The Complainer
by Michael A. Kechula
“Hey,
waiter!” Harry yelled, “There’s a
fly in my coffee!”
“Not to
worry,” said the waiter. “It’s
Horace. He belongs to the owner. He’s
training for the Olympic swim team. Wow!
Look at him go. He’s in great form this
morning.”
“Are you
crazy? Get this cup outta here and give me a
fresh one.”
“Shhh. Horace
is very sensitive. If he hears you, he may think
you don’t like him.”
“Give me
a new cup of coffee, or I’ll never eat here
again!”
“Do you
hear that, Horace?” asked the waiter.
“Yeah,”
the fly said, looking up at Harry. “What’s
your problem, Mister?”
Harry chuckled.
“Oh, I get it. You’re a ventriloquist.
Pretty neat trick making it seem like the fly’s
talking.”
“I ain’t
a ventriloquist,” the waiter said. “Horace
is talking. He just asked what your problem is.
You better answer. He don’t like it when
somebody don’t answer him.”
“I ain’t
talking to no stupid damn fly.”
The fly leapt
from the cup and karate chopped Harry’s nose.
The impact knocked Harry off the chair. His
face was blood-soaked when he hit the floor.
“You hit
him pretty hard,” the waiter said. “He
ain’t getting up.”
The fly flew
to Harry and put its ear against Harry’s
shirt. “No heartbeat,” it said.
“Aw, hell.
Why’d you hafta hit him so hard?”
“He
deserved it for not answering my question. Let’s
dump him out back in a garbage can.”
The waiter
grabbed Harry under the shoulders, while the fly
grabbed Harry’s ankles. Carrying the
corpse outside, they dropped it into a trash can.
“Leave
the lid open,” the fly said, as whistled
into the wind.
Suddenly, the
sky was black with flies.
“Free,
fresh chow,” Horace called, pointing to
Harry’s corpse.
As thousands
of famished flies dined, the waiter and Horace
returned to the coffee shop.
Soon after,
another patron complained about a fly in his
coffee. He too didn’t talk nice to Horace.
“Hey, I
got an idea,” Horace said, while he and the
waiter carried the second body to a garbage can.
“Instead of letting flies dine on corpses
for free, we should charge them each a dollar.”
“Good
idea. But where are we gonna get extra corpses
for them to munch on after this one’s gone?”
“No
problem. If I keep swimming in customers’
coffee cups, I’ll bet they’ll complain
like these two guys did. When they do, I’ll
slam their noses right into their brains. We’ll
drop them into garbage cans, let the flies know
dinner is served, and collect a buck from every
one that wants to eat.”
Horace and the
waiter got rich.
Unfortunately,
they invested all their earnings in the Stock
Market. They lost everything during the
Great Crash of 2008.
Worse, a
customer didn’t see Horace swimming in his
coffee, and drank the whole cup in a single gulp.
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