$700 by Yale Miller

He had me by the balls.

*******“And if I don’t do the repairs?” I pace around the room, holding the phone out like a platter. “What then?”

Then my front axis might lock up on the highway. My last memory: five interlocking stick figures peeling off a shattered window as my eyes melt into oil-fueled flames.

Or—everything might be completely fine.

RISK ASSESSMENT (CON * PROB) / COST

• Consequence: Death(s)
• Probability of that consequence coming to fruition: Unclear
• Cost to avoid: $700

“If you’d like to wait on the repairs, sir—”

“No, no. Just give me a moment.”

$700. I still think of that as two and a half Xboxes. A reddit comment from five years ago says that it’s on the high end of reasonable prices. It has three downvotes.

“What should I do?” I’m muted but still whisper.

My girlfriend shrugs. “I don’t think there’s a wrong choice either way,” she says.

Centrist bullshit. You people are ruining this country.

I’m thirteen watching Super-Size Me in class. I have already eaten my last McNugget. The host, his complexation a good argument for renaming Caucasians from white to pink, is vomiting on the asphalt. His sin: eating McDonald’s twice in one day and not, as he would admit under oath a decade later, debilitating alcoholism.

I’m twenty and on reddit again. The comments are telling me if I take medicine to stop male pattern baldness, I’ll be impotent in five years. What the smart guys do is just shave it bald now, get a headstart on the journey of acceptance.

*******I’m twenty-four and the man on the phone wants $700. Or I die.

It’s been thirty-seconds now and I can tell by the patterns in the silence he’s getting pissed. And that he thinks I’m an idiot. I’m not an idiot. I won’t let him sell me headlight fluid, but my Dad decided a long time ago that car trouble was a problem he’d just let money solve. His text back says as much.

Just do it.

He does not understand the enemy. Ivy League sorcerers and McKinsey & Co. warlocks, harnessing forces unfathomable and invisible to ensure in every way but legally I am required to own a car. A white elephant paid for with my life’s savings. I will have no job, no girlfriend, no fun in these fleeting days of youth if I do not pay $700 (plus tax) right now to Joseph Honda of the Greater Cincinnati Area.

Like I said, he had me by the balls.

Yale Miller is a writer and visual designer based in Cincinnati. His work spans flash and long-form fiction, often examining corporate America, Big Tech, and the beauty of the Midwest as core subjects.

Photo Credit: Arya Garg, 2026

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