A Holiday Story

     On December 23, 2013 at 10:30 pm a tall slender woman with blonde hair slowly walked into traffic on Main St.  The speed limit on Main St. is 25, so the first motorist that came upon her had plenty of time to stop.  The car only had one headlight burning, but the man driving the car still saw her clearly.  She wore brown boots, blue jeans, and a gray hooded sweatshirt, and it looked as if she was in her late 20’s or early 30’s.  When he stopped in front of her she stood there and spread her arms wide and stared.  Main St. was a one way street so it would not be hard for the driver to simply drive around her.  But the driver didn’t move immediately he sat there staring back.  After a moment he became worried that perhaps this woman was in trouble so he waited for her to move over to the driver side to ask him for help, but she didn’t.  She just stood there and closed her eyes.  This the driver thought to himself was strange, he pulled into the other lane and rolled his window down so that he could speak to her.  “Is there a problem?” said the motorist.  To which the woman replied “Um yes I want you to kill me.”  The motorist rolled up his window and drove away, he didn’t have time for the problems of stranger’s.  He was on his way somewhere.  Besides what could he do?  He had already spent a total of three and half minutes on this stranger, and he doubted if he could convince the woman that this was a life worth living in another three and a half.  So, he drove on into the night thoroughly bummed out.  “Fucking holidays.”  He thought.