By Marini Uba
The Red Light
There was a road that I used to drive down on my way to work. Somewhere along the way was a city that was never seen through to completion. There were gas stations and convenience stores, a suburb that never got any visitors, but everything stayed dark at night. Everything except for the traffic lights. Flashes of green would pass above you every once in a while after long pauses of midnight darkness.
But there were the moments in time where your unlucky soul would get trapped under the red hue of the night. The stoplight would turn on, and the camera sitting above the pole was enough of a threat to make you avoid the fine of skipping an empty light. I pulled into the intersection just in time to catch the night air turn crimson. Red light bathed the path to my office job, and as much as I didn’t want to run late for the graveyard shift, I wasn’t looking forward to losing my paycheck to the courthouse later.
One minute passed. A car stopped next to me. The guy inside almost immediately pulled out his phone and started scrolling. I still wonder what he found so interesting about that video. How many stop lights had he stopped at to make it halfway through that video? I had better things to focus on at the time.
Two minutes passed. I checked the time and wondered just how long it’d take for this light to change. I wondered how fast I could drive on the next few roads to make up for the time.
Four minutes? Maybe five? I rolled down my window to catch some of the breeze. It smelled musty, but it was some kind of change at least.
Minute seven. This had gone on for too long, definitely. I checked the clock again. It hadn’t changed. I checked my phone and that hadn’t changed either, but I was absolutely certain that some amount of time had passed. The guy’s video had gotten somewhere closer to being completed. I watched him scratch the stubble on his chin and go back to his video like nothing was wrong with this situation. I looked around for any sign of the world existing outside of this moment, but the wind didn’t blow past the trees and the subtle flicker of the stoplight ceased.
I rolled down my other window to try and catch the attention of the guy in the next lane. Either his windows were too thick or his video was too loud, because he didn’t catch a thing. I tried to drive ahead.
The car was out of gas.
Great.
I threw myself back into the seat in exasperation. I just wanted to get on with my night. I stared out into the street ahead of me, wondering how far I could push my car when I saw a shape roll into the street. A small red ball rolled into the street, followed by the kid chasing after it. He ran into the middle of the intersection, then tripped and fell face first onto the floor. I stifled a laugh, but he didn’t get up. He started screaming at the top of his lungs. I thought he skinned his knee or something, but I couldn’t tell from where I sat. I poked my head out of the window, and called out to him.
“Hey kid, move! You’re gonna get yourself run over.” He didn’t react, either because he couldn’t hear me or because he didn’t care. I called out to him a few more times, but he still threw his fit in the middle of the road. I sighed, then undid my seatbelt. I’d drag this kid out of the road if I had to.
I came up to him, but he still refused to acknowledge me. “Hey, kid, you okay?” I asked. “You’re going to get yourself flattened out here.” I looked down to him to see the large gash on his knee and the large tears that traced his cheeks. With a groan, I bent down to help him up. He stood as soon as I helped him, and looked to me, his hands still in mine.
His tears had dried and his frown was gone. He looked at me innocently, or maybe he was smirking. I hated that look. “You shouldn’t play in the street, ma’am. It’s dangerous.” He raised a finger and pointed to the car ahead of us and the man enthralled in his video. I watched the reflection of the light turn green and the headlights of his car rear to life. I looked to the kid in my arms to see that he was gone. Bewildered, stunned, I braced for the inevitable.
I was fine in the end, miraculously I suppose. A lot of road rash and questions, but nothing life threatening. I got the week off to figure out the whole mess, and the police department ended up checking the camera footage to see if there was any information on the other driver or the kid there. The license plate didn’t exist, the kid was never there, and the only thing that was certain was that I had stepped out of my car and into the intersection before the footage cut out. The investigator said she’d look for more information, but she didn’t get back to me after that day.
I drove back down that road just one last time to see what I may have missed that night. I sat at the light again that day, scanning for anything that was out of place. I didn’t catch anything that hadn’t been there before, but I finally noticed, on the far side of the intersection was a set of crosses. There were five at least that had been placed there, one for every person who had been struck at this intersection and wasn’t as fortunate as me. They all stood at varying heights, the tallest of which was bent and broken in two, the top half resting on the remains of a deflated red ball.
I don’t drive down that road anymore.