ACT 1 - THE BUS
As the light and the noise abated silence fell on the bus. The teacher looked around, trying to get his bearings and find out what happened. The seventh graders behind him started to murmur, quietly at first then louder and louder. Soon it became a cacophony, and the teacher couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Silence, SILENCE!!”
The noise stopped. The teacher looked at his colleague and then at the driver who was staring out of the window, his face ashen.
“Oh my god. OH MY GOD. Everything is huge… no we’re TINY” the driver exclaimed. “Somebody must have used that shrink thing on us. You know, the one everyone is talking about.”
Teacher felt fear rising in the back of his mind.
“Ok, ok, stay calm” he thought.
“Ok everyone, calm down” he yelled. “I’m going outside to check.”
The bus driver opened the door and the teacher stepped out while his colleague tried to calm and console the students. The driver wasn’t wrong, they HAVE shrunk. The bus couldn’t have been more than seven and a half inches (20 cm) long and a couple of inches tall. To the right of the bus, he could see the curb, which was at least three times as tall as the bus.
The shift in perspective was mind-numbing. He could barely grasp it. But if he thought the curb and the trees above were the most unbelievable thing, he was wrong. What he saw next shook him to his very core. There was a person on the bus stop, pacing left and right. And what a person. She was absolutely, mind-bogglingly ENORMOUS. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing was an actual real human being yet there she stood. Or rather walked.
Somewhere in his frozen mind an idea formed. A lifesaving idea. He returned to the bus and yelled “OK, everyone OUT. Listen to me carefully and it will be ok.”
The student started to exit the bus, faces frozen in fear and uncharacteristically silent as they inspected their surroundings. Several students gasped and pointed at the giantess above.
“OMG”
“Fuck me…”
“Aaaahh.”
“I… I KNOW her! That’s Una from 7b!!”
“ENOUGH” the teacher yelled. “Here, help me here. Ok guys, spread out. SPREAD OUT! We will form the word *help* with our bodies. Just like when we took that school group photo with a drone.”
Both teachers and the driver were trying to organize the students, until a poorly shaped *help* emerged. Or so they hoped.
“Now, I want all of you to yell and wave. But don’t move!”
All forty of them started yelling, jumping, and waving, trying to attract the colossus above. And it worked!
The teacher could hear his heart beating loudly. He couldn’t believe their luck. She stopped and was looking straight at them. A curious look formed on her face, and she started to bend towards them a little.
“YES, YES!! She can see us, wave!” the teacher felt immense relief clouded only by some thunderous noise in the distance. Noise that was getting louder.
The giantess must have heard the same thing because she suddenly straightened her back and looked to her left.
“NO, no!” The teacher yelled and turned right to see what was causing that noise and the increasing vibrations of the asphalt. In the distance he saw a huge blue SUV coming down the road towards them.
“It’s ok, ok, ok” he told himself as much as the others “it is on the road, we’re not in its way.”
He looked back toward the huge teen and saw she was waving and beaming towards the incoming car. The teacher froze for a moment, then looked towards the SUV again. The approaching car was flashing its right indicator (yes, a BMW was actually indicating). They clearly planned to pick the girl up.
“OH MY GOD, back to the bus, it’s coming towards us, quickly” the driver screamed, and they all fled into the bus in panic. The driver sat in his seat and tried to turn on the engine.
The rumble coming from behind was so loud the whole bus vibrated from it.
“Listen to me. Everyone duck and cover, under the seats. Now!” the teacher yelled.
If they don’t manage to avoid the huge tires, they would have to protect themselves SOMEHOW if they wanted to survive. He had no doubts that the roof would cave in if they got hit, but the sides of the bus looked reassuringly sturdy, and the seat legs were made of steel. They could withstand a lot of weight and they should stand a good chance of avoiding the worst injuries if contact with the giant SUV was brief enough. It will be like a plastic toy-it cracks but doesn’t cave.
“We might just get through this” he thought in panic as the rumble of the approaching tire produced a deafening sound. All the students were whimpering beneath their seats.
He ducked too, throwing one last look at the back seat. That’s where the cool kids sat, and he didn’t want them to do something foolish at this moment. Fortunately, they were all safely under the seat. Through the back window he saw the rubbery tire fill out the entire horizon. He doubted anyone could hear him over the vibrations and noise but still yelled “HERE IT COMES, HANG ON!!”
The teacher had grossly miscalculated- completely overestimating their odds. He was thinking rationally, but his mind couldn’t comprehend their new reality and completely misunderstood the difference in size and weight involved. He thought in terms of “getting hit”, “duck and cover”, “crash protection”, “sturdy” and other rational terms, but nothing mattered at their size.
The toy bus looked comically small in front of the approaching BMW’s extra wide tire. The tire was at least as wide as the length of several such buses combined- not to mention as tall as a skyscraper. And it weighted as much, if not more. And that was just one tire, not counting the rest of the huge car and its passengers, the weight of each of whom could have easily flattened the bus by itself. The tiny bus stood no chance even if its passengers didn’t realize it.
As the car approached it finally started to roll over the back of the bus. It leaned on the section of the roof covering the last three rows. The roof immediately caved in and as the tire continued to mercilessly roll forward the front part of the bus rose in air. The SUV effortlessly mangled the whole back half of the bus, the massive mountain of unyielding rubber descended on the seats which cracked and collapsed not offering any resistance whatsoever, which was immediately followed by the sound of the gargantuan tire popping the sixth graders hiding under the seats like tiny grapes. It didn’t stop there of course. The tire proceeded to press the squashed mix of metal and organic mush and crunched the engine. The engine exploded, but the enormous tire snuffed any hint of the fire and drama that would usually accompany such an event. The tire rolled forward until the entire toy bus disappeared and was ground as flat as a sheet of paper under it.
If the whole incident was filmed with a slow-motion camera all those gruesome details would be discernible, but in reality, it took the SUV less than a second to pulp the tiny bus and its contents with a wet crunch as it rolled to a stop.
The SUV was stationary for a moment, what remained of the little bus holding its entire weight. A door opened and closed. Then, the tires turned sharply to the left, grinding the flat piece of metal under them even further and shredding it. Some of it was left on the hard asphalt but most was stuck in the deep threads of the SUV’s winter tires. With a sudden lurch the car sped up and continued down the street.
ACT 2 - UNA
Una paced along the bus stop in front of the school while listening to music through the Air Pods. She was happy because her sister was back in town, and they are going shopping with mom.
As she walked something caught her attention and she turned, looking at the floor. There on the bus stop a bus was parked, not a real bus but a small toy. She wondered how it got there, concluding it was probably forgotten by one of the younger pupils from school.
“Hmm, perhaps I should move it to the side, so it doesn’t get damaged” she thought.
Unfortunately, then she saw a bunch of weird bugs swarming around it. She couldn’t recognize what kind of bugs they were, but she could barely make out their little antennas waving frantically. “Yuck, I’m not touching that toy if it’s dirty” Una thought. She was about to lean for a closer look at the strange bugs when she heard the noise of a car on her left. She straightened her back and turned towards the noise.
It was mom’s blue BMW X5, and she could see mom and Tena beaming from the front
seats. She smiled and waved as the car quickly approached her.
“The toy!” she remembered as the car was almost next to her and turned her gaze back down, right in time to see the huge wheel roll over it with a soft metallic crunch and then stop right on top of it.
“Ouch” she thought “well that settles it. I guess mom didn’t see it. This will be a good lesson to the kid who lost it.”
She didn’t remember seeing any of the bugs around the toy before the wheel steamrolled it, so she assumed they were spooked by the sound of the car. For their sake she hoped they ran away rather than trying to find shelter within the toy. It must have looked like a sturdy shelter to them but judging by the crunch it produced mom totally pancaked it.
“Hello pumpkin” Una’s mom beamed as Una opened the door and sat.
“Hiii” Una replied enthusiastically.
“Come here you little brat” Tena undid her seatbelt and turned around to smooch her on the cheek. Una felt loved and happy.
“What were you looking for there on the floor?” mom asked?
“Oh, some kid left a toy bus on the bus stop.” Una laughed “I thought about moving it to safety but then you rolled over it.”
“Awww, poor teeny bus, I think I saw some yellow dot but assumed it was just a leave. You know in all my years of driving this is my first traffic accident EVER girls!” mom said jokingly while turning the steering wheel to the left and checking her left-wing mirror “Fortunately our car seems undamaged, how did they fare pumpkin?”
“Crunched like a piece of chips. And I think you just turned our wheels on it, so I guess also smeared on our tire lol.”
“Well, I guess I hope they have health insurance” mom said as she pressed the accelerator and merged back on the street.
They all laughed as the powerful SUV sped towards the shopping mall.