CYCKLING

I must have a cheese sandwich every morning. Coffee is fine, of course, but that is only the second most important thing to have. I hate nothing more than to wake up and find out that there is no cheese or sandwich left in the kitchen.

Like this morning. I wake up, alone as usual, grab my pair of slippers from under the bed. In the bathroom, the laundry is still waiting to be washed. I look around in the kitchen. The yesterdays paper is just where I left it on the table. Bread, where is the bread? Did I or didn't I leave some bread for the morning? Cheese, where's my cheese?

Nothing!

Why, for me, this agony? What have I done to get into a situation like this?

I hate the world. They all treat me bad. From the beginning.

Philip had to go work in spite of the disarter in the kitchen. No excuse. Just take the car out of the garage, drive to the city, think about something else.

And what would he do, where would he go, other than to his normal job, living his normal life? Turning the steering wheel in the middle of thousand other drivers. Just swallow your dreams and get moving.

In the intersection there was a bunch of cyclists bugging the car traffic.

“Why don’t they ride their cycles somewhere else?” Philip began to get really annoyed. He was drivinghis car in the rush hours, in a hurry. The morning at home was lonely and distressing, as always. His car was old, bursting stinking fumes out the exhaust pipe. The motor was coughing.

“I would never ride a bike in the center of the city,” he thought himself.

Suddenly there was a biker beside him. The old man had a t-shirt with a picture of a dogs jaw, sharp teeth glistening. He shouted something, but Philip didn’t hear because of the closed windows. Maybe the man complained about the exhaust gases, or the noise of the old motor. He could also have uttered some vicious words about Philips driving style: he was not the most tranquil man behind the steering wheel. Philip reached out to open the side window.

“What’s your trouble?” he shouted to the cyclist, when they both were halted in the red lights. Philip didn’t quite see the face of the cyclist, only his t-shirt with the face of the dog.

“You didn’t use the blinker,” answered the cyclist. “I was close to bump into your car.”

“Don’t you have enough money to buy a car?” Philip asked. “It’s not safe to ride a cycle in the center.”

“This vehicle is safer as yours,” the cyclist answered. “It is also more quiet and doesn’t stink as your car.”

”You might get hurt there in the middle of the traffic,” said Philip and closed the window.

The cyclist gave the finger to Philip.

Traffic lights changed back to green. Philip stepped on the gas, and the car went past the cyclist. Philip steered a little to the right, just in front of the cyclist. Then, suddenly, he braked and slowed down, so that the cyclist had no other chance than to hit into his bumper.

The bike collided with the car, and the cyclist fell down and crashed in the pavement.

Philip did not halt the car. He watched the cyclist in the rear-view-mirror.

After a week the police finally found him. The old man in the t-shirt with dogs teeth had died in the hospital the next day Philip collided with his bicycle. Many eyewitnesses remembered his car, but nobody was quite sure of the license number. Fortunately the car was captured to many surveillance cameras of that area.

In the interrogations Philip first claimed he didn’t remember anything about this kind of episode. Later, in the court, he claimed that he wasn’t even there when the incident happened. He was driving in a nearby street.

The court did not believe him. He was accused of murder.

The justice was quick, and sentenced Philip to prison for four and a half years, for manslaughter.