The stop had cost him. Now his bladder was displaying warning signs all over his brain. He was about

He had to pee. Mr. Jayden Lewis, age eighteen, of Los Angeles County, mgm grand hotel casino California had to take a piss. A simple act complicated by location and distance. He had sat down near the front of the bus, the toilet was in the back. He had taken a window seat and a woman had taken the aisle seat boxing him in. The bus was crowded. mgm grand hotel casino he didn't want to go back. Maybe he could have a few hours ago when the sleek gray Greyhound had just pulled out of LA, but by now every one of the twenty passengers had probably crapped back there. The smell would be awful and as the bus bounced along the road he kept having visions of the toilet being frothy like a well-mixed milkshake .
Phoenix , however, was an hour away and a countdown had started in his bladder and in his brain. The sterile Mohave desert mgm grand hotel casino outside the bus's windows did nothing to stem the tide of watery images of dams bursting, faucets pouring, sprinklers sprinkling, clouds raining, and long involved pictures of immense oceans draining down seafloor trenches.
"Where are you going?" the lady asked. She wasn't old, but he thought she was old. To a fresh suburban Cali-forn-I-A-kid fifty is old. Her faded blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail looked old and out of date, and her face which was as crinkly and shiny as a tinfoil wrap looked ancient. Her eyes were the only think young about her: chips of ice; azure discs.
He expected a one word answer. What he got was a long story, laborious in detail, about how her husband had died and she was using the insurance money to travel mgm grand hotel casino about. She did not appear to want to visit any one place, only travel through them by bus or train or plane or automobile until the money ran out. She didn't, according to her story, ever stop to look at things. Her knowledge of the great cities down the coast were limited mgm grand hotel casino to truck stops and various stations. She had no friends, no family, so why not travel? Everybody she knew was dead, there was nothing to hold her down. She was going to travel where the wind and the Lord wanted her. She said that several times. "Where the Lord wanted her."
"I heard this thing on the news where it isn't even safe for white people to walk down the streets there. I can't imagine. Apparently tourists have to pay a tax to the drug lord s to visit the restaurants. mgm grand hotel casino There are gays everywhere and all the illegals and blacks fight over dope and--."
"I almost forgot," she said digging through her purse and pulling out a blue surgical mask . She fit this around her face. "We're so close to the south here, I don't want to catch the Mexican Flu ." All this muffled through the mask. "You want one? I always carry a spare."
"I'm fine," he said trying to lean away from her. His bladder told him he was not fine. Phoenix was pushing it. Sooner not later, he would have to go or risk riding mgm grand hotel casino all the way to Kansas smelling like piss. Worse, the bus liked to stop at every small town or dirt-blown village it past. The stops were seconds mgm grand hotel casino long, so there was no time for a quick showing of urinary theater presents . He only regretted that the bus had to take significant detours from the highway to get to these stops. It was killing his insides. His bladder felt like a balloon filled with lead .
At Kingston , an old oblong-shaped woman and her toothpick daughter got on. The daughter, a woman in the good part of her forties had a great figure, even in his discomfort with his bladder yelling up at him, Jayden noticed. She must have been a beauty mgm grand hotel casino at twenty. Now the interruption of youth was on her face. She'd not been sleeping, she'd been crying at night. The bags under the eyes told the story with clear and direct phrases.
Jayden (whose mother was a Martinez ) tried to ignore this. They looked more like Indians to him and he'd much rather count signposts than care about the people in the front. Crossing his legs didn't help. It only made the pressure shift up until he was sure his genitals would become liquid and pour out of his bellybutton .
He uncrossed his legs and his bladder settled with a nasty liquid lurch. Jayden's mind traveled back along the bus to the toilet. Not an option. No. It would be crawling with big desert flies. Greenbottles, bluebottles, mgm grand hotel casino evil metallic shiny things feasting mgm grand hotel casino on half-flushed shiny green shit. Their maggots mgm grand hotel casino boiling, roiling, pulsating. Pure evil lived back there. He could feel it festering like a sore behind him.
Public bathrooms were unnatural. In restrooms at restaurants, he'd go with his ass up in the air, or he'd cover the seat with layer upon layer of toilet paper. He would wash his hands until they were red and irritated and use enough mgm grand hotel casino soap to kill off half the Earth's biosphere . Better to wet himself than go back there.
It took the daughter fifteen minutes to calm her mother down. The old woman started dozing, but Jayden noticed that the driver looked even meaner in the large convex mirror that she used to watch the passengers.
Silence again. Jayden wanted to head back. To see if there were any empty seats back there, faraway from the screaming woman, but the masked woman didn't look like she wanted to move. She had pulled out a book of Sudoku puzzles and was staring at them, pen in hand. The pen would drift up to her mouth and be deflected every once in awhile.
But the bus driver'd had enough. The bus idled to the side of the dusty road. A lone weather-beat service station survived the elements here. The trees around it were stunted and grew sideways. The Mohave yawned around it like a great golden beast ready to swallow the world.
The bus left them and their luggage standing in the middle of a dust storm, the mother yelling at the sky, the daughter crying her eyes out, fists clenched tightly to her breast. Jayden watched them as long as he could, until the bus pulled away.
The stop had cost him. Now his bladder was displaying warning signs all over his brain. He was about to ask the lady to let him up when she said, "I'll be back." She left the Sudoku on her seat. Jayden watched her make the trek back to the toilet door. The bus was emptier than he remembered. mgm grand hotel casino Only one man sat behind him. The other seats were empty. If it was that empty, Jayden supposed, then maybe he too should take the trek. His insides felt filled to capacity. mgm grand hotel casino It wasn't even a choice now. When the woman came back he would go.
Checking his cellphone he saw that there was still forty-five minutes before Phoenix. It didn't seem possible. Surely, they must be nearly there. Surely, the desert couldn't mgm grand hotel casino be that big. It was Phoenix, then Albuquerque , then Colorado , then Kansas . It all looked mgm grand hotel casino short on the ticket. He waited and waited. He counted out twelve agonizing minutes.
He staggered over suitcases and handbags. Edging through the crowded mgm grand hotel casino aisles and empty seats he barely noticed how empty the bus was. There was no one else. It was completely silent except for the tires on the road and the rocking and creaking made as it raced through the desert.
mgm grand hotel casino The restroom door had an occupied/unoccupied wheel-sign on the door. Rusted, but readable it said UN OCCUPIED in faded green letters. Jayden paused swaying with the bus. The smell was sour, rank. He could smell it through the door. Like death and diarrhea . But his bladder could no longer be ignored. He threw open the door.
It seethed out, a stream mgm grand hotel casino of white thrashing tentacles. Jayden screamed and stepped back. Each tentacle peeled apart and unfolded revealing a wall of teeth, dis-rhythmic pulsing eyes, vaginas, infected pimples. Each pimple split apart, each vagina opened up revealing more teeth and vaginas and tentacles and fanged penises with blinking blithering sideways mouths containing more teeth and tentacles and gonorrheal genitals and those unfolded and those unfolded and those unfolded and those unfolded .