The Mugging

Anthony Maiorana
Fiction Hub
Published in
5 min readSep 24, 2016

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This was a story I wrote and submitted to The First Line, where the first line of the story is the prompt. I got rejected so I’m putting it here. Everything after the first line is me.

Mrs. Morrison was too busy to die.

Every fifteen minutes of her life was accounted for according to her calendar that was managed by her assistant Terry. From 5:30–6:00 AM she had time to hit the snooze button, drink coffee, and peruse the headlines of the day. From 6:00 to 7:00 she had a training session with her personal trainer in apartment’s gym. Consistent attendance had put her in the best shape of her life. She ate breakfast, showered and dressed, and arrived at the office by 8:00 AM and worked for clients until her business dinner with the partners for the firm that started at 8:00 PM. They had a permanently reserved table at the steakhouse across the street from the office. From 9:30 PM to Midnight she was free to read, screen movies, pursue a hobby, or go on a date.

Mrs. Morrison was also in the process of become Ms. Morrison. Her husband had cited irrevocable differences, but she knew it was because she worked too much. She was too busy to be the classic housewife and make breakfast and dinner for him and their kids. She was too busy to make it to the kid’s soccer games and piano recitals. Cathy Morrison was too busy to be a Mom because she was the one who paid for everything. She was prepared to pay for child support and alimony and it was probably cheaper in the long run because she could work more. Cathy Morrison was too busy to die. The knife pricking her in the back begged to differ.

“Give me your purse, briefcase, watch, and your shoes,” A gruff voice grumbled in her ear.

Cathy’s purse, watch, and shoes were all replaceable. She even had insurance for an instance like this. The briefcase contained her laptop, which still had information she had yet to upload to the cloud. Her laptop contained the only copy of what she thought was the defining argument of her career to date and it was the key to her upcoming client meeting.

She stepped out of her Jimmy Choo shoes, unbuckled the Rolex she got when she was made a partner at the firm, and dropped her Hermès purse to the ground. She held on to the brief case trying to think of what she could say to keep it. The pressure from the knife went from uncomfortable to painful. Cathy yelped as she felt the knife’s tip puncture her skin and she felt blood rolling down her back.

“I said drop the briefcase. Are you deaf?” He asked.

Cathy’s heart felt it was going to burst out of her chest. She hadn’t felt this panicked since her first client pitch. Whatever composure she had managed to hold to was leaving as fast as she had divested what the mugger asked. She had stared down billionaires and not backed down until she got her way and yet — a guy with a knife asking for her briefcase could reduce her to losing control.

“I need something in here for work. I’m willing to pay you to let me keep it,” She told him with the voice she reserved for boardrooms.

“How much?”

“How about the maximum amount I can withdraw from my bank at once, which is five hundred dollars. Would that satisfy you? There is an ATM right there,” She told him while pointing at an ATM across the street.

“Let’s go. You try anything brave and this knife is going into your liver.”

The man pushed her forward enough to grab what she had put on the street and then told her to keep walking. The knife was a constant pressure against her back. She had trouble believing that all her would be mugger wanted was her immediate possessions. If she was going to do such an illegal extortion it would have to be for a much bigger payoff than some shoes, a purse and its contents, and a watch. At best including the ATM fee her mugger was going to maybe get ten thousand dollars.

Cathy thought ten thousand was a nice signing fee, but a better payoff would be residuals of ten times that a week. She was currently making just under a million a year at the firm. Her work paid the firm at least ten times what she was making annually. If this client went through the way she thought it would easily be twenty times her annual or better. Cathy realized that she was actually getting mugged on a daily basis by her own beloved firm. The firm she had dedicated her life to was ripping her off.

“Here, pull out your ATM card and let’s get this withdraw going.” The man told her while shoving her wallet into her hands.

Cathy took out one of her debit cards and inserted it into the machine and pushed her finger against the fingerprint scanner. She had helped bring the company who manufactured the revolutionary ATM to being a public entity early in her career. It was supposed to minimize people choosing bad PINs and illegal access to accounts. The ATM account making it public was the reason she became a partner at the firm.

She punched in 500 to the withdrawal amount and contemplated asking her would be mugger what his ROI was on this mugging. His risk was high. He had to be reporting to someone who was making at least ten times what he was making off this mugging. Market value of what she had given him was easily somewhere in the six figure range. Her watch alone was valued at forty thousand.

“What if I gave you a thousand to set-up a meeting with your boss in a week?” She asked him.

“Lady, you fucking crazy. Big Mike don’t take meetings with people like you.” He told her.

“Well tell him I’ll double his income in the first six months if he takes my meeting and that I’ll reduce his risk. All you need to do is tell him and if he doesn’t want to meet that’s fine, but if he does you get a thousand dollars. All you get from this scenario is a thousand dollar upside.” She told him in the voice she reserved for pitches.

The cash was pushed out of the ATM and she handed it and her wallet backwards to her mugger. The pressure from the knife disappeared and she turned to see him running down the street to a car which pulled away before he could even close the car door. She started to feel the cold and rough texture of the sidewalk creep past her socks on the quiet street. She had six more bank accounts that the guy could have gotten her to take money out of, but he was already gone. She would cancel all her credit cards and report her debit cards stolen when she took the elevator up to her apartment. There was a convenience to living across the street from her job besides having no commute. Perhaps it was time to start afresh with a whole new list of clientele she thought to herself with a smile on her face.

Mrs. Morrison was too busy to die.

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Anthony Maiorana
Fiction Hub

Writer of The Polymerist newsletter. Talk to me about chemistry, polymers, plastics, sustainability, climate change, and the future of how we live.