After School

The bus passed him when he was on the wrong side of the road, despite his best efforts. "Oh shit" would have been his go-to phrase, but this happened so many times before, it didn't really come off as a surprise. He slowly started walking the opposite way from the bus stop, staring at the ground. The old cracked and faded surface pitifully trying to let off a little heat it's absorbed through the day, but the black tar was now only a grey crag. As he looked up, a motorbike who was obviously going too fast and too close to the side walk brushed against his arm. The driver of the bike turned to look back at him  as he sped past and put up two fingers, as if to say "peace". Except his hand was the wrong way around. It was at that moment that the driver ran into the front of a lorry waiting at the traffic light, at the bottom of the hill which led up to school. The lorry contained 4 cylinders, each of which filled with gasoline. At first the boy thought some massive, perhaps even "epic" (he hates that word) explosion would happen. But no.

No, that took about 7 seconds after the initial impact. It probably wouldn't have been so bad, but the motor biker was smoking too. What an idiot. The blast radius was large enough to hit him, and he fell down an open drain, rushing with dirty water and red curry. This helped extinguish the flames that were burning him, leaving him relatively unscathed. The same, unfortunately, could not be said for the biker. What a shame.

As the fire ensued, he was pulled by the current of the disgusting drain liquid and poured out into the sea across the street. At least he was on the right side of the road now. His hair smelt like school lunch and his left hand was a charcoal black. He always did find it hard to tan, but this seems to have been an exception. The crusty skin crackled as he stretched his fingers, which surprisingly didn't hurt. Odd. Instead there was a funny kind of tingling where is fingernails used to be. One could liken it to the feeling of sticking your fingers into a jam jar filled with bees and jam.

He brushed himself off after getting out of the jellyfish infested ocean, and decided to walk out through the main hotel lobby which the beach front belonged too. No one seemed to really notice the boy with the permanently shadow-cast left arm and only half a face. Oh yeah, he only has half a face. Probably should have mentioned that. When he got out, he noticed the next bus was just around the corner. He casually walked up to the bus stop down the street, placed out his thumb, and hopped aboard. Whereupon he wasn't even charged a dime.

What a convenient stroke of luck.