Tales from Gresley Station

(Incident at Moorwood Tunnel)

Eee it's a dank, morbid, miserable bit of a town. One shop, one pub (one bar, no women allowed), one policeman (part time) and no chip shop, take away or resident vicar. Surrounded by the northern moors, set up in the highest crappiest place that anyone could ever build a hovel let alone a town.

Excitement is limited to the daily post delivery and the twice weekly train. Bus? Not since the last one disappeared in a heavy mist one Thursday in July. I am the only person remaining who knows what exactly happened and where the others went, along with the bus.

I could say it was a hot summer’s day with white fluffy clouds but it wasn't, it was a shite awful day with rain like stair rods hammering down as if there was no further use for it. Rain poured, temperatures fell to an all time low for July and then the fog came down. A truly remarkable day with promise of worse to come. Dark forbidding clouds gathered like crowds at a hanging, each pushing another to get to the best position. Then it went dark, no not dark, lightless. Totally black, an absence of all light. And it was silent, even the rain fell without a sound. In amongst all this the bus arrived, stopped at the shop as always to collect any poor souls who were to escape this hellhole for a few hours.

Today was exceptional with no fewer than 50 persons waiting to board the bus, many more than the normal 2 or 3. Then I remembered the convention, "BDSM for Novices", a local gathering inspired by a popular book -- it was a new fad for tired sad people with just black and white lives, added a little colour to the grey.

Then Doris hove into view and 50 faces turned white with fear. Several scrambled on board the bus flashing the inevitable bus pass with such speed that I swear they blistered the paint.

Doris was next in line, well not quite in line as everybody else was taking refuge from her.

Doris was quite unique, she cultivated body odour and made it an art form. An astringent pervasive cloud that hung around her like an overcloud. Getting within "the zone" made every mucus membrane in the body heave with agony, turning a human into a mewling ball of snot and tears as the cloud infiltrated deeper and deeper, worse than pepper spray, far worse and now she was getting on my bus …..

Those poor souls already on the bus tried to become one with the paint on the bus, imitating the slenderest layer they could manage to avoid contact with the Doris overcloud. A few were lucky but many suffered the agony of her passing as she shuffled to the rear of the bus, her usual place sitting exactly in the middle of the rear seat on the bus. It was Doris' seat, it bore her aroma, a fragrance so foul even the latent bacteria and bugs had long since died, glad to pass into the beyond rather than exist in her presence.

The bus seated 54 persons with or without Doris but if she was aboard the remaining passengers would be squidged into the front half of the bus preferring to sit on each others laps than risk the rear half of the bus.

With all aboard, a collective intake of breaths harmonized with the hiss of the door closing as I prepared to leave Gresley Station, each passenger hoping for one last intake of fresh air before the door closed. I just hoped that Doris had not been on the Cabbage soup.

Anybody outside the bus would have gazed in wonder as 50 white squares of cloth were waived through the small windows into the consuming rainfall.

The "DorisCloth" had been a local appliance carried by all residents since its invention by the last vicar before he succumbed to the Doris odour mid-sermon.

This was not a surrender gesture, due to the odiferous Doris but an attempt to wet the squares so they could be tied bandanna style across the face to alleviate at least some of the fragrance from Doris.

It looked like a bus full of bandits on a day out.

Carefully I eased the bus into the gloom, eyes straining to see the road or any hint of it. Slowly the bus made progress across the moors and was soon approaching the Moorwood tunnel, a short but necessary cut through under the railway to save a twenty mile detour.

Glancing into the rear view mirror, I noticed Doris was being more mobile than normal, fidgeting ceaselessly. Probably fleas I thought but then a previous memory clicked on a light --- Cabbage Soup.

Panic rose in me as I tried to steer the bus along the road as quickly as possible, I did not need an anal eruption from Doris in the bus, let alone in the confines of the tunnel we were approaching.

My eyes flicked from front to mirror every few seconds, waiting for that moment, only to see that Doris was not fidgeting she was searching for something.

Although smoking had been illegal on buses for years, that small point was never going to stop Doris, in fact who could or would want to try and stop Doris? Carefree Doris fumbled through her voluminous coat and finally found a battered box of cigarettes and a few minutes later a box of matches.

Sat like a queen in residence Doris placed a cigarette in her mouth and fiddled to open the match box, finally succeeding she held the matchbox aloft and prepared to strike the match.

I was too busy trying to keep the bus from scraping the sides of the tunnel to know exactly what occurred and I can only relate what I heard or saw in the bus mirror.

At that precise moment the bus hit a pothole, jarring all of us with its vicious effects. Every passenger felt the impact, some more than others, those near the middle of the bus were shot into the air while Doris at the rear was catapulted some 10/12 inches into the air. The launching of Doris was not the problem, it was the landing.

Older women tend to have less control of their, shall we say evacuation facilities. Put crudely; they can manage to cough, belch, pee and fart whilst apparently totally oblivious to any such function.

As Doris landed back on her seat she coughed, spitting her cigarette onto the floor, in a simultaneous manoeuvre, Doris had ignited the match whilst landing, and now she leant forward to retrieve her fag.

That was the moment.

The moment.

Doris, bent almost double, farted with such ferocity the whole bus shook.

Now farts are primarily methane, and with good quality gases produced from Cabbage soup the resultant meeting between lit match and methane was only ever going to be explosive...

The sound of the explosion made me look into the mirror, to see what appeared to be a very large rotund object hurtling towards the front of the bus closely followed by a massive orange fireball.

The object was of course Doris, compacted into a human ball by the force of the explosion and now heading my way.

Time became slow, as it does in such situations, seconds become minutes, ….

Sitting here calmly reflecting on those last few seconds that I was on the bus is like watching a film.

I looked into the bus mirror to see the approaching storm that was Doris, tumbling ass over breakfast towards me. Her combined width, mass and velocity were folding each pair of bus seats as she passed, totally oblivious as to whether they were occupied or not. The persistent contact must have slowed her progress as the firewall behind her was slowly catching up until it engulfed her completely.

There was another huge explosion, caused by what I will never know for certain but the possibility of retained methane within the Doris bulk has sprung to mind.

Whatever the cause, all I experienced was the effect.

All explosions produce a shockwave, in this case two explosions, and two shockwaves.

The first removed the bus windscreen with alarming ease. The second somewhat more powerful, lifted my driver’s seat and I was jettisoned through the front of the bus, similar to the ejector seat in that Bond movie Goldfinger except I was travelling horizontally.

Behind me there was a third explosion, deep vibrant and hot enough to melt the soles of my shoes.

All I can remember after that was waking up staring into the face of PC Weddlehorn, the part time constable from Gresley station.

"Are thee all reet lad?"

Dazed but apparently unbroken I replied that I was OK.

"Looks like some bugger stole your bus, lad"

"Stole my bus?"

"Aye lad, seems they set of a couple of firecrackers to make you stop, then hijacked the bus with all the passengers. No sign of it or them anywhere"

"That's …. strange"

I was about to say impossible but then thought better of it. How in all common decency could I tell anyone that a Doris fart had caused an explosion so massive that a whole bus and 50 passengers just vaporised.

Weeks later I went to look at the tunnel, curiosity had got the better of me, and I needed to know if any trace had remained.

It was a bright sunny day for once and as I walked the length of the tunnel carefully examining every mark, spot or crack, the sunlight caught a part of the tunnel and something glinted. I moved towards it and saw it was a piece of mirror embedded into the tunnel wall and on it the letters "  re Bu " which I recognized as part of Yorkshire Bus Company, marking it as part of the bus I had been driving.

Then as the sunlight caught the tunnel at a particular angle I stood in open mouthed amazement at the sight in front of me. The entire tunnel walls were coated in bus. It was as if the bus has been blast formed into the tunnel. I could see the whole bus outline stretched by the blast but still visible in the tunnel wall. Here and there were other marks, suggestive of handbags, walking sticks and other remnants of the occupants of the bus.

I can only suppose that the third blast, probably caused by the diesel fuel igniting under all the heat and pressure, had been so powerful that it incinerated then melted the whole bus, forcing the resulting molten mass into the tunnel walls like graffiti, making a sort of Banksian tribute to those that died.

I often go back to the tunnel, and gaze at the walls but in all those visits I have never seen a trace of Doris.

The local police stopped searching for the bus after a couple of weeks presuming that it and its passengers had been hijacked for some eastern European human trafficking operation. Nobody seemed in the slightest bit bothered about why I got left behind, I feigned amnesia so they left it like that.

Sometimes, when the rain is pouring and the fog comes down I think I can smell Doris, it is strange what fear can do.