It Won’t Hurt

It Won’t Hurt is a sad and spooky story about a Russian bus driver who experiences something shocking when he is driving the night bus between one town and another.

I heard this story from a bus driver in Russia. One night, he was driving the night bus from one town to another. There were a lot of passengers on this journey and a few people were standing. One of them was an old woman who suddenly became ill and she started asking the driver to stop the bus. They were on a country road, surrounded on both sides by forest, so the driver told her to wait until they got to the next town.

The old woman began to scream and yell, demanding that he stop right now. The driver pulled over to the side of the road and opened the door. The old woman got off the bus and fled into the forest. The passengers waited and waited and eventually she returned, but there was someone else with her. As she emerged from the woods, they saw she was holding the hand of a little girl who was weeping.

When they got on the bus, everyone asked the girl what was wrong. She said that her mother had brought her into the forest and placed her on a high branch of a tree. Then she put the noose around the girl’s neck and said, “Sit here a little while, and when you get tired, just jump down.”

“But Mom,” the little girl had said, “this rope is pressing on my throat!”

“Don’t worry,” the mother had replied, “when you jump, it won’t hurt.”

The passengers were shocked and horrified. The old woman said she didn’t know why, but she had suddenly felt very anxious and that was why she asked the driver to stop there. When she ran into the forest, she came to a small clearing and saw the little girl. She caught the child just as she was about to jump off. There was a red mark around the little girl’s neck and she was coughing.

The bus driver decided to take a detour so they could bring the child to the hospital. They drove off, but they had only gone a few hundred meters, when the driver stopped again to pick up a young woman who was standing by the side of the road.

When the doors opened and the young woman climbed onto the bus, the little girl suddenly stood up and said:

“Mom, you said it wouldn’t hurt…”