May 2 - The Torture Warehouse

A few minutes after I got on the bus, we were stuck in traffic. There were police cars and emergency vehicles everywhere. A couple of helicopters hovered above downtown. What looked like several city blocks were closed off.
"Any idea what's going on?"
The driver looked back at the woman through the rear view. "Somebody called in a bomb threat at city hall."
"Are we gonna be able to get down to 3rd?"
"Don't know."
The bus hadn't moved more than a couple of inches in the last five minutes. A few people had gotten off other buses and started walking.
"Are the police going to reroute us?"
The driver didn't look at her this time. "Don't know."
The woman looked at her watch. "I really have to be at 3rd and Sumner, like, now." She was speaking half to herself, half to the driver. "OK, just forget it. I'll walk."
The driver exhaled loudly through his nose.
"Can I get off here?"
The driver shook his head and opened the door. She got off, and I took her seat.
"Bomb threat," he said to nobody in particular as he pulled the door closed. "What the hell is that? Threaten to blow up a building, kill a bunch of innocent people."
Traffic opened up a bit and he eased forward a few feet.
"Probably never catch the guy. And if they did, so what? Like that guy, McVeigh. Blows up that building and kills all those people, all those babies. And yeah, I know they executed him, but what'd they do? Electric chair? Lethal injection? Man, that ain't nothing. That's too humane. He probably didn't even feel a thing. We're all worried about 'cruel and unusual', but that guy didn't care thing one about cruel and unusual when he killed all those babies. That man should've suffered."
Traffic loosened up a bit more, and a police officer motioned for the bus to turn right. The driver acknowledged her with a wave and turned the corner.
"No, man. See, what I think we need for guys like that is a torture warehouse. Just line up all those guys from death row and send them on through."
He straightened out the wheel and started up the street. "Just this big warehouse. Filled with all sorts of stations. You'd have one room with rats, one with dogs, another one with alligators--"
"Snakes!" added an old man sitting in the front seat.
"Yeah, snakes. Put a shark tank in there. Get a fire room, a freezing room. Broken glass."
A few people at the front of the bus laughed a bit. I couldn't tell if the laughter was genuine or nervous, but either way he knew he had an audience.
"Some people might say that's cruel and unusual, but I don't care. I say anyone who kills another person, blows up a building, whatever--we should just send them through the torture warehouse. And I--I would be happy to be the, the proprietor of the torture warehouse."
For some reason when he said the word proprietor I pictured him wearing an apron in a yellowed, old-time photograph of him and his family standing proudly in front of the torture warehouse, est. 1912.
He turned another corner. "Just send all them criminals through the torture warehouse."
More people laughed, and he looked back through the rear view mirror. "And if any of ya'll want to oppose the torture warehouse, I say we send you through the torture warehouse, too."
And, as if because of the finality of that comment, we were finally clear of the downtown traffic. The driver stopped talking, and concentrated on his driving. The other passengers went back to their newspapers, and I got off at the next stop and continued on my way to work.