Rafter Fiction is short stories based on songs by Rafter. I am starting the series with the songs from his newest album, “Terrestrial Extras”.  Buy the album Here

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Sixteen stoplights from the house to work, sometimes having to sit through three rotations before it is my turn to go. Traffic is tedium. I do not want to do this anymore.

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Many times I watch people stuff their faces with donuts and pastries, breakfast sandwiches and burritos. I want to be a raccoon, reaching my paws in through the crack in their windows, snatching the food out of their hands and running off.

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Instead of getting stuck in a car, I want to be free like a squirrel. Sit in the park all day, running up and down trees, cracking open acorns to eat the meat out of them or just collecting them for the coming winter.

Start. Stop. The woman in the Saab next to me is putting on her makeup, barely paying any attention to anything else. She should be a cardinal, the dun colored female bird that is not the one that needs the attention. If she is the female, I want to be a bright red  male cardinal, flying up to random people so they can remember their loved ones for a moment.

Start Stop. I want to be a rhinoceros living on the savanna, chewing on grass, finding water and shaking the dust off of my thick hide. I can look out for predators and poachers. I can become a legend as a killer of humans, getting to them before they kill me for my horns. Actually that sounds tougher than this traffic.

Start. So many hours and days spent in this car, going to a job that I really do not care to do, watching people graze like antelope, I am tired. This is not what I signed up for. Not what I want my life to be at all.

Stop. I can be the sunshine, with heat so that when a person goes outside, tilts his face toward the sun, he feels nothing but my warmth. This way I can be a beneficial thing instead of a drone heading toward an office building to do work for people that do not even know my name.

Start. Stop. I want to be a whale. Whales are cool. Swimming around the world, catching seals, having a small group of family swimming with me, with a heart as big as a Volkswagen Golf. Then again, there will always be people trying to hunt and kill me. I am not interested in having a life of danger, looking over my shoulder for humans. My job is stupid but less stressful.

Start. Stop. I want to be a rabbit, hopping through all of the stopped cars, getting to my office building quicker because nobody is moving fast enough to run me over. Instead of going in, I will hop on over to the retention pond, find some tall grass and reeds to hide in, and sleep all day.

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Or an alien in a UFO. I can zoom off to outer space, go home to my planet, and tell them to not bother with Earth because I was there, I was there for far too long, and there is not anything worth coming back for. Sure Deep Dish Pizza will be missed and I will not know the ending of  Game of Thrones, but to be a extra terrestrial in a UFO, going to a home that might be so much better than this one, seems the most appealing to me.

Start. Stop. I just need to do something else. I drive closer to work. Everyone is done with their breakfast and  their makeup. I wonder if I am the only one who does not want to do be a human anymore, if I am the only one that sits in the parking lot with the car running, wanting to be a falcon, flying out of this city, away from all of the things that just confuse me and to another place where I could at least try something new. I’m sure I will not like eating rodents, but maybe they aren’t so bad once I get used to the taste.

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Is anything bearable forever? If I am a barnacle attached to an ocean liner, or if I am an ocean liner, or if I am the ocean, will any of it be better or will I just want to be something else? If I am turned into any of these things, I will most likely miss being a human.