Road Warriors

Hopeless. There was no way he was going to make it to the office on time today, after seeing the horrendous amount of cars lining up infront of him. The scene was sort of scary, actually, conjuring images of people running away from a major disaster of sorts, or some sort of Hollywood movie apocalypse.

But there was no disaster to run away from here; it was just another regular day, another rush hour, and through turning from the small peaceful lane near his house onto the main highway, daunting traffic greets him, assuring him that his stay won't be a short and pleasant one.

The traffic edges forward slowly, inch by inch, it seems. He knows that it's almost two miles until the next main traffic light, which has probably caused this bottleneck, and he recaps the events of this morning and curses why it took him so long to leave the house.

It didn't matter now though; he was on the right-most lane trying to penetrate the slow moving queue of vehicles. He spots a little gap between an old Caprice and a pickup truck, and attempts to turn into it. The Caprice owner, a fifty-something with what seemed like a bald spot and a short temper, pretends he doesn't see him and makes a quick step for the gas, cutting off any space possible for him to overtake.

"So you wanna play it that way?", he thought, and decided this reaction by Mr. Baldy here is going to end in full-blown confrontation. The traffic was at a standstill, so he slowly edged his car forward to the front end of the Caprice, who in return also edged forward to block any way in, and waited calmly like a ticking bomb. As soon as the pickup truck moved he immediately forced down the gas pedal catapulting himself forward and slammed the brakes, wedging himself right in between the pickup and the Caprice (who also rammed the gas pedal, but not fast enough). He pretended he didn't see the Caprice owner either, even though the latter had started blowing his horn in rage and waving his arms around.

"Haha, don't even think of messing around with me" he quietly chuckled to himself. "I OWN these roads." Still, he had so far moved approximately five meters from where he had started, and the traffic was still at a dead stop.

He looked around, the sky seemed so blue, and somehow he wished he was all the way up there, preferably in a helicopter flying far away over the congestion. But here he was, a pickup truck infront, a big school bus to his left, and Mr. Angry right behind him. The pickup started to move, yes, finally seems the traffic light upfront had opened up, and things started to slowly flow. Other cars started coming in from the rightmost lane, to merge with the flow the same way he did; he let the occasional one in, and sped up and blocked whenever one he didn't like tried to force it's way in.

"Funny this whole traffic thing", he thought to himself. "How these people struggle and fight to get a few inches ahead, when in reality there's a long way to go making whatever effort they put in relatively useless". But that's just how the people were. As the line moved and stopped, moved and stopped, he noticed a car in his rear-view stitching it's way through the stopped vehicles. A new Lexus, with a young driver wearing a red baseball cap (probably a spoiled brat), screeched it's brakes as it switched from right to left lanes and stopped directly behind him. This lane stopped, so it cut to the the left lane again, and kept going, slithering it's way between the traffic.

A little lady passed by in her Camry, calm and quiet, in the lane next to him. He admired the way she looked, so at peace, innocent, and somehow naive to the road rage filling the other cars in this jam.

"Perfect opportunity", he thought, and slammed the gas pedal and overtook her, as her lane started moving again. Unfortunately, in his haste he forgot to look and see whether the car infront of him was moving, and crashed directly into it's back.

"Oh shoot", he thought. "This is gonna be a long day."