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<span class="mu-i">He was drunk.
Inebriated by intoxicants far past any rational thought. The young man stumbled from the bar, fighting with each step to remain on his feet. You can see each footfall and trip he makes behind your closed eyes. Despite the countless potent drinks addling his mind, the man managed to reach his speeder. Arriving at his parked vehicle, he flops his torso onto the rear bonnet of the craft, housing the imported overmodified engine block, you can see his chest heave once in a private intoxicated chuckle. His hand slaps uselessly at the black glass pane door until he manages to keep the flat of his palm pressed into the barely translucent material. An outline of electronic white glows around his hand. The dark wall of glass becomes fully transparent, then the wall shrinks into the body of the speeder, allowing the man to fall limply into the pilot’s seat. The grainy memory dies. The footage captured by surveillance cameras ends here.
During the trial, the footage was replayed again and again. Every day you’d be greeted with a viewing of the video, perhaps that isn’t quite what happened, but it is what you remember. Then as if to salt your wounds, it was always followed up with a still photo of two faces. A young boy of only twelve, showing a mischievous yet innocent grin that only a child can wear, holding an action figure in his tiny fingers. And behind him is the most beautiful woman in the world, smiling, with eyes full of kindness and joy, both arms wrapped around the child. The next photo they would show is two speeders fused together, melded into one disjointed metal frame. Shown again and again these unwelcome sights become burned into your mind. They haunt you every time you sleep, every time you close your eyes, every time you even think.
There was no justice in the courts; the one survivor walked free. Somehow the claim of affluenza meant that malaise caused by all his father’s wealth poisoned his grip on reality and responsibility. Instead of death or even jail, he was sentenced to a rehabilitation facility. Your son and wife’s lives are only worth a couple of years in the expensive rehab, with luxuries that you could never begin to dream to afford for your family.
A potent cocktail of swirling negative emotions has stuck to you ever since the crash like flies on a corpse. Anger and hatred at him, at the courts, at the entire galaxy, wanting it all to burn has slowly converted into malaise and a deep depression, stealing all of your energy and your very will to live. You had no vigour to leave your apartment, the one filled with reminders from once loving memories, now turned bitter and foul. One day you heard a repeated knock on the door, which you ignored, thinking it was your landlord. On what you think was the third day of the incessant knocking, in this stupor the days blurred into each other, you relented and were surprised by the face a neighbour. </span>
Inebriated by intoxicants far past any rational thought. The young man stumbled from the bar, fighting with each step to remain on his feet. You can see each footfall and trip he makes behind your closed eyes. Despite the countless potent drinks addling his mind, the man managed to reach his speeder. Arriving at his parked vehicle, he flops his torso onto the rear bonnet of the craft, housing the imported overmodified engine block, you can see his chest heave once in a private intoxicated chuckle. His hand slaps uselessly at the black glass pane door until he manages to keep the flat of his palm pressed into the barely translucent material. An outline of electronic white glows around his hand. The dark wall of glass becomes fully transparent, then the wall shrinks into the body of the speeder, allowing the man to fall limply into the pilot’s seat. The grainy memory dies. The footage captured by surveillance cameras ends here.
During the trial, the footage was replayed again and again. Every day you’d be greeted with a viewing of the video, perhaps that isn’t quite what happened, but it is what you remember. Then as if to salt your wounds, it was always followed up with a still photo of two faces. A young boy of only twelve, showing a mischievous yet innocent grin that only a child can wear, holding an action figure in his tiny fingers. And behind him is the most beautiful woman in the world, smiling, with eyes full of kindness and joy, both arms wrapped around the child. The next photo they would show is two speeders fused together, melded into one disjointed metal frame. Shown again and again these unwelcome sights become burned into your mind. They haunt you every time you sleep, every time you close your eyes, every time you even think.
There was no justice in the courts; the one survivor walked free. Somehow the claim of affluenza meant that malaise caused by all his father’s wealth poisoned his grip on reality and responsibility. Instead of death or even jail, he was sentenced to a rehabilitation facility. Your son and wife’s lives are only worth a couple of years in the expensive rehab, with luxuries that you could never begin to dream to afford for your family.
A potent cocktail of swirling negative emotions has stuck to you ever since the crash like flies on a corpse. Anger and hatred at him, at the courts, at the entire galaxy, wanting it all to burn has slowly converted into malaise and a deep depression, stealing all of your energy and your very will to live. You had no vigour to leave your apartment, the one filled with reminders from once loving memories, now turned bitter and foul. One day you heard a repeated knock on the door, which you ignored, thinking it was your landlord. On what you think was the third day of the incessant knocking, in this stupor the days blurred into each other, you relented and were surprised by the face a neighbour. </span>
