[LolitaBonanza]: 762.ENG361Prompt

It was a damn shame.
Martin agreed. A damn shame, a girl that young. Pretty, too. Damn pretty, Martin grunted. Her bony limbs spilled onto the asphalt from an expensive looking black dress the size of a hanky. Blood—still hot, still pumping out of gashes and holes in that soft, olive colored flesh—painted the sidewalk in a way that would make Pollock nod in appreciation.
Martin and I stood over her fresh corpse while the boys blocked off the street, doing their best to keep the curious at bay. “Bunch of vultures,” Martin growled in the general direction of the crowd.
She was so young, I thought.
A damn shame.
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Every morning, Diane’s ears were greeted with the delighted, tormented, bubbly shrieks, screams, and giggles, respectively, of little school children, their eyes still caked in sleep sand. Every day, she shot down the streets and highways like a giant yellow bullet, toting noisy kids to and from their educations. It was a thankless job, but necessary and of import to the good of society. Or so Diane was told.
Diane hated kids.
Twice every day, she was subjected to the humiliation and degradation that gave children so much joy. A paper wad to the back of the head, a jeer about her clothes, a kid releasing lunch the wrong way all over the seat, another who’s crying because Jimmy pulled her hair…it was all she could do to control herself from physically beating her tiny passengers into silence. But she couldn’t complain, really. It was work, after all.
Besides, there was always the promise of sweet, black night at the end of a hard day. Juicy, secretive, noisy night, the time when Diane became what she only dreamt of being during the waking hours.
Tonight, Diane Dopple slipped her slim body into her little black dress; it had taken her weeks to sew it (she’d always said her one God given gift had been sewing). She’d wanted to take her time; she’d wanted it to be perfect. As she sized up her reflection, she couldn’t believe it was her who was perching so gracefully on those stilettos (taken from the middle school drama club closet). The V-line beneath her neck plummeted elegantly between her breasts; the lace hem hugged her thighs with a charming tightness. Her hair, combed and drowned in mousse, was unrecognizable. Instead of the frizzy mass that stared down at her from the bus mirror, she now stared at gentle, flowing waves of dark curls cascading down her shoulders and back.
Diane Dopple felt beautiful for the first time in a long while.
Every Friday night for a year, she left her bus driver life at home, and ventured into the urban jungle that was the city nightlife, acquainting herself with the suave, the rich, the beautiful, the “I have more money, time, and friends than I know what to do with.” She’d watched them, studied their behaviors, mimicked their speech and gestures, and saved obsessively to buy jewelry, expensive fabrics, books, makeup, and most importantly, a night on the town. She had every minute of this night mapped out before her: a late night cup of coffee at a chic coffee house she’d snooped about in on previous evenings, where she’d casually reread Musicophelia and drink a chai latte with a shot of espresso. Perhaps a young college graduate with a slick haircut and expensive clothes would chat her up. Afterwards, he’d take her to Tavern on the Green, or a little Italian place she’d seen in the village. They’d talk and talk, maybe go dancing in Soho…
As Diane paid the cab driver dreamily, she began clicking her little feet across the street. She thought, “I wasn’t meant to be a bus driver; this is what I was meant to be!”
By the time Diane’s senses emerged from her hallucinogenic imagination, the glare of the headlights was too close, the shriek of the brakes too imminent…
The city bus crashed into Diane Dopple, a born sophisticate.