JimSoft Insanitarium -> Insane Stories -> Traffic Cones
By CrazyJim

It wasn’t my problem, but as usual I decided that I should get myself involved. Always being one to help when somebody is about to be run over by a car, I quickly reached for my backpack where I conveniently stored a set of orange traffic cones.

Losing no time, I quickly laid the cones out, curving toward where the unsuspecting pedestrian resided. After a painstaking five second process, I stood back on the sidewalk and marvelled at my own magnificence as the car screeched to a halt at the traffic lights, placed at a nice distance of ten centimetres from my ingeniously designed detour.

I watched, dumbfounded, as my target crossed the strip of black tarmac, each step like a nail through my fourth vertebrate from the base of my spine. I took up the previous position of my missed prey and tried to work out what went wrong.

I looked up and remembered the traffic lights. I sighed and looked down at the sidewalk, reminiscing on my failed scheme. Suddenly, the traffic lights came back into the forefront of my mind, just in time for me to look up at the now green light and the full reality of the situation hit me.

I realised I never knew colliding with a situation could hurt that much. I spoke several words of nonsense as I awoke, to which the doctor standing to my right responded, “Yes… I… love you too…” and walked off, seemingly uncomfortable in my presence.

He came back several seconds later, saying, “Oh, yeah… we had to amputate your left leg and two fingers on your left hand.”

“Where are my cones?” I asked.

“Your what?”

“My cones… my traffic cones… are they Ok?”

“Oh… the traffic cones. The ones you used to re-route traffic in a failed suicide attempt?”

“No… the ones I used to re-route traffic in a failed attempted murder…”

The suspense was killing me, and soon it did. However, the doctor soon managed to awaken me by beating me with some metal paddles attached to wire.

“Damn,” I heard him grumble as I opened my eyes.

“What about my cones?” I asked, wearily.

“You ate your cones! We mentioned the word ‘traffic cone’ and you immediately jumped up and screamed for ice cream.”

“You let me eat my CONES!?” I screamed in protest.

"We really had no choice in the matter.”

“Well, you obviously had the choice NOT TO!”

“You threatened us with three balls of lint you found in your pocket! What were we to do?”

“Hmm… I see your point…”

The doctor seemed to have lost interest. He was talking and moving about enthusiastically, seeming to be enjoying his conversation, but not making any noise. I tried poking his eye to awaken him. He grabbed his eye with both hands and started to mime screaming.

I watched in humorous awe as he stumbled back toward a pile of newly stacked magazines, took a sudden left, bumped into a closed window, dropped several pointy objects from his pocket, and got his hand attached to a beeping machine of some form and started spasming wildly.

I laughed at his psychotic display of diplomatic tension toward the seemingly energetic piece of rubber tubing he grasped in his right hand and was now conversing with.

I was startled to hear a strange hissing coming from beneath me. I looked down and noticed a flow of clear liquid flowing from a curved piece of metal which was attached to a white basin-type object that reminded me of a similar object I once got my head glued to in the process of washing out the glue that I had mistaken for sunscreen the previous day.

I looked where my hand was resting and noticed that the activating device was attached to it by the three remaining fingers on my left hand.

I put down the piece of rubber tubing and walked out of the bathroom. Looking behind me as I left, I noticed a stick-figure image of a cross-dressing man.

Ten days later I was free to return to my road construction job. It was nearly my lunch break once more, so I wandered off to the nearest pedestrian crossing I could find. Out of my backpack, I pulled several more traffic cones and proceeded to lay them out in a similar pattern to my last attempt.

Taking a seat on a conveniently placed park bench, I watched as a lone pedestrian walked up to the crossing. He glanced over to me, “Hey, what’s this about?”

I stood up, glad somebody was taking an interest for once. “Well, it’s this new business I invented. I set up traffic cones to divert cars onto the footpath,” I pushed him out of the way, “so when people stand here, they—”

© 2003 JimSoft