Party Bus to Perdition
E.J. LeRoy
About the Author:
E.J. LeRoy is a freelance writer and poet whose work has appeared in several speculative fiction and literary publications including Fiction on the Web, NonBinary Review, and Usawa Literary Review. LeRoy has a science fiction novella forthcoming at The Whumpy Printing Press in 2026.
Party Bus to Perdition
How is it that you were my first forbidden crush? The kind of limerence that could not speak its name along the hallowed halls of St. Clare?
Exchange student and cradle Catholic, Japanese and American. I didn’t see your lack of faith or begrudge our dearth of common words. I only saw your smile and the mischief in your eyes, heard the sparkling rebellion in your unladylike laugh.
The bus we rode to the girls’ soccer match and back, those shared giggles that required no translation. Knowing we had more than friendship but less than romance, the thrill of transgression in our playful hearts. A new secret about to unfold.
Somehow, you knew about the railcar at the edge of town, the one spoken of in whispers and disdained in gossip.
How did we know just where to meet when conversation eluded us? Lust supplied our common language, our tongues ready for better sport than speech. Suppressing the conscience formed by years of faith, ready to throw it all away for you.
Did you know my ensuing guilt? Those frequent trips to the confessional, begging for both forgiveness and true contrition? The rending of my soul between the heaven of your arms and the hell surely awaiting me if we did not cease? The ambivalence of your departure, pining for your return while simultaneously relieved to lose my one dear occasion of sin?
Abandoned railcar
Nuns’ warnings rattle the mind
Our first hurried tryst