He was a man that had very little to lose. I was a man that had very much to lose. But I didn’t care. I ran up to him mad as hell and decided to pick a fight. The man that left his dignity home gave me a look that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. In five minutes he had me under his spell. He used to be a salesman but now he was a wrestler and his spell was direct and to the point. His arm was around my neck and his smell was making me dizzy. I had no choice but to suck it in and wait for his next move. I was either too much of a wimp or he was one very strong man but I couldn’t get free. I tried using my legs and I couldn’t do a thing. For the first time in my life I decided to shut up.

He looked at me disturbed and a bit condescending. No one was there to witness my beating so he let me go. I gasped for air and he kicks my stomach, as if I wasn’t in enough pain. I fall sideways on the street waiting for the man to hit me again. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t fight and I couldn’t even thing of a strategy to escape this situation. I didn’t care that my car was dented anymore. Now all I wanted was to get the hell away from this road rage maniac, not that I was any better.

I stand up and he looks at me. The bastard just stares at me and reaches for his pocket. He takes out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, a pink one. He takes on cigarette out and throws me the pack. He lights it up and puts his arm around me. Now I didn’t think he would be the raping kind but he was getting awfully touchy feely on me. Then he starts to talk. From that point on my real nightmare began, I should have faked passing out.

“Look here you snappy little man. I don’t want to beat you up. I’ve had the worst day of my life, probably the worst day I man can have. In all honestly I don’t like your car, I don’t like your driving, I don’t like the way you look, I don’t like your hair and I especially don’t like the way you don’t even try to defend yourself,” the man kept rambling and rambling I was trying to talk but he would never let me. I didn’t really want to interrupt him either and looking back on it, good thing I didn’t.

“Now let me guess, you must be a lawyer. Maybe you’re a psychologist and you can help me. Well I don’t care if you’re not, you’ll have to listen to me,” he takes my arm and pulls me towards the side of the road. I have no clue what I did to deserve that but it was a dark night and a desolated road. It was a mixture of intrigue and fear that engulfed me that moment. I had no choice but to follow his lead. He sits on the curve and there we are in our improvised psychologist chairs. I rested on my car and he was sitting on the curve. Now that I look back at it, I could have escaped or done something about my unfortunate situation but I guess at the time I really didn’t wanted to leave without knowing what triggered this man’s insanity.

“I don’t know what happened today. I’m still figuring out if everything actually happened. You know how I woke up. An armored car crashed into my bedroom. Yes, a huge armored car full of money. Driving the damn thing was my son. Just picture my surprise when I see my son’s bloody face in the windshield of the armored car that crashed into my house. In a matter of seconds I hear sirens and screeches of the herd of cars that were following my son. That’s now quite the best way to wake up. I was standing next to my bed and the white sheets were turning red. I look down to try to find my wife and half of her body is under the armored car. My son is possibly dead, my wife is probably dead and once I get out of my house the cops will most likely kill me thinking I stole the fucking car, not to mention it’s a bad neighborhood and I’m black. That was all before nine in the morning,”

I wasn’t sure what to say but in my head all I could think was: that’s fucked up. Sure that’s not very articulate of me but hey it’s a fucked up situation this man was going through.

“So there I am, cops screaming and money still falling from the opened door of the armored car. The money I begged for yesterday arrived today with a whole lot of side effects. So before that day I had money problems, not like this isn’t a money problem too but you get the picture. Now I didn’t even have time to think about yesterday because right when I was going to sit down it starts to rain. Half of my bed room is exposed and now rain is falling on the blood of my wife, the armored car, the money and eventually on me. The roof was starting to collapse on the small ranch style house of mine. I walk to the closet and take out my rifle. That’s exactly when I lost it. I shoot the roof, I shoot the mirror, I shoot outside and all the cops that were approaching the house now are more cautious. With guns drawn, about ten cops come in the house through the huge opening the armored car left on the side of my house,”

I remember staring at him blankly as he was telling me all this. I could picture every single detail and for all it’s worth I wish I could have helped him feel better.

“They all come in and the roof collapses. I bet it killed at least seven of them and injured all of them. When the other officers outside saw the bloodshed and saw a black man with a rifle standing up next to the door they assumed what most white cops would. I did it. So I ran. I ran like I really killed those cops because I knew that’s the way they were going to judge me. Right there and then. Police justice. As I run to the back I bump into a cop, actually not one cop but about five more. They all had their guns drawn and in a split second they were close to splitting my head open with it until a man with a suit on stops them. Hell, if I knew I would have let them killed me before going away with that man. He turned out to be FBI. He grabbed me by the back of my shirt and tossed me on a black sedan”

I knew where this was going but I didn’t want to interrupt. He was slowly crumbling in front of my eyes as he told me all this.

“We were going speeds I’m sure were illegal and I had no seat belt. The man was clearly not in his best state. Apparently he was going to get fired and something had fucked up him so bad he wanted to kill himself. So the agent stops the car in the middle of a busy avenue. Shoots his partner and then looks back at me. He laughs a way that only a fucked up man like me would comprehend. Just one look gave him all the information he needed so he spared my life and right there in front of my eyes he puts the gun in his mouth and click, brains all over the fucking windshield. There I am, on a FBI car in the middle of a busy avenue with two dead FBI agents. I try to open the door but I was handcuffed so everything was a bit harder than usual. A man, a guy that appeared to be a bum approached the car. It was raining and he was completely soaked. He opens the front door and pushes the dead man a side. He takes a dirty cloth he had and cleans the blood from the windshield and puts his finger on the hole left by the bullet. Then he punches the windshield and breaks it slowly,”

I never thought so many maniacs would emerge in a single day, and I would most definitely not think they would all mingle and meet in one day of maniac rendezvous. Then again I would have gone mad as well if I had a day like that.

“It was already around noon and this bum, was really going to steal this FBI car with two FBI agents dead on the front. So he took the keys from the agent and started to drive off. People were staring and a couple of cabbies got out of their taxis to asses the situation. Someone must have called the police and in a few minutes five units of cops and three FBI sedans were following us. At that moment I prayed. Let me tell you I’m not a man of God but that moment when we turned into the highway from the wrong side of the street I turned Christian for a couple of minutes and called for every saint I knew and recited every prayer I learned as a child in less than five minutes. Two trucks maneuver to stop the maniac bum. He loses control and the car swerves. Finally he stops and gets out of the car and runs out. All the cops get there about a minute or two later. They all pointed guns at me and screamed. I was handcuffed in the back so I thought maybe they would rule me out as a suspect, but then again today wasn’t a day with much justice. So they take me out of the car and throw me on an armored SWAT van,”

I saw a couple of cars approaching but by then I didn’t wanted to escape this guy. I wanted to know more. It was all so unfortunate but so addictive. Like a bad action movie were the main character never really recovers from all the mayhem.

“I’m in the county jail with about five more guys, three of them skinheads, a big fat black man and a bum full of filth that smelled like piss and shit. One of the skinheads approaches me and shortly the other two grab my arms. He suddenly grabs my crotch and painfully squeezes it. The big fat man stands up. He looks at the skinhead that’s grabbing my crotch and grabs the skinhead’s crotch and holds him over his head. Then he throws him on the wall. I don’t think after that he was going to grab anyone else’s crotch. The other two skinheads started to beat me up but the fat brother took them both out. A cop comes to see what happened and he opens the cell. The fat brother takes the cop by the neck and slams him into the bars. Then he escapes the cell but soon three more cops come from the station and start to shoot him. I run behind him and then run away and narrowly escape through a back door.

I take a bus near the station without been noticed and in the bus I see four kids on the back and a man making out with a young woman. When I look closely it was my brother and when I look even closer I see my little girl, my daughter. I was so furious I wanted to go back to the police station to get a gun and kill my brother. I go straight to them and ask what the fuck was going on. She tells me she was having a baby from my brother and she was running away. To top that off, my brother tells me my mother died very early this morning. It was such a great and peachy day so far. I slap my daughter and punch my brother and get out of the bus in a God forsaken neighborhood but I didn’t care. I man that was clearly going to rob me decided not to after taking a closer look at me,”

For a minute there I started to doubt his word. There was no way someone would have that much bad luck. But for some reason I wanted to hear more because I wanted to hear what else had happened.

“By then it was beginning to get dark. I was walking down an industrial park and finally someone offers me a ride. I didn’t care I had nothing to lose. The man was a short Asian man. He was kind of old and while he was driving he collapsed. I think he died of age but I didn’t really know. I don’t know why such an old man was driving but he was and he died on me. We almost crashed but I managed to take the wheel before that. So I put the old man on the back and drive off. Here I am with a dead old man in the backseat as I sit on a curve talking to some stranger I just crashed with. You know I remember that before I even woke up I had a fucked up dream. I dreamed I was in a dark road and someone told me: you’re it. Now my friend, all I can tell you is YOU’RE IT.”

In a matter of seconds about seven cop cars pull up. They all start screaming with their guns drawn. I had no idea what to do and all the guy could say was: “yes, you’re definitely it, sorry.”