A second. A glance. A word. It’s strange how powerful these seemingly little measures can be the difference between life and death.
You’re sitting in a bus reading a novel and easing into the sound of the engine you know so well after hundreds of trips like this one. You notice a baby flapping her chubby arms across her mother’s shoulders and you smile. The baby’s wide eyes glow and she smiles widely, innocently beautiful.
You go back to reading your novel after a few seconds. You are eager to finish it, hopefully before you reach your destination. It’s not your usual kind of book but it’s been interesting so far. A spy book like the Tom Clancy ones you used to enjoy back in the day.
The chattering crowd on the bus has settled into the ride now, too. The woman who was leading a prayer earlier is now concluding her short sermon. The traffic is getting lighter and lighter. In three hours or thereabout, you should reach your destination.
But things stop being ordinary when the driver cusses and pulls up by the roadside. He explains that he felt the car drifting a bit and that it is likely something wrong with the tyres or so. He couldn’t be sure but he wanted to check it out.
The grumbling starts.
“These drivers are not serious, shouldn’t they check their buses before starting a journey?”
“What nonsense is this? I’m going to be late for my meeting! This is nonsense.”
“Please let me get down.” The baby’s mother says as the baby starts to cry.
But you just sit. You’re in no particular hurry anyway. You watch the driver check just about every part of the car for about 5 minutes before telling everyone to get back in. He couldn’t find anything wrong with the car.
More grumblings. But everyone gets back in.
A minute later, the bus starts to pull away from where it was parked to rejoin the traffic. That is when a huge force hits the bus’s rear, jerking it violently.
Screams, cusses and exclamations of different kinds fill the air. Your heart rate is through the roof. Time seemed to slow down as the driver stops the bus again and everyone gets down.
You all stare at the dented back of the bus.
Apparently, a tyre had gotten lose from a moving tanker and rolled right to where your bus had been. Two more seconds in that spots and you’d have been rolled over.
You. You had been sitting nearest to the window and the tyre would have come directly at you.
You just breathe. Two seconds. A slight difference on any count. But all of life to you. You breathe deeply and feel your body go numb as you sink to the floor. Breathe, you tell yourself, just breathe.
Prompt: Slight
