The Perfect World Fallacy - - Chapter 8

[seymoure]

Chapter 8

That’s a Lovely Dress, Mrs. Cleaver

It wasn’t evident to begin with, but after about twenty minutes of her commute Harriet had to admit the eerie truth.

People were driving differently.

They were doing the speed limit.

They were staying in their lanes.

Most weird and unearthly aspect of it was that people were merging . . . courteously!

Not a single bird, to her alert eye, was launched from one driver to another.

Not a single curse word seemed to boil between vehicles.

A chill crawled up the P.I.’s spine.

In the terms of the internet: WTF?

Searching for an answer she did something she had forced herself to stop doing years ago, she turned on her A.M. radio. She had ceased to do this for two reasons: 1) She only had A.M. and that meant she couldn’t get any of the music that she would like to listen to. 2) The only thing, at this hour of the morning, to be found on A.M. radio was Right Wing (and by that you meant the far tip of the right wing, out where George W. Bush was the savior of America) talk shows.

When she turned on the radio no blustering idealogs erupted.

Instead she heard the soothing sounds of Glenn Miller playing “In The Mood.”

Instinctively she hit the breaks. She didn’t mean to do that, but something within her said that something evil was going on.

Sitting still on the expressway for a full 10 seconds she sat in silence.

Not one car horn honked.

She looked behind her and saw a burly man smiling back from the car behind. When he realized that she saw him his smile turned into a huge grin, and then he waved at her.

She saw a teenager on a motor cycle pull up beside her.

Now the shit was going to hit the fan.

The kid took the helmet off his head and leaned into her window.

His face was a composition of brushstrokes of concern.

In a voice that one would normally reserve for a kitten or an elderly aunt who had just come out of the bathroom trailing a full roll of toilet paper, but wasn’t aware of it, he said, “Ma’am, is there a problem? If your car is malfunctioning perhaps I can help.”

“No thanks,” she heard herself saying.

When the boy had removed his head from the inside of her car, she slammed on the gas pedal and roared of.

She looked back and the cyclist was waving, with a grin on his face, as he replaced his helmet.

“I hope I wake up soon,” she muttered to her self as Benny Goodman’s “Don’t Be That Way” creamily filled the inside of the auto.

The horrible truth was that she was not asleep, and therefore, not soon to wake.

© 2009 by C. Wayne Owens

Link to Chapter 1
Continue to Chapter 9