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In the glaring light of the fast-food diner, the meal that had been thrown onto the table looked sterile. She picked up a fork and poked half-heartedly at the unappetising mush. Looking wistfully up at the posters she mused about how she was supposed to expect a huge, succulent meal fit for a very hungry bear. She had been in here enough times to know that it was not what she was going to get. She knew that they spat in the food before serving it, and if it was the same size by the time it got to the table as it had been in the kitchen then you were very lucky. Sighing, she pushed the plate away from her. There were some things in life were too disgusting to do for the sake of manufactured nutrition.

A pack of screaming children stampeded past her, heading for a man dressed as a clown. She saw his eyes widen behind the makeup, and she wondered why he was doing a job that meant that he dressed in a clown costume every day only to be beaten up by children who were being brought up on the recycled filth that they dished out over the counter every day. It was not a job that she saw any reason in, and she did not spare him a glance as he disappeared under a tide of thrashing fists.

She looked around the restaurant, noticing a certain mean minded woman. She looked about fifty, and she was prowling between the ranks of tables, dragging a large yellow sign behind her which proclaimed in over-zealous letters CAUTION WET SURFACE. When the woman spied a youth walking into the aisle she wound deliberately place the sign in the way, causing the disgruntled customer to walk around and find a seat nearer the kitchen. What a sad little life she must lead thought the lady at the table.

She looked around again, and saw a couple walk through the doors, arm in arm. She watched closely as they sat at a table and ordered a single drink off the teenager tasting the grim conveyer-belt of the workplace for the first time. When it arrived they each took a straw and took an inordinately long time finishing the drink, staring into each other’s eyes. The woman sighed again, sorry that they had to try and make such an uninviting hole romantic. With eyes like that they should be consorting over champagne in the moonlight on the Nile, or courting in a café in the shadow of the Coliseum. Instead they had been convinced by a sick world that it was normal to live out their one life in the place where they had gained employment. People only have one life, and to spend it doing tasks not suited to the lowest form of life is an insult to the gift of sentience. They finished their drink, and rose, hand in hand leaving a sizeable tip for the small person whom had been told to take them their drink. It brightened his day, and it may have even brightened theirs.

Still the lady at the table watched as the world of the tiny walked into the fast-food joint. She chewed her lip, feeling deep repulsion of all the people who thought that it was freedom to be able to go to this poor excuse for a trough once a week and eat food less edible than the most poisonous plants. It made her feel wretched and she resolved to do something about it. Rising, she walked out of the overcrowded room, her head aching with the banality of the human race. None of them had the slightest idea what was important, and they were supremely happy ignoring their god-given right to think. It made her sick. She pulled on a long coat, and something heavy in the pocket hung uneasily at her side.

The world outside was no better than the prison on freedom she had just left behind. From every shop window posters proclaimed deals on small things that were no better than the deals that the other shops were offering. They may have been catering to the mindless tribe that walked up and down the street every day in search of something to lighten their grey existence, but she had a sneaking suspicion that even the people who had written the posters were convinced that having a better washing power was worth wasting valuable seconds of time over.

She walked down the middle of the road, looking neither left nor right, trying to see nothing but the moon far above her. Flags flapped into her peripheral vision, making her flinch. They were a feeble attempt of the ruling body of the town to inject some life into the sad, dead district. They meant nothing. They were pieces of cloth suspended from metal wires. They did not enhance anything other than the image of a place where life had no meaning.

She heard a voice talking in her ear, and she looked down to see who it was. There was a man, dressed in a cardboard box, looking up at her from the ground. He was chattering away someone but it was not her, and it was no one who could be seen. The look she saw in his eyes spoke of true, unbridled happiness. He would be dead in a week, but he had managed to find the place that most people spend their lives living in fear of. It was a place with no government, no commitments, nothing but the pure cerebral enlightenment of seeing the world from the outside. She smiled at him, and walked on.

The broken town clock would have struck eleven, except it could not. She knew from past experience that this meant that the remnants of society would be turned out onto the streets from their warm, drug-induced lives. She knew memory is a precious commodity, and she saw losing it through actions that could have been avoided as stupidity of the highest order. She continued through the dark world, her hand lazily resting her coat pocket. The woman, unlike many of the other people on the streets, was walking with a purpose that they had only ever seen in fiction.

She saw a large building, lit up like a bonfire. The white boards nailed to the half-painted wall informed the public that it was a cinema. It was a place where people go to get away from the world for a couple of hours. Her mind reeled at the sheer weakness of the invention. It encouraged people to leave the world, which, given a chance and a bit of imagination, can be as fulfilling as any film. They were running scared, scared of a society that had boxed them, packaged them and trapped them. They were without free will, and so were no longer humans. There may have been a time, long ago, back when men were men and people had reasons to live, that she might have tried to talk to them, changed what was left of their minds to something better, more like her own way of thinking. But it was useless now, with the whole world ranged against her, and the entire sum of history to back it up, she could do nothing more than make her decision based on what she would gain. She didn't care for what they said, or what they thought. They were beyond help, waiting for the day when they would die. Across the road, in the insane fluorescent pit of an amusement arcade, someone voiced their joy over striking the jackpot. The cut of her coat changed as her had gripped something in her pocket tightly.

She stood at the main entrance for a minute before nodding and turning to seek out the side door. It opened easily, leading her into the darkness of the main theatre. She stood in the shadow of the red curtains, looking with pity at the sea of upturned faces caught in the thrall of the silver screen. She stood for a few minutes, the only face looking the other way. As the noise of a war never fought echoed from the dark walls her hand came out of her pocket.

She was on the stage before anyone could do anything, firing the gun indiscriminately into the darkness. The screams took a long time to register, because her ears were filled with the fiction being played out on the big screen behind her. Running people dropped in the aisle, bleeding from gaping wounds. Soon the room was full of empty seats but there were people hiding, and screaming.

She stopped firing, tucking the gun away. The stage was empty, and the film played on.

She stepped down, and walked away smiling to herself. She did not fear reprisal, nor did she regret what she had done. She too was free and, like the man in the cardboard box, she would be dead in a week. It did not matter to anyone who mattered to her, so she walked tall in the drizzle of the dank world.

Please feel free to send comments to me. Any input gratefully received.

Jim