by Steven Easley

Created on: January 19, 2010

An Insane World

The downtown streets were filled with the typical morning madness of everyday living for New York City. The noise and smog of the normal mad dash of commuter traffic filled every street. Car horns mixed with the shouts, curses and average number of wrecks that was the norm for rush hour in the early morning.

James Barnett Troud hated this craziest of daily activities which signaled the start of another day. Two lanes over a black, dented Cadillac slammed into the rear of an old Volkswagen bug. James watched as the driver of each climbed out of their cars and hugged each other. To James’ left he caught sight of a group of carpoolers pointing and laughing uproariously at the accident just ahead of them.

A woman in the front passenger seat caught his eye for the briefest instant; he thought he caught the slightest hint of serious concern in her eyes. She seemed to realize he was watching and broke into a mad torrent of, what he felt was, forced laughter. He could still see the concern, or perhaps it was fear in her eyes beneath the smeared clown’s paint.

Fearing that she might pick up on his too obvious sane gaze, he quickly began to bang his head against the horn of his rusty Jeep Cherokee. James thrashed himself around in the driver’s seat. He hoped she would not discover his hidden sanity. Through the windshield directly ahead of him he saw the huge lettering of a billboard on the top of a taxi. He read the sign, “Remember your duty, fruity. Report the sane, end their pain.” The ad also included an 800 number to call. James wondered where the sane had lost control or had they merely given it up. The penalty for being sane fit all to well with this insane world, it carried a death sentence. Looking at the faces of fools, he wondered how many others there were who were acting through this insanity for survival.

He glanced once more at the woman in the other car. She was staring at him now, occasionally laughing that fake laugh. Their eyes met and locked, in that instant he realized that she was just as sane as he was.

The taxi in front of him suddenly sped backwards slamming hard into the front of his Jeep sending him forward against his seatbelt. He silently praised and cursed himself in the same breath for wearing the thing. How responsible it was to put it on; how sane. Quickly he unfastened it and reached for the baseball bat lying in the passenger floorboard. He smashed out his own windshield and crawled onto the hood. The cab driver stood at his open door pointing and laughing at James. Commuters in other cars pointed and laughed as well.

James wanted nothing more than to use the bat on the cabby’s head. He hopped to the street, gripping the bat tightly, forcing himself to throw back his head and laugh. He thought, “I’ve got to escape this madness, now, before it becomes reality to me.” He reached into the back seat and took out a child’s purple school bag and threw it across one shoulder. He looked for the haunted eyes of the woman hidden behind the mask of smeared paint and gave her a curt nod. He smiled as she broke into a string of genuine laughter. He turned and began skipping up the street toward the taxi. He laughed as he shattered a window on the way by. Before he reached the car, the woman caught him and linked her arm in his and together they skipped along the street and turned into an alleyway. A moment later they disappeared forever into the underground world of the sane. 

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