 335)
House at night, mail art postcard, 2015
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
I love this two sentence story…is Isabella going to return again, I want to know about the tears.
Thank you. I’ve taken a lot of bus trips in my time and I find the local nature of the travel (with stops at gas stations and parking lots in small towns) to be fascinating, that is what I was thinking about here.
Writing doesn’t have to be thousands of words to be meanful…I’m learning that from you. Thank you.
Thank you. I agree. I try to pare down things to make them easy to read and understandable while still being attractive in how I write, I think less is more, too…
This is so sad. Even the bus didn’t want her.
Or, the person she was waiting for did not choose to get off, after all? I’ve taken a lot of long distance bus trips and they are full of drama, made very personal, since often the stops are in parking lots or even the bus just pulls to the side of the road and people are waiting to meet it. There is no extra veneer of sophistication, it all happens right in front of you on the public street, practically in their homes, not like an airport or train station.
Another possibility. The long distance bus sounds like the perfect setting for a mystery/thriller story.
Hard to find a place to hide, though, unless the bathroom, or maybe the luggage rack. Definitely a challenging setting… and I know I’ve been tempted to violence against fellow bus-mates in the past…although also I’ve mostly made some nice acquaintances, to be honest…
The urban bus system might be more fruitful. Your killer could hop off at the next stop and disappear into the city streets…
The other passengers would just think the victim was asleep.
If your city buses are like ours, even if they though the victim was dead they wouldn’t say anything.
Hard to say. People do like to get in other people’s business and of course some will love the attention of news interviews, phone videos, tweeting…
If the bus was very crowded, somebody might just dump the body on the floor to have the seat…
I like this–like your own form of Haibun.
I want to know more, too. Perhaps you can continue Isabella’s story, just a bit? 🙂
My problem is I can’t figure out what she is doing exactly, waiting for the bus for herself or for someone else? Or is there a third possibility? Isabella did not reveal herself to me any further! Plus, I like some ambiguity in things, I think – I never think things are just “what they are” but there is always…more. I invite you to fill in the “more” here!
Hmmmm. . . 🙂
I love that these super brief stories leave us with answers, leave us craving more information; however, at the same time, I don’t want to know any more. I like the mystery.
This is my aim, I think. I enjoy revealing the situation and letting it in turn reveal itself as much as it wants to, which turns out mostly to be in making the reader complete it or think about it. I enjoy things like that and I guess it is natural it is the way I would like to write. I’m of the opinion that nothing is ever complete, ever finished, or even can be figured out in all its levels.
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