Traffic

There was silence in Mike's car as he impatiently tapped his finger on the steering wheel, staring angrily at the stopped car in front of him on the freeway. They had been stuck in stop and go traffic for well over an hour. He had mismanaged his battery life on his phone, killing the battery, and the fact that all of his usual radio stations were well out of signal range, meant that he had nothing to listen to. He was traveling by himself on a business trip, so he had no one to talk to. There was really nothing to distract him from what was going on in front of him on the road. And that wasn't very much.

He really should have known better than to set out at this time. He should have left hours earlier if he wanted to avoid this kind of traffic, but he had been lazing around in the big city, seeing the sights. He wasn't exactly a city slicker, but he wasn't a bumpkin either. He lived in a fairly small town, where he managed the power plant, which was why he had headed out of town for the weekend. There was a conference going on where people were gathering to discuss better ways to manage electricity, and by some fluke he had been invited to attend. It was a good opportunity, and it let him get out to see more of the world, which was something he had often thought about.

But if he was going to do it again, he certainly wouldn't have driven. The amount of time he had been staring at bumper stickers while not moving was agonizing. The number of drivers who had cut him off, only to hit the brakes and lean out their windows to yell at him as though he had been the one to cut them off. He had dreaded every time he had to get in his car, which was why he had waited so long to leave - any excuse he could come up with to not be driving again he took. Which, of course, had only made it that much worse when he did get back in the car again.

He was glad he had printed out directions before he left, because he would have been lost otherwise, but he questioned if they really were the fastest. They probably hadn't taken into consideration how much traffic there was on the road. But the alternate path probably would have taken him up and around the mountains on either side of him, and he wasn't sure how comfortable he felt with doing that. He had already made that mistake once before, and his brakes almost hadn't held him in place when he had had to stop while going uphill. That had been a terrifying experience.

The brake lights on the car in front of him turned off, and the joy was overwhelming. He moved forward about five feet in total before coming to a stop again.

He wanted to die.