Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

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Besides, what kind of idiot gets caught up with a couple of thugs like that? Probably just a family dispute among criminals anyway.

And if the cops did ... well, these guys might be off the street for a night but they'd be on the lookout the next.

And what about Ms. Door-in-Your-Face? Why didn't she call? She could at least run.

And why don't the police at least patrol this area once in a while?

I don't ask a lot, and I don't expect charity, pity or any of those other self-indulgent sentiments from others, so why shouldn't I expect not to be expected to show them to anybody else?

For Sally, yes I would. Definitely!

For a stranger, why? It was a stranger who put me in this damn chair. What do I care — why should I care — about a stranger if it means risking my own—

It was Sally's ringtone. As soon as I answered, she noticed a difference in my voice and immediately asked what was the matter.

By this point, I was fully committed to the belief, reached more or less through systematic reductio ad nihil, so I answered, "Oh, nothing. It was really nothing."

"What? What was really— "

"Nothing. I'm just real tired, that's all. Think I could cash in that rain cheque?"

First published in The Release, July 1, 2014.