Because I am dreadful at writing fiction

Clyde had had it up to here with those damned cyclists, zipping around, beholden to no one, and always thinking that they were better people because they weren't sending the planet to hell in a handbasket; those forgetful old ladies on cycles with those huge wicker baskets, young people talking on their mobile phones and riding without hands, punks with awful hairstyles and their shiny BMX dirt bikes. There were those who rode on the pavement, those who rode the wrong way of the street, and those who rode on the pavement in the wrong way of the street. Too often had he been forced to brake and avoid some fresh-faced cyclist darting in from a side lane, who then, as he rode off into the smog of exhausts, flipped him off in a triumphant and menacing manner.

The table rattled as Clyde slammed his mug on the surface. This would not do, and Clyde decided that he would have to have his revenge. Drumming his fingers absently on the old heat marks, he thought up a plot: he had to knock off a cyclist – that ought to show them. He pictured the H-- linkway, where impatient cyclists frequently came charging in from the opposite direction on the way to their stupid little appointments. That would be perfect – noone would see him, and, after all, those cyclists had been asking for it all along. It would have to be the first unfortunate soul who, to his discredit, had decided to shave a few minutes off his final journey that day; tomorrow.

Clyde sunk noisily under the duvet as he grunted in self-approval of such a clever scheme, envisioning delightful crunching noises.

Sandra jerked awake, mildly aware that something was amiss. Clutching the digital clock at her bedside, which had failed to go off, she realised that she was running late, something that she could not afford to do, not since her husband had died, shot by those robbers he was trying to stop, and she had to hold down that cleaning job at the hospital, scrubbing furiously with bleach, trying to remove the urine stains on the baby blue carpet.

Throwing the sheets aside, she dashed to rouse her young daughter Emily, cozy under the covers. She had to bring her to the crèche, which took up a worryingly large proportion of her already meagre income, but there was no one else after her sister Marianne had succumbed suddenly to that rare and excruciatingly painful nose cancer.

Emily in arm, Sandra trooped to her slightly rusty commuter bike, one that had a problem with the gears and the pokey seat, but it worked well enough and she didn't have enough money for another one, unless the extraordinarily large conglomerate that hired her decided to reduce their profit margins a little. She strapped Emily into the bent child seat at the rear and hopped on, pedalling the pink contraption furiously. At this rate she would never make it on time, but if she was late she knew she would be fired, having already been forced to be tardy many times when Emily had that worryingly high fever or her suffering father died in his sleep and she could only go long enough to see the dirt land on his coffin.

She could take that shortcut down H-- linkway, instead of turning left at R—street and going around that one-way system that would suddenly spit you out into bursting traffic. That would save about 15 minutes and she would be only slightly late, which she could excuse herself for because of women's problems or the like. The problem with cycling was that you always knew, to the minute, exactly how long a journey would take. She forged on.

Clyde tapped his steering wheel, prowling just outside H—linkway, waiting. He had the day off work, and he could sit here all day puffing endlessly on cigarettes, eyes gleaming with anticipation. He turned on the ignition suddenly, and sped off down the road, setting his mind straight about those damn cyclists.

In the end, Sandra didn't take the shortcut, and ended up at work quite late indeed, but was set to work scrubbing stains without a whimper.

Instead, Clyde ran down a bicycle courier named Darren who had been a waste of space anyway.