A very (very!) short story written for my creative writing seminar.

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The pool of blood had begun to trickle down the aisle—that, I could recall, but only after I’d slipped off the bus and made it halfway down Market Street. I’d stopped to check my phone whilst everyone behind me got off, caught the shape of someone clutching their crimson raincoat, shuffling crabwise, saw the blood; never thought twice about it. Clearly no-one else did, either, if getting to where they needed to be was so important. No-one slapped themselves stalwart to calmly call for medical attention; no-one stopped to shriek and point at bloody murder.

Only once I’d reached the old cobbles did the thought arrest me. Either Hobbes was right about human nature, or I’d just gotten off at the start of an urban legend. Surely, surely, the cleaners would see it? It had to be on CCTV somewhere. Or Twitter—the bus services were never without mentions from passengers who wanted to put the world to rights about litter, or ‘what was scribbled about our Siobhan on the back seat—disgraceful!’ I searched for “bus” + “St Andrews” + “blood.” No results at all.

I knew what I saw, like an autistic kid telling the truth about who spilled that juice, but nevertheless found guilty of lying by class trial. Something had happened, at least: a stitch come undone; a severed head; broken glass; for all I know, maybe it was nothing more than hot Ribena. I was a detective with no search warrant, the long, long fading after-image in his head as the only crime scene, and a presumption that this was his case to solve.

But it wasn’t. I’d decided from the start that I was never really there; inked by someone else’s blood, the truth was never mine to claim.

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1. (Image: Calum Cape, CC-BY 2.0) ↩︎