John stopped at the intersection. Looking off down the dark street ahead he could see a seemingly endless set of lights, all red and sneering.

He could almost hear them laughing. They laughed and they sneered at him. He could feel it.

For a moment, he lightly considered turning off the road and forgetting about the trip; too many red lights; too much jeering.

But John was not laughing. He had places to be and to get there he would have to pass the sneering lights ahead of him. He tapped his finger impatiently on the steering wheel. When would that light turn green?

John stared ahead at the straight double yellow line that traced the middle of his course. That double yellow line made life simple. The random drunks who couldn't stick to it sometimes ended up in terrible wrecks. The newspapers reported them often, but John would only read the headline. He didn't really like reading even the headlines. They made him feel the world a little bit darker.

John once again noticed the lights ahead; still red. They would intoxicate him if they could, those lights. He knew they would. Their one function was to stop him from moving forward, from getting where he needed to go.

John had read in the newspaper years before about a man who had come upon a red light and had steered his car directly into to the pole. He didn't do much damage to the light pole, but he wasn't so lucky. He lay on the operating table cursing the pole and the lights. The ER nurses had to strap him down pretty tight and sedate him to get any work done trying to save his life. In the end the light won the battle and the man lay dead.

John didn't like to think about that. The stupidity in the world was almost more than he could bear. He'd never been a genius himself, but he was competent. He wondered and shivered thinking about a colleague at work who cheered the man's fight with the light pole and invited everybody over to his place to celebrate the "war against stop lights" and the "memory of the brave soul who died trying to bring us some measure of freedom". John didn't attend; too much drinking. Everyone had driven home intoxicated that night. This was apparent from the talk around the office.

John knew that it was no use fighting the lights, though he'd once been a stubborn man in his own way.

Sometimes, on this route, John used to try to take side roads; roads without so many jeering lights, but that always took longer and a few times he got lost. Worse still, the lights still laughed.

It was strange then, when he used to wander the side roads looking for shortcuts. He always seemed to take comfort whenever he'd cross a main road and see the other drivers stopped. They were delayed too and he would smile to himself, sometimes even chuckle. This is how John knew that there was laughter behind the red lights. There was laughter and mocking in the automobiles crossing at the intersection acting like they were getting somewhere so much faster. They looked like they were getting somewhere too. John knew better. He'd been down many of those roads. There was nothing on them, just run down huts and shiftless poor; even if the intersections looked upscale. Just travel the road a block or two. The scenery would change and there would be no shortcut. Traffic lights replaced by stop signs and pot holes. Low speed limits and tight urban streets, so tight that you had to slow down to pass the parked cars safely.

He didn't realize it then, wouldn't admit it to himself, but the man in the side street can never do enough to keep the intersection red on the main road forever. The man in the side street slows himself down more than others.

Suddenly the light turned green and John began to move forward. As he passed through each intersection he looked to his side at the stopped cars and began to wonder where these people thought they were going. Did they even have a destination in mind or were they just trying to feel important and pretend to be productive as they meandered aimlessly? He wondered how many of them were fruitlessly seeking a quicker route.

Without red lights now, soon only his destination concerned him.

The double yellow line still at his side was telling him that he was still pointed in the right direction. John was safe. He would reach his destination. Even the sneering lights which had stirred up so much of his emotion were soon forgotten.