If. (a study in foresight)

If the shot had missed completely, there would have been no problem. David Kramer would have gone past the drugstore, and Bella Polson would have made it to the bar and to her first chance of sex in over a year. But then, that’s the way of things. They never go according to the great plan.
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Bella was annoyed. The shooting was already on the local radio station and would no doubt make the front pages by morning. The call from the hospital could disrupt all her plans, but the poor guy had been shot in the butt, and butts were Bella’s forte. As she reached for her cell phone to tell them she was on her way in, Bella laughed at the headline that went through her head – “Assbandit”.
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If the scotch had not smashed miserably on the bathroom floor then Margaret Lasco would not be on her way to the Seven Eleven to replenish the stock. Her husband would notice if there was no scotch in the cupboard and then he might notice that Margaret was consuming at least a bottle a day washed down with a couple of Buds to take the tang away.
She’d had years of driving drunk, and driving at ten miles an hour meant that she had a very good view of the man with the gun, who was now running out of the drugstore and making straight for her car. With a gun against her head, Margaret Lasco set off on the road out of town.
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If Vernon Spangler had stopped for that last donut before getting off duty he could have avoided the mess that he now found himself in. The cop patted his stomach and was just congratulating himself on resisting another burger when Margaret Lasco passed him at the speed of sound. He jumped in the car and set off to book his last speeder of the day.
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If Mervyn Farser had paid more attention to the cop car he was repairing and less on the magnificent cleavage of Miss July, then Officer Spangler might just have avoided the rear end of Margaret Lasco, who was now on her way to a twelve-step programme faster than you could say “I’ll have a chaser with that”.
Vernon Spangler’s brakes gave out just as Margaret was approaching her original destination.
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If Bella Polson had not chosen that moment to reach for her cell phone, then who could say what would have happened.
Vernon Spangler clipped Margaret Lasco’s bumper and sent it spinning into the path of Bella’s beat-up Chevy, which in turn sent Bella straight through the window of the Seven Eleven.
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As fuel, and Oreos (on special offer), rained down on Bella’s dying body, the radio informed her that David Kramer, who had been shot in the butt outside the drugstore, had died of his injuries. Funny really, that had been the name of her blind date…

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This story was an entry to the first Moon Topples competition.