I end up there again. The dangerous bus stop that doesn't lead to anywhere in Rolling Hills. The ones that lead to otherworldly places and otherworldly people. I sit on the 'Go-Green' ad bench, my light honey-brown bag hiked on my shoulder. Except I don't sit to be consumed. There isn't anything to drown for. The Rabbit is in the den and Lucky is in one of the windows, harassing some other kid with existential problems (because he's an undead dork.)

It's just me; a random stranger like the strangers that are ejected from the brightly-colored buses every hour. I can be anyone. Or maybe no one at all, just invisible, just another detail to the scenery.

For once, I don't feel my skin prickling with fire, feel the monsters dancing around me and leaving trails in their wake. I can't feel anything, just the Summer sun beating down on my head as if it were trying to pry it open and infiltrate the frozen cells in my brain. My brain, which has turned off, unplugging the tubes that feed the howls of The Wolf, the rock music of coked up mothers, and thorny friends.

Those memories belong to Lucky.

I am just a nobody, a nobody that's sitting at a 'Go-Green' ad bus stop, a nobody that stands up for the dark blue bus that slowly whizzes forward. It's the same bus that'd stopped here in Paradise before, spitting out foreign people with their foreign bags and foreign thoughts. The bus that had haunted my - Lucky's dreams for weeks; the ultimate hope of light, shining brighter than the beam in the Leo Carillo beach, more luminous than the lights of the beautiful, teal house.

However, I can't label the light as a lie, not yet anyway.

The white, blocky words reading,' Sunny California,' greet me as the bus stops, the doors making a tired wheeze as they slowly open. The driver looks me up and down and I realize she is the same woman from only two weeks ago, the woman who looks like Lucky, dead and ghastly. I had spent days wondering what killed her, but she doesn't look dead now as she gives me an acknowledging nod, taking a moment to look down at her cell phone.

There is vast, brown plains in her eyes, wild grass reaching for the skies, and she doesn't look empty. Her stare is wholesome, her voice a feather on thick currents of water as she says, "Getting on?"

I feel something stir in my chest, or maybe in my mind.

I feel them again, the monsters, and all the emotions rush up to the surface like a gush of water, or a gush of red matter. The monsters are unearthing the frail boy underneath their feet, pulling him from his dark corner by the hand, pulling him towards the boy who's Converse move to take a step towards the bus.

For the first time they speak, they don't want me - Lucky - to forget about the beautiful, teal house, to forget about the sprawling roads of suburban dreams, to forget about The Wolf, to forget about what I am.

'You belong there,' they say.

I can't leave.

Lucky can't leave.

Lucky is stuck here in Paradise, he has no choice.

I can feel my skin coming alive again, hear The Wolf's howls ringing in my ears, feel the monsters leaving ice cold kisses in my brain.

I almost turn around and walk away, go back to The Wolf where the Rabbit is waiting for my return. I almost let the monsters yank me away from my dark corner, almost let them limply guide me back to my body swaying in the wind at the dangerous bus stop.

But then I fight.

I don't know how or why I do, maybe it is the glimmer of hope on the driver's face as she looks down at her phone once more. Maybe it's the sun continuously beaming down on my brain, warming the icy kisses of the monsters until it is nothing but residue in my head. Maybe it's the sun girl, her star-embodying smile engraved in my thoughts.

But I fight off the monsters by taking one step forward, as Lucky inches back into his dark corner.

I am nobody again.

Lucky is in his corner and the Rabbit is in the The Wolf's den.

Lucky can't leave Paradise.

But I am nobody, a blank canvas free from monsters, orcs, and wolves, which means I can.

So I dig in my pockets until a crumpled up dollar falls out and step on to the platform of the dark blue, dangerous dragon that roars a mist of fire and gas exhaust when I take my seat near the window.

Running only leads me back to Paradise, so I'll take a dragon that soars over it instead.

-----------------------

The remnants of Paradise blurs past me as the bus escapes the 'Go-Green' bus stop and I crane my head to see its entity wave goodbye. However, I only see the monsters, glaring holes into my eyes, leaving imprints of scars across my face. Except before I can feel the singe of rotting skin, they are gone, whisked away by the transparent wings of the dragon that beats gracefully upon the cement streets, pushing the bus further and further away from The Wolf, from the beautiful, teal house, from Lucky.

The wings of the dragon, made of metal and shiny steel, beat against the cement streets before the bus shoots into the sky, casting a large shadow over the American dreams beneath it as it soars. It soars into the clouds and then dips down again, flying above the Leo Carillo beach until it lands somewhere far away, somewhere distant, somewhere foreign.

And then I enter the void.

The void is the in-between full of blurred images that fly past me as the bus rolls on its wheels crafted from fine, dragon scales. The blurred images hide their beauty, shelter the people swinging brightly colored shopping bags, hides the skyscraper buildings and their intricate details. The blurred images even whisk away the scents, scents that fill the bus only to drift abruptly away like feathery smoke from a cigar.

I try to hold on to everything; the blurred images, the escaping aromas. And then when the bus stops for the calm current of traffic, the dragon roaring its protest, I take it all in and drown in it. I drown in the dizzy images of downtown, capturing the glass-walled stores and the people that hurriedly cross the busy streets.

I snap pictures of the rickety coffee shops, promising coffee and free wifi. I take in the smell of fresh chocolates from the Seed's Candy, soak in the alien laughter of teenagers speeding out of the shop with stolen truffles. My mind relishes in the cars frozen in traffic alongside the dragon, watch the businessman staring blankly at the road and the boys talking animatedly in a pickup truck, four surfboards stuffed in the trunk.

I imagine I'm apart of the scene, pretend I'm in the shoes of the skateboarder rushing across the street before the crosswalk, bulky headphones in his ears. I try to guess what he's listening to, conjure up a reason for why his left arm is in a cast.

I wonder what the homeless woman hunched over in front of the coffee shop is thinking, why she's smiling despite the stench of her clothes. I decide she's elated because being free of bills and jobs was what she always wanted. She probably lives to be free.

My hands itch for something only Lucky would know of then, something to sketch with, something to sketch the homeless woman with. Or maybe the skateboarder who skids to a stop in front of the coffee shop and tucks his skateboard under his arm. For a moment, I wish I could go back to him. To Lucky, just so I could sketch the tangled scene, capture the sights so that I can keep them, absorb them.

But I don't because going back to Lucky would mean giving up my status as watcher, a nobody riding a bus in the middle of nowhere, somewhere dangerous and perplexing.

I hope the images make a home in my head, replace the holes where the monsters might sleep.

The bus moves again, the dragon roars in agitated relief.

The scene before me becomes a blurred image, hiding its secrets once more.

People to start to board the bus by the third stop, which is a small, wooden bench that looks as if it were plopped down in front of Manhattan Beach pier just to be there. The bench is plain, sand occupying the small space, threatening to give anyone who dared to sit over a hundred splinters, but the people that file onto the bus aren't plain.

They are lively, like scattered stars all in different phases of life, coming together in a route straight to the moon and back. They wear jean overalls, tie-dyed crop tops, brightly colored crocs, suits, and oversized sunglasses that cover half of their faces. They wield umbrellas, surfboards tucked under their arms, limply carried briefcases, miniature-sized backpacks, and gigantic blunts.

Their voices fill the bus. Some are laughing, some are speaking hushedly into earpieces, whilst others don't say a word at all, their headphones blasting the melodies of exotic people from the radio. However, despite the variety of their sounds, they all come together, filling the dragon's insides and becoming the hum of its heart.

I want to make a sound, but I can't come up with anything, just a gasp of air. So I listen to them instead, let their blooming words consume me, fill the holes the blurred images couldn't fill.

I consume the words of the couple behind me, the girl with chocolate brown waves and olive skin chuckling loudly as she tried to get the boy beside her to listen to the music dancing out of her earbuds. I try to picture who's on the other end of the man clad in a rolled up, navy green vests' cell phone, visualize who could possibly be making him smile so hard that the corners of his lips hung off his face. I peer slightly over the shoulder of the middle aged woman in front of me, sneaking a peek at the couple kissing underneath dimmed street lamps spinning across her screen.

I try to put a story to each and every face on the bus. Chocolate Brown Waves likes harsh, punk music that her best friend absolutely hates, Navy Green Vest is smiling so hard because he is talking to his kids who are all the way in France, and the woman in front of me is watching her favorite romance movie of all time because she misses the one she loves most.

When the bus makes its fourth stop, it is Navy Green Vest who gets off first, smile still plastered to his face despite having ended his call only thirty minutes before. He gets off in front of an airport, although he doesn't have any luggage, and I wonder if my guess is right. As he pulls out his phone again, I reach for the smile on his face through the tinted windows of the bus, try to pry it off his face and tape it on to mine, but the dragon is soaring once more. Navy Green Vest becomes a hidden treasure in the blurred images breezing past me.

As the dragon flies over cities and people, the sun starts to set, its dimming rays reflecting off the windows and slipping through unseen cracks. The rays pierce my eyes, give me the sight to see the blurred images that rush to escape me, and I catch tendrils of visions. I catch the red car sporting a deep dent on the bumper, catch the towering telephone circuits bearing the load of digital 'I love you's and 'I hate you's.

I see Lucky crawl out from his dark corner and climb one of the circuits, wondering if he could slip into the flow of messages and send one for himself; 'Help.'

Help.

This is stupid. What I'm doing is stupid. Riding the bus, not a dragon but a bus, will not get me away from Paradise. It will for a little while, for a short, blissful period of time. But a bus ride is not eternal, nor a garden promised to the "good ones" by the man in the sky.

I can take as many bus rides as I want but it won't change one obstinate truth, forever standing atop gushing hurricane waters and roaring ocean waves.

I am Lucky Grant.

And Lucky Grant belongs in Paradise with The Wolf in the beautiful, teal house on 87th street.

When this bus ride is over, I'll have to go back.

My breath quickens and I feel my skin coming alive with winter frost.

The bus stops again and the middle aged woman turns off her movie and steps off.

I can't focus on the blurred images anymore, only on the stubborn, absolute destiny that will be waiting at the very bus stop I'd escaped from.

I try to stuff Lucky back into his dark corner, beg the monsters to help me bury him, but they only stand by and relish in my loss of breath. So I get a shovel and dig a grave, push him into it and let the dirt seal him shut.

But he only unearths himself, reminding me I can't escape. I - Lucky - can't escape.

I'm stuck.

"Hey, dude, are you okay?" I hear Chocolate Brown Waves say, her voice strained under a sore throat.

I can't answer her though, I am too busy trying to kill my mind, tuck it away somewhere so I can go back to being a nobody on a bus ride.

Chocolate Brown Waves gets off the bus with her friend when I don't answer.

'Aren't you tired of hurting?' The Wolf had asked, the gentle touch so unfamiliar on his tone, shooting me up with jolts of uncertainty that sets wisps of fire and snow in my veins.

I am tired, so, so tired.

But I can't turn off my brain. I haven't found the OFF button.

"Excuse me? Hello?"

I manage to look up, come back to the bus that is planted on a curb.

The driver had turned in her chair to look at me, tiredness to her voice but a smile on her cheeky features. She gives another lopsided smile when I meet her easygoing expression. "Do you plan on getting off soon?"

"Yeah." I nod, there's only one stop for me.

Her smile falters. She looks like the dead again.

"Well, this is my last stop."

"Oh...okay."

"And this is also my last round for the day and as someone who has a date in two hours, I don't want to be late because I have to drive some indecisive kid around the city."

"Oh, right, sorry." I don't know what I'm doing but I stand up and drag myself to the front of the bus.

She reaches a hand out as if to stop me. "No, no," She chuckles. "I didn't mean to kick you off, what I mean to say is...do you want me to drop you off anywhere in particular? You seem lost."

Just take my brain and throw it in a ditch.

"Um, no, I guess here is fine."

But what is here exactly? I peer out the mechanical bus doors. Throngs of people speckle the sidewalk, their chatter taking the jolly music in the distance captive. The sun is hiding behind wood-embellished roller coasters, fair rides, and small, rickety trinket shops.

The Santa Monica Pier.

"Is this alright for you?" The driver asks.

I feel the monsters pulling at my arms now, tugging me back towards the bus, back towards Paradise. I feel them tug, bite, and claw at my skin, activate the ice cold kisses in my brain until my head is filled with The Wolf, the beautiful, teal house, Mrs. Burnsby, the Orc...

I almost stagger back to a seat on the bus and offer my hands to their chains.

But something pushes me off the bus anyway, something makes my feet float over the platform until I land on sandy ground.

Maybe it's the bright, neon lights of the Santa Monica Pier, greeting me like a brilliant, hopeful lie. Or the exotic people that fill the winding walkways leading into colorful tents and stomach churning rides. The pier was a beautifully complex lie, promising endless fantasies of cotton candy and new people to love.

It's a trap, like the sun girl, like the words on the tip of Mile's tongue, like the smile on Mrs. Burnsby's face.

Maybe that's the irony of lies, people still want to believe them.

And it doesn't matter how many times lies pirouette upon my path, arms outstretched and begging me to take their hands, there's a part of me that'll always believe them too. Because it numbs the truth, sharp as a dagger, repeatedly stabbing you in the chest, even if it's just for a little while.

So I step off the bus, wait for the doors to whiz closed with a screeching sound of complaint, and bury Lucky once more.

The monsters' dissents are drowned underneath the peppy carnival music and ponderous laughter. I am no one again, just a boy who got off the bus, and I melt into the crowd, seep into the words that dance through deaf ears. I disappear in the neon lights casting bright shadows across the throngs of vibrancy spewing into the pier, step through lines that twist, turn, and wind, and dodge the malicious smiles of eager salesmen lunging for  kills.

For a moment, I forget who I am. For a moment, I am the seven year old girl picking at her purple cotton candy, or the boy aiming a bright, yellow ball at a hanging buzzer, or the guy on the spiraling roller coaster, knuckles white as he holds on to the love of his life.

You don't lose your way in a crowd, you lose your identity. Intertwining with the brisk who shove, bump, and shout until you're no longer in their path.

So I keep walking until I can't remember who I've buried, until the monsters whispering in my ears don't make any sense, until the sight of a tornado snatches my vision, spinning and spinning until all that can be seen are blotchy colors of crystal and gold.

The Tornado looks like a circus windmill, its spidery limbs carrying screaming passengers, its fuel adrenaline as it makes a swift circle around and around again. I start to think it won't stop, that it'll keep going and going until everything is repetitive and the riders are begging for it to end. But instead of stopping, it picks up, spinning madly as if its limbs are wings chasing the air. Some unbuckle their seat belts and let themselves drift on the currents of the skies, waiting to hit the hard, lovely ground. Others hold on until their knuckles bleed and they're suffocating on endless momentum. They hold on because there is a neon light residing in their mind, wistfully promising the ride has to stop sometime soon.

Or they hold on because they're too scared to fall off.

I hold on too, stomach swooping, belt unbuckled but still attached to the metal bar. The Tornado spins faster and faster until its going so fast I'm hurling my soul and I've forgotten why or how I even ended up on this ride. But there's no time to reckon because the Tornado is still twirling and the very seat I sit upon is swaying up towards the purple sky and then downwards, sending a flurry of panic up my spine and-

"Excuse me, are you in line?"

I turn around but no one is behind me.

I have to turn to my left to see I am standing slightly off to the side, a long, thick line waiting in front of the bar doors leading to the menacing Tornado. The line is full of chatter, victims unaware that the ride never stops, unaware that they're even on a ride.

I lower my eyes, drag them away from Lucky who is still dangling in his seat, unable to jump although his belt is unbuckled.

I'm not sure if I was rooting for him to fall or keep going.

"If you're intimidated just by looking at it, you probably shouldn't get on. Eight people have been to the ER and it's only been thirty minutes," a voice chuckles in my ear once more and I open my mouth to tell the unknowing victim of the Tornado they'll regret getting it on.

However, at the moment, I'm no longer nobody, the veil of the crowd being lifted and torn to shreds. The monsters appear again, fangs bared, as they unearth Lucky from his tomb, shoving him out of his dark corner and into the light.

The light is blinding, burning his sockets - my sockets and warming my skin.

I can't kill myself anymore.

Because I see her, standing under the large sign reading, 'The Santa Monica Whirlwind'' that shines luminously underneath the drowsy sun. She's dressed like a fairy, long, thin gold dress, specks of sparkles adorning her ebony skin, and small, slender wings growing from her back.Her hair isn't large and reaching for the last bit of rays in the sky, not like the way I had imagined her before, but her laugh is undeviating; airy and melodic and overtakes her face like a sun contorting a crescent moon.

She is the girl from the beach, the sun girl, the girl who had a hand in foiling my perfect suicide, the girl whom I'm pretty sure only exists in my head. A person I conjured to justify the anxiety in my trembling trigger finger.

I took my pills today, the happy pills, maybe that's why I can see her. Maybe that's why she looks so tangible, so definite among the buzzing crowds hoarding into the pier.

Maybe I am crazy, just like Elizabeth thinks, just like everyone thinks.

I'm going mad, The Wolf has left his venom in my bloodstream and I am going mad.

But yet I rack my scattered, war-ravaged mind, trying to find words, trying to find thoughts, trying to remember how I got here and the monsters desperately try to pull me away as if they truly want to save me from my insanity.

And she keeps talking, smile continuing to stretch over her face, obliterating the monsters, leaving my mind bare, hollow, and empty for only a moment.

I seize that moment, take it with both hands, but all I can say is, "I know you," and suddenly the loud, dizzying music of the carnival dissipates.

"Cool, you're not dead," is all she says, nonchalant and bright, glimmering underneath the warmly lit Tornado.

Like an inviting lie in the flesh.

Except she's more tangible than anything I've ever known.

The deathly Tornado ride finally comes to a soft, silent halt.