You can also read this flash fiction story on my Substack.
Sunday’s church bells are ringing. I’m waking up from a dream and inside the dream I’d drunk a gin and tonic with Humphrey Bogart in a New York bar.
Then I hear a car alarm.
The thief wrenches open Ms Hayworth’s car parked outside her house next door and crawls behind the wheel.
I look out my bedroom window. I’m in my boxer shorts.
I jump across my room, over my Hammett and Chandler and Spillane novels and my five Sin City volumes, and run down the hall.
Mum’s already downstairs making breakfast. I run to her room and grab her umbrella stand, and I break the lock off her special cupboard.
I swipe her car keys and her 44 Magnum from the closet and run away from the police badge hanging from a hook at the back of the cupboard.
Mum shouts something at me when I run past the kitchen out the front door. I don’t listen.
The thief’s pulling away and Ms Hayworth (that’s just what I call her) is out on her front porch screaming loud enough to summon dolphins. I jump inside Mum’s car, shove her gun in the cupholder, and take off after the thief.
I’m still only wearing my boxer shorts.
The Sunday traffic is light but not light enough. I bolt zig zags between a freight truck and two family-sized Fords to keep up with the thief. It spins my stomach clockwise and anti-clockwise inside my trunk thrice both ways. But he doesn’t lose me.
He turns hard into an exit lane. I turn hard after him. I see a yellow bug pass behind me in the rear-view mirror. The bug’s nose just misses my rear end.
We’re on the highway now.
The traffic’s gone.
I whip the Magnum out of the cupholder. I keep my free hand on the wheel and I lean over towards the window and I reach out the window and I stretch my arm forwards.
I aim for his shoulder through the rear window.
I keep the wheel steady with my free hand.
It’s just like in the books and films.
I’m like Bogart now.
And I’m smiling.
I shoot.
I shot him through the shoulder and he jumped off the accelerator. Ms Hayworth’s car lurched sidewise and stopped. I pulled up, got out, and walked up alongside the car to check he wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t.
When I was walking up I saw myself in the rear view mirror. I was still holding Mum’s gun and I was still in my boxer shorts. The glass was cracked but I was framed in the glass’s centre. It was like seeing myself inside a cracked movie screen and I was the hero.
William Barker-Writer and Philosopher 
Gripping and action-packed!
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Thanks Matthew. Sorry it took me so long to reply to your comment.
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