Terror...
Over the course of my life I have seen any number of looks of terror.
The incidences usually begin the same way, as they did this morning. People just standing around some place - including bystanders such as myself - an unmarked vehicle with no license plates pulls up and men jump out.
They are usually armed...no, I take that back...they are always armed. Menacing, threatening men. They always act with an air of importance, impertinence and swagger. Sometimes they have uniforms, sometimes they don't, depending on the state sanction of their activities. They wave the guns and point them at nearly everyone in the vicinity. They begin beating someone - also usually either a bystander or someone unimportant until they get the information they want. Others who try to intervene also get beaten or a gun pointed at them. There is always yelling.
Eventually, the people they want are dragged out to the car. Sometimes they are fighting; sometimes they go quietly. But they all, and always, have the same look of terror.
Abject and total pleading fear and desperate hope that someone will stop it all and they won't have to get in the car, or the bus, or the van. But no one does anything. The men waving the guns make sure of that. Then, the armed men jump in, the doors close and the vehicle speeds away.
It always speeds away.
The incidences usually begin the same way, as they did this morning. People just standing around some place - including bystanders such as myself - an unmarked vehicle with no license plates pulls up and men jump out.
They are usually armed...no, I take that back...they are always armed. Menacing, threatening men. They always act with an air of importance, impertinence and swagger. Sometimes they have uniforms, sometimes they don't, depending on the state sanction of their activities. They wave the guns and point them at nearly everyone in the vicinity. They begin beating someone - also usually either a bystander or someone unimportant until they get the information they want. Others who try to intervene also get beaten or a gun pointed at them. There is always yelling.
Eventually, the people they want are dragged out to the car. Sometimes they are fighting; sometimes they go quietly. But they all, and always, have the same look of terror.
Abject and total pleading fear and desperate hope that someone will stop it all and they won't have to get in the car, or the bus, or the van. But no one does anything. The men waving the guns make sure of that. Then, the armed men jump in, the doors close and the vehicle speeds away.
It always speeds away.
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Julie