City Lights

City Lights

His wristwatch says it is already 8 p.m. Yet he still has to earn more. He stopped on the nearest gasoline station and asked for a gas refill on his taxi. He sighed, prices are just too much. He looked longingly at the crumpled hundreds that will be handed to the gasoline boy. He must earn more; earn more, for his only son’s education, for his wife’s medication, for them to be able to survive, must earn more. It became like a mantra, earn more money, and earn more money. For what will a poor man like himself be able to achieve without earning enough money? His family will starve, and he is just a poor man. Must earn more.

She needs to go home now. She forgot to cook something for her fifteen-year old son and he must be cranky now. Forcing herself to stand up and stretch her worn out muscles after a long day of just sitting down, she tried to finish all of the reports that are needed for the next day’s meeting. “I’ll just buy him the special menu on this famous restaurant then,” she muttered, “he will surely love it.” She closed her desktop computer and turned off the lights on her office, leaving only the red emergency lights on. She then bid her associates goodbye, and headed for the door.

He is a husband and a father to an only son. A taxi driver, earning just enough for three meals a day, his son’s allowance, and his beloved wife’s costly medicines. Struggling.

She is a working single mom, raising her only son on her own. But she is doing fine, being a senior associate of the firm that she is working on. Pretty stable job.

He treasures his family much.

She never got close to her son.

It was that time of night. When people care about no one other than herself/ himself. Survival of the Fittest is the name of the game. Survival being the operative word. Morality, ethics, and concern. These three has been a thing of the past. Survival has the least possibility when you possess these three. And the taxi driver had one. Concern. He was blindly driving his way through that road, his mind has since gone numb from all the poverty that can be seen when he looks out of the car’s windows. Then he noticed an old woman at the middle of the street, looking like a deer in the headlights, shock written all over her face. He didn’t think twice, and he swerved to the right, where a truck is running too fast to be able to avoid that taxi who suddenly went out of its lane. The green light for vehicles went red, as if saying “pedestrians may now pass.”

It was that time of the night, when thugs and hooligans are at large. When they destroy things and lives. When killing is but a normal action. She was walking that street to her favorite restaurant. She is already thinking of the better dinner that will make her son less irritated of her. Unbeknownst to the woman, someone is in the shadows, his menacing eyes following her every step.

“ She is late again,” a fifteen- year old boy muttered, “she always forgets about me.”

Life is fair, in a way that nobody can avoid its injustice.