Culture of Fear

400

"We’ve all been there. It starts out with a tap of the horn, a dirty look; strangers in their cars, ready to snap, driven to violence by the wrong move . . ." The warning rang out of his thoughts, ran down his arm and around his right hand: paralyzing. " . . .The most disturbing aspect of the growing trend towards roadway violence: We can’t choose whom we drive with on the highways . . ." He exhaled with purpose but couldn’t force his fingers to respond. It happens without warning to ordinary people. Oh god. Nothing but the series of tinny mechanical clicks, nearly audible, as his key passed out of the ignition. He had his arm back. The cold sweat dissipated as he opened the door and looked helplessly down at the idle sedan, and then to the dingy metal garage door behind. Then himself to the kitchen door.

"It’s better like this. I’m liable to be shot along the way." He set his keys down on the linoleum counter top and wiped the grime off his kitchen windowpane and glanced out. From what he could see the sky was blue, as it ever was; the street pulsing with empty faced pedestrians he had never seen before, as it ever had. Sense slapped him in the mouth for a brief second. "I should walk to the store. Who would bother with an old man? Yes . . . Who would bother with an old man? No. Who would bother to notice if I should fall and break my ankle in a ditch crossing the street? They wouldn’t. The city is in such disrepair." He had learned that a local commission was lobbying for road repair in his neighborhood in pouring over the mornings paper. "I’d die. Christ. There’s no decency anymore." It was enough to make him tear up the paper and vomit in despair, had he anything left in him to expurgate. Instead he folded the day up neatly and placed it on the pile: second row, fourth stack from the pantry.

Into the sitting room. He turned the nob with his right hand and melted into the armchair. It came over him in slow, calculating waves. "In tonight’s program, Teenage Time Bombs. Don’t miss Dateline or YOU could be the next victim!" Timidly, on the edge of his brain, he pulled the walls in around him and drove headlong into the static.

I saw it in the news.