{"id":481,"date":"2018-04-10T18:13:54","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T17:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/?p=481"},"modified":"2024-10-17T17:08:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T16:08:22","slug":"flash-fiction-mr-mercedes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/2018\/04\/10\/flash-fiction-mr-mercedes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Mr. Mercedes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

You don\u2019t look a gift horse in the mouth. That\u2019s what my mom used to say. No idea where the hell it comes from, but I know what the hell it means, believe that. So when Flash Harry glides up alongside me in his two hundred thousand dollar ride, the right-hand side of his S-Class overstepping rudely into the bicycle lane, the gleaming black bodywork so close all I have to do is move my knee a bit to the left for it to touch me, I know what I gotta do: tumble to the ground screaming and crying like a soccer player in front of the opposing team\u2019s goal. I tangle my legs up in the frame of the bike as I roll, for optics you understand, as I hear his brakes apply. The car stops on a dime, right the way you\u2019d expect, and Mr. Mercedes climbs out, jogging up to me in his nice blue suit.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou okay?\u201d he says.
I don\u2019t answer him for the moment, just wince and moan and stay down like I\u2019ve been shot. Rubbernecking pedestrians stop to gawk on the sidewalk, and the traffic turns to gridlock, right on cue, as drivers, bored out of their tiny little minds and the prospect of another day in their cubicles of hell, see something that just might give them something interesting to talk about around the coffee machine later this pissing-it-down Tuesday morning.
\u201cWhere you hurt?\u201d Harry asks.
I turn up the volume on the wincing and moaning and clutch my knee.
\u201cI\u2019mma call an ambulance,\u201d a voice says from the sidewalk.
That\u2019s my cue. \u201cNo, it\u2019s- it\u2019s okay,\u201d I say, undoing myself from my bicycle, the front wheel of which has helpfully buckled itself into a convincing-looking Pringle shape.
I throw a glance at ambulance caller guy and he holsters his phone. Good boy.
\u201cYour knee,\u201d says Harry.
\u201cYeah.\u201d
\u201cStrange place to land off a bike,\u201d he says. \u201cThe hip. The head. The wrist or the collarbone, now that\u2019s what I\u2019d expect to see from a fall off a bicycle. But the knee. Believe it or not, that\u2019s rare.\u201d
\u201cWhat are you, a doctor?\u201d I say. Shit. If the dude is, he might see right through me. Especially if he insists on examining me right here and now.
\u201cNo,\u201d he says.
Thank fuck for that. Cancel those evasive maneuvers and get back to the scheduled programming of the extortion at hand.
Traffic resumes and rubberneckers disperse, due to a mixture of disappointment at not having borne witness to a gruesome fatality and having to be somewhere soon, I imagine. I crawl over to the curb and sit myself against a parking meter.
Harry crouches down next to me. \u201cI\u2019m not a doctor, no, but I do know a lot about pain.\u201d
\u201cYou a pharmacist?\u201d I say.
\u201cSometimes,\u201d he says, \u201cwhenever the job calls for it.\u201d Whatever the fuck that means.
\u201cLook at my bike, man.\u201d
He just looks at me, not once at the bike. \u201cWhy?\u201d
\u201cCos it\u2019s fucked, that\u2019s why,\u201d I say.
\u201cAnd I should care because-\u201c
\u201cBecause you hit me.\u201d
\u201cI didn\u2019t hit you. If I hit you, I would have done it only because I meant to. And if that had have been the case, we would not be having this discussion. Do you follow?\u201d This guy is nuts. \u201cMaybe I was intruding into your lane. For that I give you my apologies. But that\u2019s all you\u2019ll be getting from me.\u201d
The prick. Thinks he\u2019s going to put the shits up me and one over me. \u201cYou know what?\u201d I say, \u201cI think maybe I do need to go to the hospital and get examined.\u201d
He nods. \u201cOkay then. Why don\u2019t I take you?\u201d
Now we\u2019re getting somewhere. I struggle, painfully of course, to my feet, as he points his key fob at his car and the trunk lid glides up. \u201cLet me grab this,\u201d he says, picking up the bike.
I join him at the open trunk. He makes no attempt to put the bike in, just nods his head at the large shrink-wrapped parcel on the floor of the compartment. \u201cOh, forgot this was in here,\u201d he says.
\u201cWhat is it?\u201d
\u201cTake a guess.\u201d
I\u2019m pretty sure I know what it is, or what he wants me to say I think it is. But I can\u2019t.
He smiles, or what passes for a smile in his world, and lowers his voice. \u201cI admire your enterprising attitude,\u201d he says, \u201dbut you are barking up the wrong tree here, my friend. You saw the car, you thought payday. But I\u2019m afraid this vehicle, a bit pretentious for my liking, is not mine. In fact it\u2019s not anybody\u2019s. It used to be this<\/em> body\u2019s, but right now its only purpose is to go to a wrecker\u2019s yard where it, as well as its rotting cargo, will be disposed of.\u201d
I take a couple of steps back.
\u201cThat knee is looking much better all of a sudden,\u201d he says.
I become genuinely uneasy on my feet. He grabs my wrist in a way that both steadies me and lets me know I\u2019m not going anywhere unless he decides otherwise.
\u201cI don\u2019t typically kill people for free,\u201d he says, \u201dbut in your case I am prepared to make an exception. Unless it suddenly comes to your realization that you do not require a visit to the emergency room and the only reason you ended up on the ground is because you wanted to lie down for a rest.\u201d
It\u2019s quite the pitch.
And it doesn\u2019t take me long to decide.
Because as my mom used to say, you don\u2019t look a gift horse in the mouth.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You don\u2019t look a gift horse in the mouth. That\u2019s what my mom used to say. No idea where the hell it comes from, but I know what the hell it means, believe that. So when Flash Harry glides up alongside me in his two hundred thousand dollar ride, the right-hand side of his S-Class […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flash-fiction","category-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1408,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/1408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grahamwho.com\/grahamwrites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}