Tastes of Auto-matic Unease

I look around at the dusky street upon which I appear to be walking. The sky is purple and stormy, yet the air is clear and ringing with silence. Skyscrapers' crowns disappear amongst the mauve stained skies, giant and somehow ominous. I don't know, I think I'm dreaming.

Thankfully, there is no traffic. I get the feeling I'm supposed to be avoiding something... Grass perks up from cracks in the oily slick asphalt, neon in the semidark. Where are all the people?

I'm passing an alley, where litter gathers around a dumpster like puppies fighting to suckle. I hear a single scream, ripped from the darkness some blocks behind. A dim wrenching sound, as of metal being forced against a brick wall. A shiver works up the small of my back. Yet, I keep striding boldly down the avenue. Somehow, I can see very far ahead. Movement, towards a large, modern and black glass building.

A light goes on in my head. Safety! And I double my pace, practically jogging to reach the shallow steps up to the glass doors of haven. I see adults and children and young people alike, shuffling and galloping and sneaking towards this building. Why? I wonder, from far away, why are we all going here? Everyone else is running here, it must be safe for some reason. Nobody is talking, screaming. Just breathing like frightened rabbits.

Over the muffled sound of heartbeats and breaths, there is a dull roar. Fear, tasting of tar and the primal tang of blood, floods my throat and chokes the breath from every soul as they turn and look back.

Cars. Dozens, hundreds perhaps, a traffic jam moving at unbelievable speed, hunters on the trail of prey. From every street, the rumble from the distance. Acrid exhaust fumes already taint the air. And we are all standing here, literally caught in the headlights, staring at a death engineered by our own hands.

Then the scene is broken. Pandemonium, or maybe survival instinct, kicks us all in the behind, and sends us scrambling for the doors.

Some are even shoving the smaller ones behind, not caring so long as they are protected from the death roaring closer and closer behind.

And I am inside. The room is wide, clear, and cheaply carpeted. there is a ramp, where several small children huddle. Immediately, I walk over to them, through the tumult of panicking forms. Dim lights make everybody's eyes look sunken and dark, ghostly.

Oddly, in these seconds that have stretched ten minutes too far, everyone seems to have calmed. People sit, far from the windors, and lean against one another. This is the safety, they can't get inside here. I almost hear it in the collective sighs of the grown-ups, as they shut their eyes for a moment and relax.

"It's okay..." I say as I approach them. But there is still fear in their eyes. "It must be safe in here, they can't eat us." I am hardly coherent to my own ears, and they aren't mollified. Suddenly, the lights flicker and then everything is dark as pitch. Screams rise up from all around, and the first of a continuous crunching shatters the illusions of safety we had all been laboring under. It only now occurs to me that perhaps a simple brick apartment building would have stood a better chance agains the barrage of taxi cabs and convertibles. I take the children's hands, and lead them against the wall, stumbling, to the first unlocked door I can find.

The lights are still on in the bathroom. Relief, even though I batter it back as a fool's feeling, courses through my breath. "Hide in the stalls..." And the kids obey with as blind trust as they had given me in the hellish dark hallway. I know that, if the cars crash through the bathroom wall, the flimsy metal of the stalls won't protect them from a painful death. I lock the door, anyways. With a heavy heart, I lean against it and listen to the screams and roars as human is hunted by machine.