I have this dream...

…admittedly it is more of a fantasy and it involves the deaths of dozens.

I’m walking along the busy street, it’s bustling with people shuffling along like zombies dressed in their Superdry© best. It’s like that scene from the Matrix, the one with the woman in the red dress. Only there’s no ‘clubbed to death’ by Rob D playing in the background and in my dream the woman wouldn’t be wearing a red dress, she’d be wearing something brown from Primark and her face would most likely be buried in a mobile phone.

The sky is an early afternoon autumn one, liberally smeared with watercolour hues of blue and grey. The air is light with a crispness you can smell. It’s a smell that tells you that there will most likely be frost tonight and the jacket you’re wearing isn’t thick enough.

Truthfully the sky is beautiful, framed at the western horizon by a soft band of purple where the bloated November sun is giving up the ghost for another day, but alas I’m the only one who sees it.

Everyone else is staring at text messages or ‘i-messages’ or at twatter or fuckbook, or their playing angry fucking birds or fruit ninja. Everyone is facing downward, towards the floor. Nobody is paying any attention.

It makes me sad.

The dream is always roughly the same, but little details change now and then. For example sometimes I’m in a rush, but I can’t move fast enough because the guy in front is dawdling. He’s not walking slowly because there’s something in his way, but because he’s too busy concentrating the text message that absolutely can’t wait five minutes and has to be sent now from the middle of the street.

Other times I’m in no rush at all but in fact I’m walking leisurely with a beautiful young blonde girl. We’re having a chat and it’s great to spend time with her but the mood is constantly ruined by her replying to text messages every couple of minutes. Messages that absolutely can’t wait five minutes and have to be replied to immediately, never mind the fact she’s with company and it is remarkably rude.

Then there’s the mother whose child is crying but she’s too busy swearing loudly on her mobile phone to do anything about it because she’s in the middle of a phone call. A phone call that – yeah, you guessed it – absolutely will not wait and needs to be taken right now. Otherwise who knows what might happen. I mean if we don’t keep our eyes glued to our shiny smart phones every moment of the day, who knows what we’re going to miss?

I have this dream

Admittedly it’s more of a fantasy and it involves the deaths of dozens.

I’m walking along the busy street, it’s bustling with people shuffling along like zombies dressed in their Superdry© best. It’s like that scene from the Matrix, the one with the woman in the red dress. Only there’s no ‘clubbed to death’ by Rob D playing in the background and in my dream the woman wouldn’t be wearing a red dress, she’d be wearing something brown from Primark and her face would most likely be buried in a mobile phone.

The sky is an early afternoon autumn one, liberally smeared with watercolour hues of blue and grey. The air is light with a crispness you can smell. It’s a smell that tells you that there will most likely be frost tonight and the jacket you’re wearing isn’t thick enough.

I’m walking along the street and I hear a screeching sound. I look around to see a bus veering off the road and heading toward the crowded pavement.

It’s not going fast at all but for some reason it can’t stop. Maybe the brakes are shot, maybe the driver has gone mad (maybe it’s just an angry boy’s sick fantasy) but the bus continues slowly lumbering towards the throng of pedestrians.

I can easily step calmly out the buses path, but nobody else does.

Everybody else dies.

All of them.

Crushed horribly under wheels or mangled up against the glitzy shop fronts. Bodies bursting and twisted, syrup red spilled prettily over the frosty grey concrete.

Everybody dies.

If only they’d looked up from their phones, just for one second, they’d have seen the bus coming and they’d all be alive still.

But no, they’re dead.

Horribly dead.

All because they were too busy checking fuckbook and twatter, to busy replying to ‘urgent’ text messages or taking phone calls that absolutely could not wait.

All of them dead.

And there’s me.

Smiling inwardly as sirens begin to sound off in the distance.