Monday 3 September 2007

Dubai Traffic

I’m a giant, lying on a bed of cars, thrashing in my nightmare and rolling over, crushing roofs, glass splintering. I’m staggering through the traffic, snaking lines of it spiralling into a smoking, choking infinity. Effed up on something: a nasty acid badness and a metallic taste in my mouth. Sudden awareness: you don’t taste in dreams. A fear rush, then; not good on acid. Calm down before things get really twisted, you’re centred. Think of trees, sitting under trees. Woodlands, birds singing; the hills and Julie Andrews.

Shit, that was a mistake. Julie Andrews has ripped me out of slomo and brought me in a rush back to realtime like a webcam taped to the front of the Kyoto Bullet train and I’m back, staggering in the grey smog, cars jostling around me.

It’s bumper to bumper and they’re aggressive: I can see one face snarling out of a window at me, blank-eyed, lycanthropic and dripping streams of saliva from the yellowed teeth revealed by its drawn back lips. I stumble backwards in fear, hit another car moving slowly behind me, a horn loud and piercing my ears as I start to lose my legs and drop to my knees. I can hear an insane keening, a banshee howl of pain and realise it’s my own voice, faltering now that I'm collapsing, choking on the thick, billowing fumes. I’m down on my belly trying to get up but I can’t move. I can feel it looming over me and the bumper nudges the back of my head as the wheel starts to roll up my leg. I can feel the slow, rolling pressure crushing my ankle, squeezing my calf muscle and veins popping...

It’s true, you know. Dubai’s traffic is a nightmare…

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never tried Dubai's traffic.

But I tried Milan, Rome, Paris, London, New York: they're all pieces of cake compared to the Mother of all Traffic Congestions: Bangkok's rush hour, which starts at around 5Am to close after midnight.

Not joking: one day we couldn't find two taxis from the Wat Arun temple back to our hotel, so I and a friend walked while our significant others and kids taxied.

We got there two beers earlier than they did!

Alexander said...

But this stuff is deadly, aggressive, multi-cultural and high tech. This is traffic that would make Mad Max crawl home to drink bottle milk. This is traffic that you don't want to bring home to mom amd pop...

And someone's going to get hurt soon: I've never seen tempers so frayed and driving so bad as in the last couple of days...

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