Throwback Thursday: ‘Late Night Fun Facts on the No. 65’ by JTF King

A young paralegal meets all sorts of interesting commuters in ‘Late Night Fun Facts on the No. 65’ by JTF King. Come along for the ride with this excerpt from Pulp Literature Issue 22!

Late Night Fun Facts on the No. 65

by JTF King

Zipper didn’t own a car. Between rent, food, and a thick slab of debt (courtesy of a criminal justice degree that wasn’t yielding any returns), she could barely justify not flushing her goldfish down the toilet. She walked the two-and-a-half miles to the law offices of Burnbaum and Paquette every morning and took the number 65 bus home every night at the insistence — and with the funding — of her older sister. 

“There are some strange people out there, Zip. I’d hate to wake up to your face on the news,” she’d said, balancing baby Bo on her hip. Norm rolled his eyes behind the Sunday paper. Zipper appreciated the solidarity, but they both nodded agreement under closer scrutiny from Clementine. Not that Zipper didn’t agree. She’d seen plenty of ‘strange people’, even more so since she’d started taking the bus.  

So far, her experience had verged on only mildly uncomfortable, but her commute was short, and she’d learned to appreciate that. Plenty of bus regulars were just that — regular — but there were a special few that made her glad for the invention of headphones. Two weeks into her stint on the number 65, she’d managed to compile a reliable list of avoidables.

The safest spot on the bus was by the front door, where no one could sit next to you. Plan B was to sit next to the lady with the massive chef knife, who was actually just an overworked mother trying to make use of her commute time. She never bothered Zipper, and her meal prep conveniently kept would-be weirdos at bay. Sure, Zipper worried about hitting a pothole and getting skewered, but there were worse fates.

To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 22, Spring 2019 here!

Plucked from wonderful, windy Wyoming by fate and transplanted to the Pacific Northwest, JTF King is the proud mother of things furry, lifter of things heavy, baker of things sweet, and writer of things on occasion. When she’s not busy with the above, her MS in publishing science sometimes comes in handy for her work as an editor.