Long ago, during freshman year of high school, I took a drama class. We broke into groups, each being assigned a short play to perform. My group did A Visit To A Small Planet, and in fact I think all the plays had originally been performed on 1950s anthology programs such as Playhouse 90.
Another group was assigned a play that I’m trying to find some information on, but I don’t remember the title, or much else. All I do remember is the basic premise: some passengers get on a bus, and it turns out that their all dead, being transported to the afterlife, and the driver is possibly some Charon like figure. The last line ends with, “This bus is death.”
This sounds a lot like Outward Bound (1923) - filmed in 1930, remade as Between Two Worlds in 1944 - but it takes place on an ocean liner and “This ship is death” is not the last line.
The trope’s not unique, of course – there was an old Twilight Zone about a train to Providence (one is misled to thinking the city in Rhode Island) that is in fact Purgatory.
One of two short stories that are my favorites is Heinlein’s The Man Who Traveled in Elephants". There’s a bus accident at the start of the story that set’s up a scene like this. And every time the story gets to the part about veterans riding in the big parade “Because merciful heaven forgive us, they could not walk” I get teary eyed at that.
The expression “catch the bus” became widespread online slang for suicide. The only explanation I’ve seen is that it’s a reference to walking in front of a bus to kill yourself. That never made any sense to me - a bus hitting you is if anything an archetype of sudden unexpected accidental death in a YOLO context - “Don’t forego this fabulous dessert, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow!” But it’s surely not a common means of suicide. And why “catch”?
So I’m wondering if there may be some link to this play, if it was once well known.
I did always read “catch the bus” as stepping out in front of one…. we do sometimes like our catchy euphemisms when it comes to death. But based on some random posts I just read, it supposedly arose at alt.suicide.holiday, and it means you’re standing at the bus stop thinking about whether or not you’re going to end your life/“get on the bus“.
I did delete the link to some of those sources, because the content is pretty dark.
But that’s just stating the metaphor, not an explanation for why it’s a metaphor. There is perhaps a sense of waiting wondering if you’re going to act, but as a metaphor waiting at a bus stop doesn’t fit with that - it’s not as though people wait at a bus stop watching buses go past until they finally decide it’s time to catch one.
The metaphor of death being a ride from one place to another is obviously ancient. The boat metaphor was already taken. A bus serves as a modern update on the idea. Why a bus and not something else? I dunno, but there are only so many possibilities, and the phrase “catch the bus” is in common use and relatively snappy sounding.
They had this at the end of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, but I do not know what original material it may have been based on (as @Dr.Strangelove reminds us, it is not exactly novel).
I found this as a podcast, and it’s a great story. However, now I also remember why I’ve been shying away from OTR, as much as I enjoy the format: horrible sound quality in so much of the content. I’m no audio snob, but some of those old epidodes are painful to listen to.