The Last Bus

Zooni waited for the last bus. She was an interior designer and was late from her work. She was waiting on the bus stop since quite some time, until finally, the bus came. It wasn't among the best buses she had seen, but was poorly maintained. By speaking with the bus conductor, she understood that the bus took a different route than usual to reach her home, which was on the other side of a huge mountain. Zooni sat in the bus. She realized that she was all alone among the passengers, while the conductor and driver were sitting in the front. The internet was really bad in the locality through which the bus was going so she had to consult a map. She then realized that the bus had to cross a narrow road with steep turns on a mountain. The route was kind of scary, as the bus had to go through a forest, with the bus headlights as the only sources of light. The road was very small and poorly maintained, which made Zooni slightly queasy. 

The bus stopped on the last stop before Zooni's stop, which was the last. The bus was supposed to halt there for five minutes. The bus stop was located in a remote place, with huge neem and peepal trees surrounding the place. The scenery was quite pretty, so Zooni decided to appreciate the scenery for a while. Suddenly, she saw something that made her heart skip a beat. A woman was standing against the moonlight, waving at her. The fact that she looked so familiar made Zooni stared at her for a while. The woman raised her right hand in the air and flic

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ked it back and forth, as if to say, "Come here, Zooni." 

As if in a trance, Zooni stood up from the bus along with her backpack. She silently walked out of the bus, hypnotised by the sight of that amazing woman, and walked towards her. She almost reached the peepal tree under which the woman was standing. "Yes, it is her." Zooni thought. A warm feeling filled her, shunning down that queasy feeling. But as soon as she reached under the peepal tree, the woman disappeared, leaving Zooni in utter confusion. "Where did she go?" Zooni thought. 

It was after a millisecond that she realised that that woman, her mother, had died in a car crash 2 years ago. "Silly me," she thought sadly, "I just hallucinated her." 

Zooni then suddenly heard the bus whir behind her. She spun back, only to see it pick speed on the road. "No! Stop!" she yelled, but the bus drove into the darkness. 

Zooni now knew that she wouldn't get another bus to her house. So, she had to stay in a nearby hotel. Zooni then woke up next morning only to read in newspaper that the bus which had drove through that mountain pass had failure and crashed in the valley. Zooni was creeped out because that bus happened to be the same one she had boarded on last night. She was immensely relieved by the fact that she hallucinated her mother the last night and left that bus. That had just saved her from her ultimate doom. "But," she thought, "had I really hallucinated mother?"