Fugue states are a bitch.

That was the last normal thought Robert had.

Traffic on Main Street was snarled. Fucked. Packed. A complete clusterfuck.

It was the blaring of so many horns that shook him back to reality.

Shit! The “protests.”

Robert sat in his well-cared-for green ‘98 F150, out for a drive, aimless. When the ennui of being a 54-year-old divorced ex-con working-class hero crashed in on him, Robert drove. Sometimes, he took long rides into the country; sometimes, he drove through his old neighborhood; sometimes, he did both. Just him behind the wheel rolling on automatic.

Fucking damnit! Damnit! Fucking satellite radio is bullshit! If I had been listening to 103.2, I would have gotten news updates. Should’ve known. Instead, I am stuck in this shit show. Fucking Demonrats fucking fuck kids. What do these schools teach these days?

He heard shouts and chants up ahead as he considered his options. Unable to do anything but move a foot at a time, he turned on the radio. Nothing but Van Halen playing. He tried the AM channels and got Sean Hannity chimping out, something about businesses being burned down all over the country.

Van Halen it was.

Some of the traffic cleared up ahead. He eased on the gas before having to play the brake again.

The crowd was chanting before him. A mixed group. Mostly college-aged women, loud, shrill, shapely legs begging to be split apart. And young men duded up, bellies flat, arms pencil thin, eyes unsure.

“No peace.”

“No justice.”

“Pigs need to die.”

“Fuck white people.”

“Fuck Trump.”

Bob Seger played on the radio something about the engine, moaning out his one-note song.

Robert turned up to an ear-splitting volume.

He alternated pumping the brake and the gas. Stop and go. Stop and go.

They hit his car. Sneakers and boots striking the side panels, wooden sign posts smacking against his windshield.

What is fucking wrong with these dipshits! Cum-brained faggots!

But he held his mouth, lips trembling, tears ready to come to his eyes.

“Get outta my way, you little bastards!” he shouted through closed windows and hit the gas harder than he intended.

The F150 shot forward, plowing through skinny jeans and yoga pants.

They screeched, they shouted, they hooted.

Someone dropped a paint bomb on his windshield.

Blind, he collided with something.

Stunned, Robert got out. Someone was bellowing cries of pain from the back of his truck. Robert looked at the young, skinny white man pinned beneath his rear wheel.

My goddamn life is over. I will never escape this even if I don’t do time.

The kid with his hip under the wheel spewed forth curses, “You fucking old white bastard. Look at what you did to me. You hit us! You fucking Nazi terrorist!”

Time.

Robert thought, returned to the cab of the truck, and took the reproduction Marine Corp Ka-Bar from the tool box.

“What the fuck you doing, old man?” the kid asked, voice breaking.

“This,” Robert said as he plunged the blade into the kid’s stomach, puncturing his thoracic vein. The kid let out a squeaky yelp. Dark, venous blood spilled out of the wound as Robert withdrew the long, black blade of the knife and rammed it home again and again.

The riotous horde closed in on him.

Robert grabbed the now limp form’s hair and scalped him.

The crowd broke pace and hesitated.

“In for a dime, in for a dollar. Come on, you pussies!” Robert challenged them and chucked the bloody, blond scalp at a light-skinned black chick with motorboat-me-daddy tits.

They charged. Robert slashed in an “X” pattern, targeting reaching hands, eager faces. Here, a black face was unzipped, a white girl’s perky breast cleaved open. He stabbed a baller in the balls, opened up an antifa’s guts.

They were stomping the shit out of Robert when the police intervened.

For Robert, it was surreal being read his rights in the back of an ambulance.

Maybe the orderliness of prison is what I need. That would be nice. Enjoy some pruno, see some old friends again.