Farewell, Mr. Fluffy

Ronald looked over at the abandoned pink "Dora the Explorer" backpack and had a wicked idea. The toy pack had fallen on the ground, and had slid underneath the blue plastic bench near the front of the bus. Nobody had noticed the small six year old girl named Sally who had dropped it, but Ronald had seen it all, as he was seated directly adjacent to the young girl and her mother. She was blameless, innocent, pure. She needed to learn the harsh realities of this world, and Ronald was just the kind of bastard to teach her those hard lessons. Tough love was what Sally needed. Mr. Fluffy was the teddy bear that Sally kept inside her backpack. She had held Mr. Fluffy to her chest, her face nuzzled into his shopworn ear. She loved Mr. Fluffy in the way that only a child can. Mr. Fluffy was her first friend, her only friend. He was her companion during the adventurous, yet frightening first day of pre-school. He protected her from monsters underneath her bed, and kept her warm on cold nights. Just before their stop, Sally put Mr. Fluffy back into her backpack so that he would be safe. Ronald had a teddybear just like Mr. Fluffy when he was six. Before his seventh birthday, Ronald's stepfather Dale decided that he needed to grow up, and get rid of that "pansy teddy bear". That night, Brownie the bear had met a terrible end, burned alive in the bottom of a garbage can, Dale and his buddies hovering around the flame like a group of drunken vagrants. Ronald watched from his upstairs window, shaking with grief and frustrated anger.

All of the passengers on the bus that morning had been too occupied with their newspapers and iPhones, too encased in cocoons of white earbuds to hear the little girl Sally scream, and cry, and plead with her mother. Sally had dropped the backpack as her mother pulled her by the arm, rushing to make some unknown but obviously important appointment. Sally had left route 29 crying Mr. fluffy's name through a curtain of tears. Parting can be such sweet sorrow, a sorrow that she would not soon forget.

In the space between the windows and ceiling, Ronald saw the many signs and advertisements that ran the entire length of the bus. These signs were always changing, as different events and products were displayed over time. Between a map of the bus route system, and a PSA listing the symptoms of Lupus, was a sign that had not changed for quite some time. It had become a permanent fixture since those crazy terrorists had slammed airliners into the World Trade Centers. As the bus stopped and picked up new passengers, an automated message read the contents of the sign in a sterile monotone. "If you see any unattended parcel, bag, school bag, or any other item on a Seattle Metro bus, train or tram or any public place...don't risk it...report it to your driver or tell the authorities" To Ronald, the pink Dora the Explorer backpack looked about as threatening as Mr. Rodgers wearing an apron, but he also knew that people still held onto their fear of the unknown, just as Sally had clung tightly to Mr. Fluffy. Even though most people had grown apathetic toward the signs and constant security announcements, Ronald knew that deep down, they still distrusted anybody that they thought looked like a terrorist. After a few stops of passengers getting off and on the bus, Ronald made his move. He went straight to the driver, and told him that he had found a suspicious backpack left underneath the seat.

"This one?" a lady in a green pants suit asked, as she held the pink backpack up in the air. "That's the one" Ronald told the driver pointing it out. "I think a guy wearing a TURBAN left it there, and it seemed like he was getting off in a hurry" said Ronald, emphasizing the word turban, so that the passengers who were listening would be sure to hear. Suddenly the woman in green dropped the the backpack on the ground as if it were crawling with Black Widow spiders, and backed away from it. Her hurried retreat, which sent her falling *** first onto a elderly couple, made some of the other passengers begin to take notice; unplugging their white earbuds, and unveiling themselves from their newspaper trances. Hoping to escalate the situation, Ronald shouted, "We need to be calm, nobody make any drastic moves that might set off the package" People began to ask, point, and then scream when they saw the perilous little pink backpack. Pink was the new yellow with black diagonal stripes. Dora waving hello on the front might as well have been the radioactive symbol. As Ronald watched the pandemonium on the bus begin to blossom, he fought hard to keep from grinning. He had created a moving work of art, a blockbuster action film without a crew. He was the hero and the villain, endangering and saving all of the sheep like passengers from their own overactive imagination and sense of panic. "You had better call the authorities" Ronald said to the bus driver, who had screeched to a sudden halt in the middle of an intersection.

As soon as the bus had stopped, half of the passengers clamored over one another to escape from the explosion device that they saw in their minds eye. The other passengers were too terrified to move. Within ninety seconds, the intersection was filled with sirens and flashing lights. "We are coming into the vehicle" boomed a bullhorn from outside the bus. Outside the window, Ronald saw that the five cop cars, and single bomb squad van had formed a perimeter around the intersection. People stood back and watched from a minimum safe distance of seventy-five feet. "Please do not evacuate the vehicle, we do not want to upset the device as it may prematurely detonate" boomed the megaphone. After thirty tense seconds, the driver pulled the air lock to open the front door. A man in a bulky black suit entered the bus. He wore what resembled a welding mask, apparently to shield his face from the impending blast. Ronald noticed that the man's suit did not look as bulky as the ones he had seen in the movies, the types of movies that involved bomb threats. This was Ronald's production, however, and small differences he could chalk up to creative license. The man quickly grabbed the bag with a pair of oversized salad tongs, and slowly exited the bus at the rear door.

Outside, the rest of the bomb squad had been setting up what Ronald named the "Detonation receptacle" The detonation receptacle was basically a black garbage can where cops blew up bombs in a safe manner. This was one detail of Ronald's action movie that the cops got right. The man in the black suit slowly walked toward the can, holding the deadly backpack out at arms length. This was the climax of Ronald's action movie. His heart raced as Mr. Fluffy was brought nearer and nearer to his explosive death. Every eye in the area was so focused on the backpack that none of them noticed the lady and her little girl, the only two people insane enough to be running toward the imminent danger of the situation. "Mr. Fluffy! Mr. Fluffy!" little Sally screamed. Apparently Sally's mother had realized that her little girl's best friend had been left behind, and she had chased the bus down. Ronald grinned even wider as the heroine of his movie made her valiant return. He remembered that not all movies have a happy ending. It took half of the bomb squad to hold Sally back from the black garbage can. The man in the protective suit let go if the backpack, and retreated behind the black van as the pink backpack with Mr. Fluffy inside dropped into the detonation charge. A bright flash and a plume of black smoke signaled the end of Sally's childhood innocence. Her first friend, burned in the bottom of a garbage can. Ronald suddenly saw the irony of the situation, and felt empathy for Sally. He knew exactly how she felt. Now she knew how hard life really was. She would look back on this day and remember how she parted with her childish ways.

After the bomb squad cleaned up their equiptment and left the scene, the intersection slowly resumed its normal function. Ronald stepped off of the bus and saw Sally sobbing uncontrollably, sitting on the ground, clinging to her mother's leg. Ronald began to walk across the street and looked back at Sally. "Look, I'm sorry about Mr. Fluffy" Ronald began to say, but he was cut off short. Two seconds before, Sally's head had been buried in her mother's leg, crying uncontrollably. When Ronald turned to meet her gaze, she was looking straight at him. All of her anger and rage were focused into one burning point, and she aimed it directly into his soul. She had seen him on the bus, and she knew that it was his fault that Mr. Fluffy was dead. He had murdered her only friend. He had introduced her to death, and now she wanted to return the favor. Ronald stood frozen in the south bound lane of traffic, unable to move. He realized that he had become just as evil as Dale, his abusive stepfather. The crushing weight of shock entangled with shame glued his feet to the pavement.

Willard had been running late for his next delivery. If he missed another delivery deadline, he would get another suspension. He had already been chastised that morning by his supervisor for the poor condition of his uniform, and he was determined to regain his reputation. For some reason, traffic had been backed up for about fifteen minutes, but it was flowing regularly again. Willard swerved in and out of cars, steering with one hand, holding a footlong hotdog with the other. Swerving around one car, he had to hit the breaks to avoid hitting another. This sudden motion caused the hot dog to slip out of his hand, spilling ketchup, mustard, and relish all over the floor. "Great, they're gonna kill me for the mess this damn hotdog made all over the place" said Willard, as he tried to mop up the spilt condiments from the floorboards. He had taken his eyes off of the road for just three seconds. When he poked his head over the wheel again, he asked himself what the strange man was doing, standing in the middle of the street next to that bus. Willard only had a fraction of a second to step on the breaks, but it was too late. The man standing in the road turned his head toward Willard a second before impact. The look on his face during the last fraction of his life could have been mistaken as relief.