He had no idea that this day would be his last: priorities can be a funny thing.
In the office he kept thinking about the TV show the night before and how it ended. What a cliff-hanger! He’d been told there was a bit of a birthday bash for one of the girls after work. He’d hang around for that. Someone usually gets a box of hot party pies for these occasions. He was very fond of these. He could never get enough of them, but he should only be seen to eat one, two at the most. When the time came he stayed chatting for a few minutes, just long enough to eat a couple; they are only small. Then, as luck would have it, someone knocked a full in-basket off the corner of a desk and papers were scattered around the floor and were getting under peoples’ feet. The commotion was enough for him to grab three pies and wrap them in a serviette with nobody the wiser.
He was in his car about to drive home with his wrapped pies on the passenger seat. They smelt wonderful. Before moving off, he sat for a few moments tempted to eat them now and find something else for tea. No, he thought, I’ll save them and have them with baked beans while I watch the next episode. Yes, that would be something to look forward to. He took off. The roads were wet, it was still raining and visibility was poor.
He was driving carefully because of the weather. He glanced down momentarily at the bulging napkin and smiled. When he looked up he was confronted by an extremely large truck that appeared to be heading straight at him. It came out of nowhere. It was squirming around on the wrong side of the road.
He glanced down and up again.
What he saw coming and what was about to happen was something completely unavoidable.
However, not many people would understand that in that fleeting moment he came to terms with the fact that not eating them when he had the chance was nothing short of regrettable…