The Itch -- Part 1

The itch was driving Mr. Kosmos mad. It started somewhere in the area of his right thigh's underside and it spread till the heel of his foot. He scratched and scratched, but it brought him no relief. The worse part was that he was sitting near the window of the bus on this long journey from his home to visit his sick mother in another town. And the woman sitting by his side was asleep since the journey began. He could not even distract himself from the itch by talking to her because waking her up would be rude and Mr. Kosmos was not a rude man. His mother had raised him to be a better man. 

He sighed deeply and continued to itch his leg through the fabric of his trouser. What he really wanted to do was to rip off his trousers and dig into the meat of his leg with his nails till he found the source of that itch and then rip the culprit agent of itch out with his teeth. He was sweating more than usual even though the air conditioning in the bus was working fine. He tried to distract himself by looking out of the window but the same old scenery of trees and roadside foliage passed him by. It was boring, but not boring enough to take his mind off the itch. 

As he scratched his leg, he felt the itch growing like an ink stain in a glass of water. It spread all over his leg and if Mr. Kosmos had as much as a shaving blade, he would have sawed his leg off with that thing no matter how much time it took or how much he bled all over the bus. He grabbed the armrest on the left side of the bus because the large lady's arm was completely over the middle arm rest. He slammed his back into the seat and opened his mouth to suck in a little more of the sweet air conditioned air, but there was no relief from the itch. 

He finally decided that he'd have to get off the bus and handle the itch before making his way to his mother by some other mode of transport. He raised his hand from his seat and waved it wildly, waiting for the conductor of the bus to notice him. The man had his headphones plugged deep in his ears and he was bobbing his head to some strange beat. Mr. Kosmos was almost at the verge of tearing his hair out when he did something unthinkable for which he would blame himself till the day he died.

He slid his hand under the fat arm of the woman sleeping in the next seat and pinched her with all his might. She screamed like a train engine and that got the conductor's attention. He knocked on the driver's cabin and the bus slowly started to slow down. 

But Mr. Kosmos had a new problem very quickly coming his way. The woman stood up to her full height like some kind of behemoth and slapped Mr. Kosmos right in the face. The last thing he saw as stars swam before his eyes and birds circled his head was the woman's other hand rushing to make another introduction with his face. 

Thankfully, by then he had blacked out. 

And so began his real problems.

- part 2, soon -