One Sunday Morning

Today Patrick O’Neil is a professor. Once upon a time, though, he was a student at a university in New York city. One weekend that a friend of his decided to have a party. It seems that this friend lived out in the boondocks of Long Island and that his parents were going to be away for the weekend. It seemed like a great idea to have a party while the parents were away. Patrick was one of several who descended upon the house on a Saturday evening.

The party was a roaring success – sort of. The host had supplied a quantity of beer for the party. Apparently this was not enough for his guests who discovered and raided the parent’s liquor cabinet. I understand some concealed the fact that they were drinking the parent’s booze by drinking straight vodka out of beer cans. A good time was had by all even including the chap who did his best to drown in two inches of water in the bathtub. All that is, except for the host, who realized that the place was a shambles and would have to be cleaned up.

The party wound down around four in the morning. People got two or three hours sleep and then their host rousted them up to start cleaning up. That must have been a sad moment as a collection of half drunk, half sober, hung over young men did their best to clean up the mess they had made.

Patrick was excused from the clean up because he had a bus to catch at eight in the morning. Bright and early at seven in the morning he set out on the mile walk to the bus station. As it happened it was a bright Sunday morning with absolutely nobody around. As Pat walked along he began to get the eerie feeling that he was in the middle of one of those SF stories in which everyone except the hero has vanished. (Three hours sleep on a drunk is very good for eerie feelings.) As he walked along this eerie feeling got stronger and stronger until he got the almost overpowering urge to stop at a door, any door, and try to find some people to reassure himself that everyone hadn’t vanished. He managed to convince himself that this was all very foolish and walked on to the bush stop. When he got there there wasn’t anybody at the bus stop. No cars, no people, no dogs, no nothing, just a bright sunny Sunday morning.

After about a ten minute wait a bus rolled up to the stop. To his unspeakable relief there was a driver and a passenger in it. At this point he wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if there hadn’t been any one in it. He climbed aboard, dropped in his fare, and settled down in a bench seat opposite the other passenger who was reading a newspaper. Pat leaned back and glanced at the newspaper the other man was reading and then got the worst shock of his life. The paper was a tabloid and was held so that only the headline was visible. The headline?