With Dreams Like This, Who Needs Sleep?
News story begins:
A man loads a casket containing the remains of a murdered police officer into a hearse. The media coverage of this murder and subsequent case ensures that the hearse is heavily surrounded by reporters and grievers roadside. The solemn event is interrupted by a middle-aged, grey bearded, gun toting biker in typical biker club uniform. Drunken obscenities and comments along the lines of ‘this is what you get’ are shouted into the air while he points a gun at the casket. He is largely ignored as, even with guns, he poses no threat under so many watchful eyes.
The murdered officer’s brother can be seen in the background shaking hands with other members of the biker club. The clean-cut club members are openly offering their condolences. He comments to camera that the motorbike club itself is not bad and that the club is only spoilt by a few bad eggs. Most, he says, are regular working men with kids and highly respectable jobs.
Another biker (captioned: most criminally active member) pulls in nearby and sits shirtless on his running motorbike. To camera, he gives his two cents on the situation.
Some pre-recorded interviews follow. A girl jokingly comments how she called the shirtless biker to order a hit on one of her old boyfriends for something he did. Other public vox pop interviews follow confirming that he is a well know identity in the community: the ‘guy’ you order for a hit.
It becomes obvious that this biker was most likely responsible for the death of the police officer. He continues to give his views to camera and then speeds off down the road. Mid-way to vanishing point in the urban horizon, he begins to perform a mono. He puts the bike back at almost tipping point and gives the engine a few loud revs. A few more revs, and the camera zooms in to fill the frame with his ‘show’. The third wave of revs are accompanied with (I am not 100% sure how motorbikes work, but) a loosening grip on the clutch. The sudden acceleration violently rips the bike out from underneath him.
The bike is immediately strewn into a modern art masterpiece. The biker soon follows; his first impact with the road on his bare back. A wave of blood is thrown into the air. He continues to roll and the road continues to unmercifully shred his bare upper body. Almost void of an epidermal layer on his upper body and covered blood, a flick in the momentum sends him airborne and he is thrown up into a tree. Now seated, straddling a thick part of the tree structure and resting back to the trunk, he screams in agony.
The clean-cut bikers stand motionless on the road side, hesitating to react as they ponder all the pain and misery he has brought to so many other people and the sheer bizarreness of the situation unfolding before them. They all simultaneously realise that they must try to help and that they are all so humanly obliged. They run to his aid unaware of how they are going to help. Some jump over wooden planks and building materials at a street-side construction zone on their way to him. Two of the men, jumping over a pile, trigger a collapse of some of the scaffolding and are buried and trapped under numerous large planks of wood.
I am in no way religious, but, this scene was playing out as if God was serving up justice and was preventing anyone from helping the shirtless biker circumvent His will. It looked like a modern day crucifixion.
At this point I turn away and stop watching.