Most great horror stories are set at night under the cover of darkness. The eerie moonlight fills the scene with uncertainty and suspense. The underlying and profound truth being, bad things will happen.

This tale is no different. Though distinctly lacking in vampires, ghouls and ghosts, it contains the undiluted essence of all things horrifying.

I call this tale "The Night Bus" Oooooh!

Upon finishing a particularly long and drawn out day at work I was pleased to be going home. Actually that’s a lie. I was certainly looking forward to arriving at home.

I had worked the late shift and my ‘reward’ was a trip on the night bus.

Now, the ‘day bus’ if you will, is bad enough let me tell you but at night, that bus is in a league of its own.

I arrived at the bus station mercifully early. The last thing you want is to end up last on and spend the first ten minutes of the journey with your face shoved up against the doors or a sweaty person’s armpit.

Fortunately on this night I was one of the lucky ones at the front of the queue. Unfortunately, this meant I had to stand around and listen to the shrill sound of hyperactive children screaming and kicking their parents for a full twenty minutes and of course the parents screaming back and threatening to "kick their faaaackin eds in" if they "dun carm daaahhn".

I turned my mp3 player up as high as I could tolerate in a futile attempt to drown out the sound and escaped into the happy land of make believe while gazing out into the middle distance.

Suddenly I was shaken back into reality as I felt a man and what I assume was his child barge past me. I assume they were going out so the dad could teach the child to smoke or something. I turned off my music and stepped aside..

Then I heard I big booming voice and at first I thought it was the apocalypse. I soon realised it was merely a chav.

"Scoose me" it bellowed, which is chav for ‘Excuse me please".

I turned to confront the chav with some well-placed sarcasm but when I looked round there was nobody there!

"Odd" I thought to myself but then I lowered my gaze by about 9 inches and realised it was a woman with a pram, she must have been no taller than 4’8"!! My guess is she got pregnant at the age of 14 and it stunted her growth.

Anyway, I moved aside so she could come by with the pushchair she was brandishing as a weapon. I decided it was best to just let her pass rather than risk being mown down and left for dead and so I did. Prambo barged past with a deluded sense of victory.

I moved back to my comfy little leaning spot and felt an intense pain on my heels. I looked round again and discovered Prambo had an admirer, an apprentice if you will. A gormless looking apprentice that clearly could not comprehend even the basics of spoken English!

At least Prambo had had a go with ‘SCOOSE ME’. This one was attempting to mow me down!

In what can only be described as a petty act of defiance I refused to move.

"The bus isn’t here yet!!" I said and with that turned back to the comfy-nice middle distance place.

The noise carried on around me. Some of the children seemed to be pacified by the passive nicotine they had managed to absorb from their parents cigarettes that their bodies had so obviously been crying out for.

Many, of course, continued screaming in deep voices that didn’t match their bodies.

"SWEETS" came the war cry as their heads spun around 360 degrees only to receive a smack and the instruction to

"Faaaackin shadap" by an aggressive care giver.

Not a moment too soon, the bus arrived and everyone moved like lightening onto it to avoid being killed in freak stampede.

I managed to get a decent seat near the back and once again I turned on my music and tried to escape the cacophony of bus noise.

Unbelievably (or more accurately – believably) the music blaring full pelt into my ears was not sufficient to drown out the bellowing screams of Prambo and Co. It was however loud enough to severely piss off the man sitting in front of me.

This man had an abnormally large head and I can only assume that this head gave him some sot of supersonic hearing. Either way, matey turned around, glared at me out of the corner of his eye and then let out the BEST impression of the airbrakes of the bus that I have EVER HEARD!

Everyone else on the bus thought that we were about to start moving. Even the driver looked slightly baffled and panicked.

I glared back and turned it up just a little bit higher out of principle but due to the lack of permanent damage to my hearing conceded and turned it off at the end of the song.

The bus eventually jolted forward and at last we were on our way. Stop after stop passed us by and people got on and others off. At one point a woman with a demonic toddler (that at first looked very cute) boarded the bus and sat directly behind me. His cute pudginess was very soon undermined by his unique ability to kick the very centre of my chair back whilst simultaneously shrieking "CARS" directly into my ear. His mother was naturally most disturbed and told the boy off for being naughty – oh no, wait, that was a dream I had. What I meant to say was his mother was naturally too busy thinking about what had happened in the Jeremy Kyle show that day to give a shit and ignored the little brat’s antics for the entire journey.

The bus came to its next stop which was at a small shopping centre and to my utter bewilderment Prambo sent her boyfriend up to the front to ask how long the driver planned to stay there. The driver, thinking that they were being a bit impatient replied as if speaking to a child (which was probably wise).

"I’ll be here for as long as long as I’m here mate, it’ll be a while yet".

It was at this point that the chav said to the driver "In that case mate, is it alright if I run over to that shop and get some juice for my kid".

The whole bus tutted in unison and sighed in outrage eyes to the sky. The bus driver, sensing he would be lynched quickly shut the door and pulled away and the ‘kid’ added to the noise level on the bus by letting out an almighty roar.

Thankfully, the journey ended shortly after this. I got off the bus and encountered my last interesting sight of the evening.

A poor bewildered boy that looked like he might have been auditioning for a part in Oliver Twist stood, frozen in fear as his beast of a mother (who looked like she had escaped from the high security wing of a prison) bellowed in his face.

"When I tell you to be-ave, I mean BE-AVE".

"Hmm" I thought, "Actually, when she tells you to be-ave she means behave." It’s no wonder the poor boy didn’t understand. And with that, she bundled him onto the bus and the tale of the night bus began its next chapter, one that thankfully did not involve me.