Stoop Kid

The wails of sirens echo and reverberate from what seems like every direction. I’ve been moving through back alleys and side streets, through crowds and traffic, so they don’t know exactly where I am yet. Still, it’s only a mater of time before they find me. They are legion and I’m but one; an expendable, mass-produced cog in this machine called society.

As I continue going through the motions of escaping, even though I know it’s a wasted effort, I take a moment to wonder how things ended up this way. My childhood was normal, my parents never so much as spanked me. My grades were average. I never got into drugs or alcohol to the point where they would have been a problem. I graduated from college and had a decent paying job. For all intents and purposes, I was perfectly normal and “well-adjusted”.

Things like this don’t happen to normal people. Everyone knows that. In the news, in movies, or on TV shows, only people with exciting, intrigue-filled lives are supposed to go through this type of shit. I’m no secret agent or criminal mastermind, and still… here I am. I was supposed to have a normal, boring, life. Maybe I would’ve gotten married at some point down the line, had a couple of kids, then gotten old and died. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s not fair!

More sirens now. There’s no escaping this, is there? It’s really happening and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to get out of it. So then those news stories, movies, and TV shows were all complete bullshit. This — can — happen to anyone. They just don’t want us to know that because if the fact that no one’s safe was common knowledge, the suicide rate would skyrocket.

I feel like such a rube — buying into all the lies sold to me by the media. It’s not even one of those wacky conspiracy theories that people can laugh off. Just a simple fact; that no one is Exempt, that things — ARE — as bad as they seem if not worse. We choose to deny these things every day because pretending that everything’s ok is safer — less stressful. And who has time to be stressed when there are bills and taxes, groceries and 50 hour workweeks?

I see a kid sitting on a stoop, fiddling with a cell phone and smiling. He looks so naive. So ready to buy into all the same bullshit as the rest of us. It’s too late for me, but maybe I can spare him from the disappointment of having all those convenient delusions shattered at the worst possible time. There isn’t much time so I yell.

“Hey kid!”

He turns my way with a bland look on his face.

“Stay on that stoop, kid. The world outside will kill you.”

At first he just scoffs and tries to go back to his phone, but as the lights and sirens close in and I’m surrounded by uniformed men with rifles, the look on his face tells me at least part of my message sank in.