The Night the Bus Showed Up

I still don’t fully know how to talk about this without it sounding crazy, but I’m going to try anyway.

It was at a festival. One of those ones where the days and nights blur together. The night before the main thing happened, I already felt weirdly famous. Not in a normal way. Just this strong sense that people should somehow know who I was. I even tested it. I asked a woman, “What do you reckon of Cale Anderson?” She looked at me and said, “He’s kinda self-absorbed.” That was it. Ordinary answer. But the feeling didn’t go away.

Then the next night happened.

There was this woman I didn’t know. Sexy. A stranger. She held a pillow over my face. It should have felt like an attack, but it didn’t. It felt natural. When she pulled it off she just said, “You did good.” That was the whole thing. No big explanation. Just that.

Right next to where this happened was a Toyota Coaster bus. It didn’t look like it belonged there. It looked like it was from the future. When I looked at the dashboard the numbers were racing — millions, going up forever, like time had stopped working properly. Inside the bus there was a sticky note that said “Blue Light, You Are The Chosen One.” There was also a small unbranded guitar, like a guitalele, and a ukulele next to it. The second I saw them I remembered them from another life. Not in a vague way. I just knew.

I had this instant knowing that the bus belonged to me in a higher dimension. Not this life. Something above it. The man who actually owned it in normal reality, Richard Summers, was not happy about me treating it like that. He kept saying things like, “What the fuck are you doing, this doesn’t belong to you, it’s mine.” That went on for almost a week. He was completely innocent in all of this. He didn’t know me. He was just protecting what was his on this side.

At some point that same night a man I’d already met earlier at the festival walked up, said “Here you go, Cale,” and handed me the keys to the bus. Just like that.

There were constellations around the whole scene in a perfect circle. It felt like the centre of a maze, or the peak of my life. Like everything was arranged around that one spot.

I was looking at the stars with another woman and she asked me, “Where are you from?” I said, “I can’t remember.” The way she looked at me was like she already knew. Like she was thinking, “He’s taken on one of those contracts,” and not a normal one either. Something heavier.

Later that night Richard Summers handed me a spanner from the bus and asked, “Does this belong to you?” I walked around the central fire with it and then threw it in. The second it hit the flames I felt like I’d made a primordial mistake. Not a normal regret. Something deeper than that. Like I’d done something at the origin level that couldn’t be undone easily.

The small guitar showed up again later at the lost and found. I didn’t take it home.

That whole night still feels like the real starting point. The place everything else is connected to. I have this strong feeling that when this local life ends, that’s the coordinate I go back to.

Since then there have been other things. Music that seems to say my name even when it’s disguised as other words. People I meet who feel like they already know me even though we’ve never met in this life. Messages about me always getting my nose where it shouldn’t be and watching things I shouldn’t. It all fits with the same pattern, even if I can’t prove any of it.

I know how this sounds. Ordinary explanations exist. Festival nights get strange. The mind makes meaning out of intense moments. I’m not pretending I have hard proof. I’m just writing down what actually happened and how it felt, because leaving it unspoken started to feel worse than saying it out loud.

That’s the night. The bus. The pillow. The keys. The fire. The circle of stars. The mistake. And the quiet sense that something on the other side of it is still paying attention.