Hello all! This is my second posting, and this one's a bit long but worth it I hope. Some non-consensual stuff in here, so if that bothers you I wouldn't read it. I like this idea, so I might develop it into a series. Feedback is greatly appreciated!
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"You - yes you in the second row there. With the glasses. Your answer?" The portly teacher gestured to the scribbles on the board, singling out the young man that seemed to not be paying attention.
Alex Sutherland had been slowly drifting closer and closer to his notes for the last minute and jumped slightly when the man next to him nudged his side. His eyes snapped to the board and he hastily ran through the equation to try and pretend he hadn't been sleeping. Ten minutes and he was free, so this was probably the last question of the class.
"Uh...the limit does not exist?" he responded, throwing out an answer without thoroughly checking.
"Hmmm. Correct. Very good, very good." Alex's professor quickly wiped the scribbles from the large dry-erase board and glanced at the clock. "Happy Friday everyone, and ten free minutes as a present to you all for the occasion! I'll see you all in here again on Tuesday."
The class sprung into motion, students gathering their notes and books at breakneck speed to take advantage of the good fortune. Night classes were hard enough, but night classes in calculus were downright torture. A four credit class twice a week meant Alex spent from six thirty to eight thirty every Tuesday and Friday surrounded by yawning and stressed-out adults from all over the inner city, everyone trying to better themselves in their spare time.
Alex had missed roughly the last thirty minutes, daydreaming of more interesting things than paying attention to the lesson. Interesting things like the cute, slightly mousy brunette in the front row. Interesting things like what she might look with her hair down and tousled after having her brains fucked out over the desk in front of her.
She wore glasses and dressed comfortably, features that seemed to accentuate her waifish figure rather than detract, and she fit his type perfectly. Alex was not particularly handsome, but he was tall and vaguely athletic, features that would have helped him work up the nerve to say hello should he force away the anxiety of actually speaking to a woman.
He was ninety percent sure her name was Becca, but he had never spoken to her in person. Alex didn't really speak to women in person, preferring to quietly observe them rather than risk rejection or humiliation.
With the class mostly empty, Alex finished packing his things up and trudged toward the door, oblivious to the man sitting in the back row that blatantly tracked his every footstep. As he reached the door, Alex felt an odd sense of foreboding and a shiver ran down his spine.
He turned around abruptly in search of the source of the odd feeling but only saw the teacher and two female students discussing the homework for the weekend, one of them coquettishly twirling her hair as she spoke. The class was empty, and he decided that he needed to get to bed early because this stupid class was driving him batty.
----------------------------------------------------
Alex waited alone at the bus stop in front of Browning Community College for the nine o'clock bus, hoping it had not decided to be flexible with its schedule and arrive early. The water pump had burst in his 1996 Camry and he needed another paycheck or three to make up the $400 to get it rolling again, so he was resigned to smelly public transportation.
Alex sat with his head in his hands and tried to picture Becca's body under the oversized sweaters she usually wore to class. Flashing images of bouncing C cups, crowned with light-colored nipples danced in his imagination and stirred his arousal enough to entertain him for the duration of the ride.
The late busses usually had either quiet, solitary passengers or insane college-aged drunkards from the university Alex hoped to transfer into next year. They usually left him alone, but he kept his head down around unpredictable people.
A sharp hydraulic hiss broke the usual din of the city and he looked up to see the bus come around the corner. Alex gathered his backpack and slung it, waving so the driver would hopefully not pretend to not see a six-foot man waiting to be picked up.
The bus trundled to a stop and the young man hopped on board, habitually tapping his bus card against the scanner. The driver didn't even look up from the road and had already started rolling forward when Alex turned into the aisle next to the standing-room seats. This sudden motion made him lose his balance and he missed the hand-holds, toppling right into the middle of a group of guys about his age.
He landed hard and his bag flopped sideways, right into the shin of one of the standing passengers.
"OUCH! SHIT - Jesus, dude, watch where you're going!" the passenger said, kicking the now idle bag at Alex's prone form. It hit him in the side and he felt his school books knock his breath away. Eyes watering in pain, he scrambled to his feet amid the laughter of the group of men. Alex could feel his face blooming scarlet for all to see.
He looked around after gaining his footing and saw that there were five of them, all young adults and probably students like Alex. They leered at him wobbling in the center of the area and blocked him from easily reaching for a hanging handle. Alex sighed and staggered past them towards the back of the bus where there was only one other passenger and ample room for him to hide his shame.
He sat down in the very back and put his head on the seat in front of him. Across from him sat the only other passenger, a rather unassuming man that had thankfully ignored him as he found his seat. Alex's knee throbbed pretty badly, and his wrist hurt from breaking the fall.
"Fucking...fuck. Cocksuckers," he swore quietly, massaging the spot where the bag had hit him. Who the hell does that? Alex thought to himself. He wasn't exactly a fighter though, and he knew better than to pick a fight with random groups of people on a bus.
"Cocksuckers, huh?" he heard from the man who was suddenly sitting in the seat next to him. Alex jumped and pushed himself up against the window away from the source of the voice, turning to see the man had somehow moved from across the aisle to sit next to him.
"Wha-what the hell man? Where'd you come from?" Alex demanded. The man had moved either so quickly or so silently that Alex hadn't heard him at all. The initial shock having worn off, he became angry at the scare. "What do you want? There's plenty of open seats. Can you kindly fuck off?" he demanded, making shooing motions with his hands.
The man regarded him with a half smirk and didn't move from the seat. Something about his eyes bothered Alex, they had a coldness about them that seemed to not reflect his smile. Come to think of it, his eyes didn't really reflect much at all, almost appearing black in the gloomy bus lighting.
"I believe this is our stop, Alex," the man said matter-of-factly and with a notable but indistinguishable accent. Alex's mouth dropped at the use of his name by a complete stranger.
The man stood up in the aisle, the lurching bus seeming to not faze him in the slightest. Alex saw that he wore a long and rather nice coat that covered his clothing and carried a cane with a polished silver knob. He raised the cane and rapped it on the ground once.
Everything was silent. It was as if the city and the rumble of the bus had gone to sleep, leaving behind a stifling silence that almost rang in Alex's ears. He looked around in wonder and saw that everything around him had ground to a halt: the bus was completely still, the five douches from earlier were frozen comically mid-laugh, one of them probably having made a crude joke only moments before.
Outside the bus, the whole of the city had frozen as well, cars stopped with blinkers stuck in the on position and people stepping into a crosswalk without their lead foot touching the ground. The world had simply been paused like a movie.
"H-how did...what did...how are you doing this? Who are you?" Alex stammered out, hot bubbles of fear prickling his stomach. "Are you going to hurt me?" he almost pleaded.
The man turned and fixed him with a cold stare. Alex quailed under the intensity of his gaze, and he fought down the urge to vault the seats and make for the exit of the bus. The man's black eyes bored into Alex's skull and planted a primal fear that threatened to overwhelm him. His ears popped and he felt his jaw shudder slightly, his terror mounting and mounting. Alex tensed himself to make a break for it when all of the sudden the feeling left.
The man tossed his head back in laughter, guffawing in a manner that was rather less elegant than would seem for someone in such an elegant outfit. Alex hadn't realized it, but he had begun to sweat profusely in his inexplicable fear. Involuntary trembles ran through his legs, and he tried to relax his racing heart.
"Oh my boy, you've passed the test," the man declared gleefully. "I never like to play with the faint of heart, and I may well have incinerated you if you had run off like a little chick" he said as he glanced around the bus distractedly. He seemed to be looking for something, but he wasn't checking under any of the seats or in the luggage racks up above. "AH!" he suddenly exclaimed, "Here we are!"
The man reached out a gloved hand and delicately pinched an invisible thread somewhere in the air in front of him before pantomiming a pull on it. Alex felt no change or movement, but suddenly was seated at a table in a flat, featureless plane. The table was furnished with a bottle of some unknown liquid, a wrought iron lantern and a single wineglass, nothing more.
Alex felt sick suddenly and fought back a wave of nausea. "Oh come now, my little pet, you'll be fine," the man chortled from across the table. "You mortals are so used to walking around, you can't stand a little travel with style."
