Nobody Knows

Just one of those random things that's on your mind and eventually forces its way onto paper. I might use it for an intro to a short story. Anyway, I hope it scares you a little, or at least makes you think

Every day is a gamble. We play the odds a thousand times before we even step out the door in the morning. We know people die in car wrecks every day, but we still drive to the grocery store a few blocks away. We know planes malfunction. We know fires start from a spark. We know that every time we go to sleep, we might wake up to the window crashing in and a stranger in our bedroom. Every new cell our body generates could be the one to go haywire and start making cancer instead of skin or bones. But what are we supposed to do about it?

I’ve driven across the beautiful state of Texas many times over. From the open plains of Lubbock to the breaking shores of South Padre; from the sunsets in El Paso to the skyline of downtown Houston; from the windmills in the west to the oil fields of the east. Between the cities and towns are two-lane highways, most with no medians and precious little time to pass the farmers’ trucks you get stuck behind. Any oncoming vehicle could have swerved into my lane, and in one short instant, I could have been squashed. Maybe they’d have to pull my mangled mess of a body through the trunk. One lazy eighteen-wheeler could have banged me off the road and into the afterlife. But did I think about any of that?

There are killers out there. We all know that. The killers have to kill somebody, don’t they? But you sit at home at night, watching the news and sipping tea before bed. You assume tomorrow night it won’t be your house in the news, with yellow police tape across your front door. You can imagine the news crew stomping on your front lawn, police officers tracking dirt into your living room, and the neighbours trying to get a glimpse of your bloody corpse on the floor. But it would never really happen. Right?

There are psychos out there. People who want to maim and destroy. There are perverts, weirdoes. They need someone to peep at and follow until they get the sick satisfaction they need. Why not you or me? Couldn’t they choose your window to peek in while you sleep? Why not choose your back door to pry open at night? Why not hide in the back seat of your car?

Why not? Because there are 7 billion other people in the world. You like those odds. We all like those odds, don’t we? Those odds are all we have. We confidently roll the dice every day, gambling for our lives every second.

But what if one day the stranger chooses your window to look in? What if one day the monster really is under the bed? What if the next propane tank to have a defect is the one you happened to buy? You go outside to grill some steaks, but in a blaze it’s your own melting flesh that has the neighbours sniffing the air and saying Yum, someone’s cooking out tonight.

What do you do in the meantime, when you’ve bet your whole life and you can’t cash out until the wheel stops spinning? You just keep playing. In a casino with no clocks and no windows you just keep playing. Around and around you go, when will you stop? Nobody knows. None of us knows.