The lights of the city blurred into focus in the distance as Mary rustled from a deep slumber. The sodium glow of a massive brewery shone pale orange into the night, distorting the flicker blue, green and red of the casinos in the distance. The glow of the city woke her from a deep dream, into the familiar hum of the highway that she had travelled so many times before.

Mary’s legs felt like dead weight, but she was pleased to find adequate room to stretch them towards the front windscreen of the upper floor of the bus. Reaching her fingers to the sky and her toes to the city ahead, she shuddered slightly with a sigh and promptly elbowed the man next to her in the nose.

Mary turned to apologize, but found no response from the sleeping passenger. He breathed softly, mouth hanging open slightly, a dribble of spittle clinging to his trimmed goatee. With no one to say sorry to, Mary turned her gaze to the window to get her bearings. The bus braked to broadly maneuver through a left turn.

Mary recognized the bar and the mini mart as they passed on the right hand side, but was confronted by the phosporous facade of a new set of condominiums on the left. She had missed her stop probably about 20 minutes back up the road. The bus had not stopped there. The bus she was riding never stops there.

But stop it did, rolling slowly past the shining lights of a run down card house and slowly coming to a rest without using the brakes on a dirt lot behind the main road. The passenger next to her stirred as life rustled through the cabin, the riders shuffling and collecting their belongings.

“Aw yeah we’re here yea fuck that was a long ride let’s get outta here”

Her cohort was already awake and down the front stairs of the bus, grabbing his backpack in a swooping 360 motion before heading for the exit.

“Ah fuck mate where’s me pluggas?”

Mary was in the midst of inventorying the detritus left at her feet, and grabbed at the pile of flip flops. Sorting them like a five card poker hand, she grabbed the pair with the bright orange thongs in her right hand and offered them up. There were three more sandals in her left hand, but none of them matched. She chucked the flippies back on the floor for the next traveller with only one shoe.