You were the sole survivor of the Great Christmas Eve Sex Bus crash of 2006. You barely remember a thing after the bus crashed through the guardrail and broke through the ice on the frozen over lake. There was screaming and there was cold, and then you were lying topless on a muddy bank feeling nothing but a sharp pain behind your eyes. You have no idea why you were the only one to not get trapped inside that sinking bus along with the rest of the exotic dancers, prostitutes, and Teflon salesmen. Some say you were lucky. Others, the families of the dead, they say you were cursed. You're inclined to agree with them.
You're presently paralyzed from the waist down and your heart is broken in two because before the sex bus crash you were engaged to be married to Lenny, the owner and proprietor of Sex Bus Tours Incorporated. Lenny was driving that night. You were all the way in the back of the bus tending bar. In between were twenty-six traveling Teflon salesmen and a staff of half-nude to completely nude women giving the salesmen a Christmas Eve they would never forget. You keep going back to that night, trying harder and harder to remember the moments after the crash. You try to put yourself back there and you try to see down the cabin of the bus, peering through the mass of naked flesh and bulbous middle-aged man to catch a glimpse of your Lenny.
You're certain he would have looked back at you at the end. Even if there were only a millisecond of time, he would have put his eyes to his mirror to find you and make sure you were all right. And you would most definitely have been looking for him. You just want to remember that one last look. You want to remember the last time you saw those eyes.
You start seeing hypnotists to take you back to that night, but the Sex Bus Crash is a spooky event in your town and many hypnotists refuse your business because they don't want you to take them there. Finally, one consents to do whatever it takes to free up your memories of that night.
It's rough going, but after many sessions with the therapist you finally find yourself transported onto that bus, experiencing the crash all over again like it was happening in the present. You search the cabin, peering past all the dancers and Teflon salesmen until you finally catch a glimpse of the driver's seat...and you find it empty. Empty with the exit door open.
"But I buried him," you say. "They brought up his body and I put him in the ground."
"Did you identify him?" the hypnotist asks.
You can barely breathe. It's like you're still in that lake.
"He was underwater too long, they said," you tell the hypnotist, realizing now that the only reason you're alive is because your Lenny must have jumped out of the sex bus just before the crash, then he swam to the rear entrance and pulled you out.
And then he disappeared. Why, you have no idea. But it's time to go find out...
Happy Sex Bus Day!
PS: Pre-Order "YOU ARE A MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A HERO," the new book by Bob Powers. Out next Tuesday, May 27th.
