2AM Traffic

This 22-year-old kid named Tim was killed in pretty horrific fashion on a Greyhound bus yesterday and I can't stop sweating over the grisliness of it. Poor guy. This other lad is popping up a lot in the news articles because he was sitting in front of the attack and was probably the first to notice what was happening, so he ushered the rest of the passengers off the bus.

A question that's being asked is why no one stepped in to immediately help the kid. I'm sure the passengers are asking themselves the same question, and will be for the rest of their lives. I'm not sure how I would have reacted in that situation if I had been the one to see it happen first. I don't know in what direction my adrenaline would have taken me. It's a crapshoot, anyway. The murder happened at the BACK of the bus in the middle of the night. If a guy wakes you up, tells you a passenger in the back has a knife (a really long, sharp one), and tells you to get your ass moving, you get your ass moving. That's the direction in which the guy's adrenaline took him, and as a result, no one else was hurt. I'm sure it's going to haunt him forever.

I have to stop dwelling on this. I've never been a bad news junkie. There's something about this in particular though that resonates with me. Maybe it's because it's such a random event that could have happened to me on any trip I ever made. There was no premeditation. Just a sociopath with a knife, a calm demeanor and a bus ticket. It's eerie. Passengers already make me nervous when they make too many trips to the washroom, or when I can smell alcohol on them, or when they act somehow out of the ordinary. I've taken the Greyhound from one end of this country to the other, and I know this is as rare an occurrence as you'll find, but I still feel as though I'll be giving everyone a second, third, fourth look.