This morning, ignoring the slackers on the panhandle of this revolting cesspool of a city, stepping over the druggie bums while hurrying to digital servitude in order to pay off my future self for my present home entertainment system, I took a sip of my Starbuck’s and felt some small, unexpected mass strike my tongue – a bug. Instinctively I reeled, dropping the cup and spitting the suddenly-vile substance into the gutter, but it was too late: My overactive gag reflex had already fired a warning signal to my brain, and my imagination had already manufactured for my edification an image of the bug’s last moments on earth, scalding to death in my double expresso and voiding the contents of its bladder and tiny insectoid bowels.
It took exactly 0.005 seconds for the results of that calculation to make it back into my conscious processing stream, whereupon my already-engaged somatic systems took the disgusting idea and ran with it, arriving instantaneously at the inescapable conclusion that the noxious molecules needed to be expunged from the system post-haste. In layman’s terms, suddenly unmindful of my pressed trouserlegs and Gucci shoes (almost paid off), I began vomiting into the street.
Several yards away, a skater and his beggar friend began to laugh, pointing in my direction and ridiculing my sudden loss of control. Behind them, several other scrappy youths turned to see what was so funny. Before I could do anything about it, I was the subject of the entire block’s attention. A nearby hotdog vendor snorted. A turbaned foreigner came out of his shop doorway and stared at me, incredulous. A busload of tourists snapped photographs. The cop on the corner shook his head and looked the other way, disgusted. My shoes were ruined. Sputum ran from my lips, splattering with a loud PLOIP! on the pavement. I hocked and spit, blinking hard and trying in vain to recapture some semblance of normal consciousness. Gasping for air, I slowly straightened up to see the client I had been hurrying to impress; staring right at me, mouth open, face drained of all color. Our eyes locked.
I have never felt so human in all my life.
And that, Your Honor, was the moment I realized that they all had to die.