A Fanfic inspired by The Founder.
The shot and the end.
By Anderson Roberto Fagundes
Two brothers who complemented each other, one for his inventive capacity and the other for his hard and intense work routine, the daily frictions at the end of the day were always overcome, this is how Mic and Mac's story can be summarized, they had a hamburger business in the United States called Mcdonalds, in the 1940s. They were satisfied with their burger joint, an establishment that was better than the others, with many customers and an atypical and fully functional kitchen, something different for the molds of the time.
In a usual day of work, both have a meeting with a salesman named Ray, who sells kitchen utensils, this salesman was an argumentative man, skilled with words, with an easy smile and amazed with every detail presented by the brothers, Ray's eyes shone like stars when he saw that modern kitchen, as if all that were something futuristic, something beyond his time, as if it were the work of a person like Leonardo D Vinci, or a complete visionary, something worthy of the great geniuses of humanity.
The natural mistrust of the brothers makes them both look at this man with suspicion and cautious eyes, and keep this contact strictly professional. But Ray was a man who asked about every detail of that business, a curiosity that bothered him, his insistence on knowing everything so quickly from people he had just met was puzzling. He didn't seem to be satisfied with a simple business, and proposes to expand this local business to something national, something that would go beyond the most daring dreams of the silent brothers.
Although the distrust was great, the deal was closed, the risk was worth it, because it looked extremely promising, a handshake seals the deal, much more power to the brothers than to Ray, that was the deal. The salesman was an ambitious man, he wanted everything his way, he treated everything as if it was only his and he acted as the handshake had never happened.
When it came to dividing the profits of the stores, the brothers had one value in mind and the salesman had a very different value, this deeply shook the brothers' trust in Ray. The problem of dividing the money happens again on another occasion and Ray, tells the astonished brothers, that "those stores were his, arguing that the brothers were just sitting around waiting for the money to come in, while he worked day and night.
Unable to prove anything signed, the brothers become desperate, they face something they couldn't imagine, they could lose everything they had earned. Mac starts to go crazy while Mic keeps a mystery under lock and key inside him, without being able to prove anything, the division of profits stops being made and the salesman pockets all the profit and gets rich at a vertical speed, while the brothers live modestly.
Mac ends up in the psychiatric hospital, unable to bear the idea of having been explicitly cheated, and Mic lives in silence, until one day that Mic visits one of the stores and pretends to be a regular customer, sitting at one of the tables eating a hamburger and noticing every
detail of the store. An unexpected encounter takes place between Mic and Ray, Mic is greeted with that typical wide smile of Ray's showing the confidence of a winner, and Mic remains silent, which was his new normal state.
Ray starts to say in a tone arrogance, that even a Buddhist monk would probably lose his temper, every word Ray uttered was for the purpose of extolling his achievements and his personal glory, he says : "you saw what I achieved, this is all fruit of all my work day and night, in life we must always be bold and fight and I got there" turning his back to Mic, who leaves his silence aside and says "you no longer have the right to this smile and I will no longer have the right to freedom and this ends now"
After months of mysterious and anguishing silence Mic, takes the most drastic action of his entire life, something that would change his life and Ray's life and Mcdonalds life. Mic shoots Ray in the head killing him, women screaming, children crying with fear, people everywhere running, fearing for their lives, police arriving, this was the scenario from that shot in Ray's head made by Mic, a cinematographic scene of murder, Mic surrenders without much resistance to the police, it seems he had the feeling of duty done, that calm man, surrendered to an extreme act, that changed the destiny of three people, and put an end to a prosperous business called Mcdonalds that was never heard of again.