Source: Telegraph

Kay was talking to Emma about her weekend, more specifically her night out on the Saturday. Emma had not asked for this information. Nor had the rest of the bus passengers.

Kay always did this whenever she did anything she perceived as ‘fun’ – talked on and on about it. She took her time to recall everyone that was there that night, which would include people that Emma either didn’t know or didn’t get on with. Kay was particularly fond of talking about the latter type – as if it gave her some sort of pleasure to talk about socialising with people that Emma couldn’t, or wouldn’t socialise with herself.

And it was never interesting. Her stories would unfold with all the intrigue and depth of a weekly shopping list. Every utterance bore a rudimentary function of either talking about how drunk she had been, how funny she had been or how much somebody had said that they liked her. That kind of stuff. Emma didn’t care, and Emma was pretty damn sure that nobody else in her position would care either. Was she supposed to feel jealous? Sad? Somehow excluded because she hadn’t been there? Or did Kay expect Emma to be impressed – captivated even? Or was she just completely oblivious to the fact that what came out of her mouth was not worth the oxygen that propelled it?

They both shared a commute to their respective jobs: a good half an hour spent in a bus rolling through the morning traffic, listening to her go on and on. And yeah, it was always worse on Mondays, when she’d have a whole weekend of fabulous things to talk at Emma about, but quite often the stories would get extended repeats in the week – the same events, but with added details that were either omitted from the original telling or simply made up for embellishment. Sometimes there’d be fresh stories too: some mid-week drinks, a Tinder date, a message from an ex who was so desperate to get back together again but uh-uh no way etc etc…

Emma didn’t have much to report on, especially at that time in the morning – who could be bothered? – but there was little chance of her getting a word in edgeways anyway. She’d once tried to tell Kay about her Christmas at home in Winchester, and she’d got as far as getting the train there on the 23rd and Kay had cut in to talk about how she’d ran into a guy Emma had once been seeing (it had ended weirdly) and how she’d taken his number and she’d been thinking about going for a drink with him, you know, if she was like, ok about it and everything. Then Kay resumed business as usual, giving a blow-by-blow of every night out she’d had, to be continued on the commute back, she promised. Emma deliberately missed the bus, and waited an extra half an hour in the wind and rain to avoid having to listen.

Emma’s nightmare commutes continued for months. She couldn’t avoid running into her in the mornings – there was no other option with the bus – and it was 50-50 whether she’d run into her on the way back, even if she delayed her return home (she was sure that Kay was doing the same just so she could go off on one again). Every day: Kay, Kay, Kay – morning and night. Sometimes a little by phone and message in Emma’s free time too.

However eventually – as if her body was adapting to the difficult nature of her daily commute – a numbness would descend over Emma whenever Kay opened her mouth to vocalise anything other than a question. It was like a reflex, and she could almost feel it happen to her. Kay would barely get the first few words out – “Soooo guess what…” or “Oh my god on Saturday…” and the veil would drape itself over Emma, shielding her from the boredom, frustration and bewilderment that once plagued her during these one-way exchanges. She would go into herself, daydream, plan dinner and organise work-related tasks in her mind – all whilst somehow maintaining conversational autopilot: “Mmm yeah…”,“Oh, right.”, “Yeah probably.” And it worked! Soon the neverending story of all the supposedly wonderful things that Kay did day in day out, with literally the best people ever was just background hum like all the other commuters. Emma had found an escape!

But after about a month of doing this, it appeared that Kay had briefly left her solipsistic dreamland and gained some awareness of Emma’s reactions.

“Emma! Emma are you even listening?”

Emma bounced back into full awareness, as if she had nodded off – had she? – and stared at Kay in confusion: “Hmm?”

“I feel like you’re not even paying attention…about Steve? On Saturday?”

Emma opened her mouth optimistically thinking that something believable might have popped out, but it was no use – she didn’t have a clue who Steve was let alone what he had done on Friday that was so noteworthy; fingered Kay up against a phonebox perhaps?

“No, sorry. No I’m not.” At least she was honest.

“I swear, actually, that it feels like this a lot – like you’re literally not even listening to a word I’m saying sometimes.”

The intonation at the end of Kay’s sentence flicked upwards in a way that particularly infuriated Emma, but would have probably aggravated 98% of the entire English-speaking world had they heard it. She felt herself blush a little in response, but was more ruffled than embarrassed.

“Like, what did I do over the weekend? Or last week for that matter? Do you even know?”

Emma looked out the window at nothing in particular. Surely a normal person wouldn’t be this outraged – if it was anyone else, they would’ve laughed it off and joked about Emma being a dreamer or something, and quietly felt a little self-conscious that they weren’t interesting or something. That’s what a normal person would do, isn’t it?

“I mean, like, it’s just a bit rude – you know what I mean?”

But Kay – not normal by any evaluative standards – was clearly incensed at the idea of her life and activities not being somewhere roughly near the centre of Emma’s universe. She continued to rant on and on with a screwed-up face, riven with disbelief at how someone could be so weird and so rude. Her intonation was all over the place. Something inside Emma was desperately tugging at the veil that had once shielded her from Kay’s nails-on-a-blackboard voice, but it was no use. She was open, exposed. And something rose up from within her that neither of them were prepared for:

“YOU KNOW WHAT KAY – NO, I DON’T LISTEN! I DON’T LISTEN, BECAUSE I CAN’T TAKE ONE MORE ACHINGLY POINTLESS STORY ABOUT WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR TIME! I DON’T CARE! WHY WOULD I CARE?! HAVE YOU EVEN TAKEN ONE FUCKING SECOND TO POSE THAT QUESTION TO YOURSELF? WHY WOULD A LIST OF WHAT YOU DID – IN PAIN-FUCKING-STAKING DETAIL, WITH ASIDES OF EVERY SINGLE PERSON INVOLVED, MOST OF WHOM YOU KNOW DON’T LIKE ME OR DON’T KNOW ME – EVER CONSTITUTE AN ACTUAL STORY OR CONVERSATIONAL TOPIC? I DON’T EVEN ASK! YOU ASK ME WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO, THEN IMMEDIATELY USE IT AS A FUCKING SPRINGBOARD TO GLOAT ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE! AND IT’S ALL JUST A BIG LOAD OF NOTHING! GOOD! GOOD THAT YOU’VE HAD A GREAT TIME! BUT I DON’T NEED AN HOUR PLUS OF EVERY SINGLE WEEKDAY TAKEN UP BY DIRECTORS CUT, EXTENDED EDITION, BLOW-BY-BLOW REPLAYS OF HOW YOU GOT DRUNK, HOW MUCH SOME IDIOT LOVES YOU AND HOW MANY AMAZING PEOPLE THINK YOU’RE AMAZING! I DON’T CARE! NO-ONE CARES!”

The last sentence had boomed out of Emma’s mouth in a tone that wasn’t her own. It was as if a thousand different voices had telepathically channelled through her, which, although she’d never know it, was exactly what it was. It was the lifeforce of a thousand wretched souls that had withered away under the strain of listening to the banal, irrelevant and quite often hurtful blatherings that had emanated from Kay’s mouth over the last decade. Emma had unwittingly given a voice to a vast metaphysical well of torment that had achieved a critical mass since Kay’s return from a holiday in Ayia Napa.

A vacuum of silence enveloped the top deck of the bus – not even the traffic outside could be heard. Emma took a breath. Tears were in her eyes. Her skin was a reddish purple – a notable contrast to Kay’s, which had turned a sort of light green. Then, following a hollow whine and a deep, furrowed brow across Kay’s face, her head EXPLODED.

Not figuratively, literally. And literally as in literally. Her head fucking exploded! Literally.

Splat! Bits of her face across the windows, both sides of the top deck! Crack! Splinters of her skull bounced off the ceiling and the handrails that lay beneath. There was blood everywhere – over Emma, over the other passengers. Emma had never seen the contents of a skull before, and now there they were, like wet red and grey confetti all over the place. It was minging.

Emma was, to use an understatement, stunned. She looked at the other passengers, who she’d expected would be similarly frozen in fear. But they weren’t. Loads of them were smiling. A man with a big moustache, who was picking a fleck of brain out of his hair, nodded at Emma in approval. The bus stopped. An elderly woman with shopping bags walked down the aisle and placed a hand on Emma’s shoulder, stopping as she passed:

“Thank fuck for that! I was going to start walking, so I was!”

A man at the back of the bus piped up: “Peace at last!”

A few more of the passengers were smiling now. Someone gave a thumbs up. And although one side of her torso and head were covered in what was once Kay’s left hemisphere and face, for the first time in her life, she felt like a hero. And all she did was tell her the truth.

She knew that Kay wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

* * * * *

On her next commute, Emma got through three chapters of her book she was reading. It was getting really good and she couldn’t wait for the bus ride home to get back to it. It was a shame about Kay’s head exploding, but she should have maybe considered other people a bit more instead of just mindlessly bragging about herself all of the time – you know what I mean?