Tag: mystery

Happy Pirate Day

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Jimmy’s turning seven. I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, and he said he wanted a clown at his party.
I couldn’t find a birthday clown, so I settled for a birthday pirate.
Snarling and growling, his peg leg was caught in a gopher hole in the lawn.
Then he ran the piñata through with his cutlass.
Just when you thought it couldn’t be any more of a disaster, the hook on his hand kept popping the balloon animals.
Oh, and he threatened to keel-haul the birthday boy.
The kids loved it. Now they all want birthday pirates.

The Last Time

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The last time I saw her, she was dancing in the middle of the street.
It wasn’t safe there, with all the traffic, but she was enthralled with some tune or poem in her head, and she just raised her arms in the air and turned like she was fending off really slow bees.
A scream pierces the air. But it’s not her, she hasn’t been hit yet.
They’re screaming for her to get out of the street. People on the sidewalks are doing that, too.
Nobody runs out to grab her. The traffic’s too thick. They just keep yelling.

The Flying Banjoman

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We found the battered boat adrift off the coast of Nantucket.
Ragged body parts all over the deck, eventually we accounted for all the passengers, minus the pieces the seagulls dragged off.
Right there, jammed in the wheel, was a blood-soaked banjo.
“The uneasy spirit still roams the fog,” muttered the old harbormaster.
He reaches for the banjo and throws it back in the water.
“That’s evidence!” I shouted.
The harbormaster gave me a stare that drilled right into my bones.
“That’s what the last detective tried to tell me,” he said, and he pointed to… a severed lawman’s head.

Moment

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“Let me know when you have a moment,” said the boss.
His idea of a moment is not my idea of a moment.
A moment to me is a flash of recognition in the street, or sipping coffee that’s just a little too hot.
His idea of a moment is forty minutes at the end of the day, delaying my commute home until traffic’s at its worst.
It could be worse. I hear that the secret police of many nations tap people on the shoulder and say “Do you have a moment?” all the time.
Those people tend to vanish.

Supercuts

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Many years ago, Mom would take me to the barber shop for a haircut and the barber would put the apron on me, but I’d turn it around like a cape and run around the barbershop, pretending I was Superman, yelling LOOK AT ME I CAN FLY over and over again.
The barber would try to catch me, but I was too fast for him, and I’d run outside and into traffic and people would slam on their brakes to avoid running me over, and they’d rear-end each other and…
Oh, man. Good times.
I wish I was twenty-eight again.

Crown Of Newspapers

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We put the crown of newspapers on the bum and call him our king.
He is no less confused now than before his coronation.
Commands flow from his ragged mouth like filth from a smokestack, catching the wind and joining the clouds.
The Regicide leaps up and smashes the king with a hammer.
The bloodsoaked crown falls into a puddle and goes limp.
Three days later, it is a grey waterlogged mass.
But that’s okay, we can make another. And find ourselves another king.
We will destroy him, too. Over and over.
Until kings, rulers of men, are no more.

Haircut

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The amazing haircut machine made barbers obsolete.
All you had to do was stick your head in a box, and the computer-scanners would figure out the perfect haircut for you.
Five seconds with a series of lasers, and you were done.
Okay, so there were a few glitches in the system’s development, but those prisoners were too dangerous to have their hair cut by any other means.
No matter how well you chain them up or incapacitate them, putting a prisoner in close proximity with someone wielding a sharp object is a very bad idea.
A little off the top?

Anonymous

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I prefer to think of myself as famously anonymous.
The bigger I get, the less people recognize me on the street.
I barely recognize myself in the mirror. When I go to brush my teeth or comb my hair, for just a moment, I wonder how a stranger got past my bodyguard.
I don’t even look like my ID anymore. Not even my shadow recognizes me. It still follows, but not quite as confidently as before.
Maybe my fingerprints have changed, too? My DNA?
If I’m going to commit this crime, I’d better do it before I change my mind.

When the music’s over

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When the music’s over, turn out the light.
That’s what Jim Morrison said, but what happens when the music’s still going, but you need to turn out the light and go to bed?
Do you really want to be alone and in the dark with the music?
I end up turning on a light in another room so the music goes in there. Then I turn out the light in here and close the door.
The music tries to creep in under the door.
And so does the light.
I put a towel under the door and go to sleep.

Please

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I looked at the note in the victim’s hand.
“Please…”
One word, three dots.
That’s all that was on the note.
Nothing else.
“Please… do what?” asked Sam.
“I have no idea,” I said. “The rest’s blank.”
“At least they’re polite,” said Sam. “Want a beer?”
“Yeah,” I said.
So we went to the bar.
The bartender asked me if I wanted the usual.
“Please,” I said, nodding.
Sam looked at me. And then…
“No, that’s not it,” he said.
We never did solve the mystery of who wrote the note or what it meant.
The victim’s just as dead.