Flurried

Greg M. Copley, aka GMC, stood over the fluffy-haired man who cowered in his only rickety chair in his own home and said, “This is it for you, Wardell. You have my payment tomorrow at noon or I come back here and take everything you’ve got of any value…which is nothing.” Wardell grinned through his watery eyes and rubbed his hands together. GMC loomed over him like an angry exhaust pipe and said, “But I bet you value your wrists.” Wardell cowered. “Oh no.” GMC pulled a toothpick from his pants and snapped it in two. “Your old bones’ll crumple into dust.” He grabbed Wardell by the fluffy hair and shook him. “And honestly, I hope you can’t pay me.”

GMC chuckled his way out the front door and left it standing wide open. Wardell shivered and hurried over and shut it. The wind forced it open again. Wardell slid back in his sock feet. He grabbed the doorframe and gave it his best. He slid back onto the floor. The door stood wide open. The black night contrasted with the fat snowflakes tumbling to the accumulating white mass on the front yard. GMC climbed into his GMC SUV and backed out, crunching snow much like he’d soon be crunching Wardell’s old apple-stem wrists. Wardell grabbed his cane and heaved the door shut and crumpled next to his chair. “Oh no. Now I’ve done it. Those damn Islanders. They were supposed to make me- not ruin me. I’ll soon be a grease stain in this dump.”

Wardell paced for a while, weighing his options. Two hours later, he found that he had none. This was the time that life gives you lemons and you will suck on them and you won’t like it. He wiped his eyes and took a look out of his window. The cars were moving slow now, like lost slugs. A white SUV came along. It was white and big and…a GMC? It was GMC. What was he doing now? Torturing Wardell further? Wardell stomped his foot. Then he reeled back and hopped about like a broken old man with a weak-boned foot. He leaned against the window. The cold glass drew him closer to the grave.

Wait a second…

Wardell opened the door and rubbernecked to the east. The white GMC SUV belonging to GMC swerved and turned and twisted and flipped into a ditch! Wardell shook but he also perspired. How could the all-powerful GMC make an idiot move like that? He overcorrected.

Haha. The fool!

Wardell slipped on his ragged boots and dug the trench coat out of the back corner of his closet, swatting a hungry mouse away. Then he wrapped it around himself and ventured into the night. He mashed his path through the thick blanket of snow and arrived two houses down from his own, beside the GMC SUV. GMC hung upside down by his seatbelt. His mouth hung open. His eyes held fear- the kind of fear where a fellow loses his juices. Wardell waved to him-nothing. He mustered up what his old bones would do and gave the SUV one shake. GMC remained with the same soaked-undies expression. He’d lost! Wardell had won!

Wardell returned to his modest dump and made himself a pot of coffee and watched the police show up two hours later. The ambulance made no hurry for the scoundrel’s departure. Wardell’s caffeine buzz got him to dancing across the floor and thumping about. His dance led him to the front porch where he sprang into the air with his eyes closed.

Freedom!

Sweet freedom!

The chains are off!

He landed in the snow.

Ca-Rack!

Wardell’s eyes filled. He grabbed his leg and howled. A million snow-devils stuck him in a million tiny spots on the leg. He shook and fought for breath. He tried to move, but he couldn’t. He leaned back up. The final police SUV sat idling at the GMC scene but that was it. The SUV gone and the goon GMC gone and everybody gone but the police SUV. Wardell raised his cold-bitten fingers and waved. He opened his mouth. Only a creepy whistle escaped him. The police SUV headed off in the other direction.

Wardell lay there in his white death trap, recalling GMC’s words. “This is it for you, Wardell.”