Micro Fiction

Photo courtesy of Allison Swift Zercher
http://www.snippetsfromsuburbia.com

Today was a bad day.  I woke up in the morning to realize that I had overslept.  The neon alarm clock beside my bed showed 5:00 when I should have risen at four.  Hastily, I scrambled into some clothes and rushed downstairs.  I opened the pantry to see that I was out of cereal.  Not only that, there was no juice in the refrigerator.  I chuckled in a sense of irony realizing that by not having breakfast I was back on schedule for my commute to work.  I went outside to my car.  Overhead the crescent moon appeared bright as it would for a few more hours.  Turning the key I noticed that the engine would not fire.  I tried again to no avail.  The thermometer on the side of my house read four degrees.  I went back into the house to get the keys of my wife’s car.  I would use jumper cables attached to her car to bring my frozen car back to life.  I backed my wife’s car out of the garage and attached the jumper cables.  It was then that I realized that I had pulled into my driveway head in.  There was no way for me to attach the other ends to my car.  I had to push my car backwards to give me enough room to lift the hood.  After much effort I was able to get my car started.  Despite my fury at how late I was going to be for work, I still had the courtesy to re-park my wife’s car in the warm garage for her use.

Traffic was a bit lighter this time in the morning.  I was able to make up some time that I had lost getting my car started.  Suddenly I began to hear an odd noise.  The sound steadily became louder but I couldn’t figure out what it was.  A person driving next to me waved his hand to get my attention.  I looked at him and he pointed down at my front tire.  With a sickening realization I finally understood that one of my tires had burst and the noise was the ragged edge of the tire hitting against the car bodywork.  I raised a hand to thank the man and pulled over to the side of the road.

Thirty minutes later I found myself sitting next to a man in a smelly tow truck.  I took out my phone to tell my boss I would be late for work.  To my dismay I saw that the battery on my phone was dead.  I would have to call my boss from the service garage.  Imagining the tirade I would face when I finally met with my boss, I looked up at the sky and saw that the moon was still there looking like a big white smile against the dark blue sky.  Could this be a sign that the universe was playing some practical joke on me?  I shuddered at that rather unnerving thought.