Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

33

It Was Really Nothing

On the way home from the library, I passed an alley where it sounded like two guys were pounding a third guy.

They must have seen me looking, because they shouted in my direction. First reaction: run. But I couldn't. It's the wheelchair.

I wheeled across the street towards a figure who was making haste down the empty sidewalk. I called and then yelled to her, but she didn't answer, didn't even look my way. Probably the same b____

who deliberately closed the elevator door in my face when I was leaving the stacks.

On the other side of the street, I felt a little safer, since no one was in sight. However, when you're in a wheelchair, things in the distance are a lot closer than they look.

I started to phone Sally, my girlfriend. Girlfriend in the sense that she's a female friend. She's normal. She's been very patient with her paranoid, handicapped friend. On more than one occasion, she offered to give me a lift when I was working late on my research.

Except for a couple of times when it was raining like hell, I routinely declined, partly to manage my mental IOUs and partly to assert my pathetic independence.

Tonight was a matter of pride though, so I stuck the phone back in my jacket pocket and rolled on — my anti-Samaritan lady out of sight save for that bobbing head of hers.

It occurred to me that I should call the cops and report the incident. I hesitated. Those guys could recognize me. For God's sake, I was in a wheelchair on a well-lit sidewalk, and they were in the shadows.