Tag: mystery

Shopper

636192

Susan held the can of peas in her hands and thought for a moment… how did she know that there were peas in there?
She grabbed a can of corn from the shelf and looked at it. Was she certain it contained corn?
She took a razor blade and peeled off the labels from the cans, switched them, and smoothed them over the dribble of glue on the can’s seal.
What was in each can now? Was there corn in the corn can and peas in the pea can?
She put them back on the shelf to maintain the mystery.

Juel’s Fish

636180

The song’s over, now you’ve got your chance.
Ask her why she has a fish circling her head and she’ll point to the fishbowl on her counter top.
It’s a perfectly ordinary glass fishbowl, filled with water. There’s some teal blue gravel at the bottom and a nice little castle and sea diver in there, too.
“He’s claustrophobic,” she says, tickling the fish on its belly as it passes by her ear.
Sometimes, it’s orange. Other times, it’s blue. And then, when it’s really happy, it’s a rainbow of colors.
She picks up her guitar, smiles, and begins to play.

War Is Hell

636196

You know those letters than the Post Office digs up now and then from a World War 2 soldier writing his wife or girlfriend, but it doesn’t get delivered until fifty years later?
I found one of those under some carpet I was ripping up in the office.
Policy says to go get a supervisor to read it before delivery, so I did.
He steams it open, takes a gander, and smirks.
Blah blah blah… killed some Germans… blah blah blah… screwed a bunch of whores… blah blah blah… stole artwork…
He pulls out a lighter and burns the letter.

Bobby

636177

Bobby died three days ago. We kept him the the tub, trying to decide how to get him out of here.
Man, did he stink.
We opened all the windows, but the stink just got worse.
“Let’s leave him,” I said. “Let’s leave him.”
Joe said no. “He’s got the key inside him.”
Without the key, no money.
So, we cut him open, slipping our hands all inside him, pulling things out, squeezing and searching.
Still no key.
Did he really swallow it before we shot him in the leg? Or did he palm it…
Where did that key go?

The Dusty Siren

636187

Wearing white lace, just like when we first met.
I chased her into the desert in the heat of the moment.
She sits there, beckoning, just out of reach.
Look again. A ragged sheet, blown across a dead tree stump.
Did I imagine her? Or did she imagine me, begging for one final kiss?
I can’t reach her. Too weak to crawl. Too damn weak to crawl.
Reach for me. Reach out to me and pull me into your embrace, my love.
She sits there, watching.
One final scream, a groan into the wind, and my mouth fills with dust.

The Symbol

636182

I saw the eagle symbol on her wrist.
Eagle symbols are for good luck and strength, but usually the eagle’s got the beak pointing to the fingers.
Hers points to the elbow, so I know it’s a fake.
It’s got the right colors, and it’s very well done.
But it’s a fake. It’s covering up another symbol.
While she sleeps, I look closely at it… the outline of something is under that eagle.
Weasel? Owl? Snake?
It’s some kind of criminal brand, something she got from the Eagles before they threw her out of their camp.
What has she done?

Feng Shui

636181

The news called them diplomats. Let’s not bullshit: they were spies.
Countries like the idea of spies with diplomatic immunity. Rules were meant to be broken, right?
One by one, important men were turning up dead in their embassies.
No bullet-holes. No knives sticking out of them. No poison in their bloodstream.
It was a real mystery.
Until one day, someone noticed that no Chinese “diplomats” had died. And the furniture of each death scene was arranged similarly.
It turns out, there’s a Dark Side of Feng Shui. The proper arrangement of furniture can kill.
Assassination through interior decoration.

Are You Happy?

636186

There’s a strange machine in the break room.
It’s about six feet tall, shaped like a box. Solid black.
It says “Are you happy?” on it in big white letters.
There’s two buttons on it: YES and NO.
I pushed the YES button and nothing happened.
I pushed the NO button and nothing happened.
Then, I pushed both buttons at the same time.
A drawer popped open, and I took a small yellow pellet out.
Should I swallow it?
I’m not sure. I’ve thought about it, and I can’t decide.
Just like I can’t decide if I’m happy or not.

Taps

636176

It took years of practice, but Softshoe Kelly learned to encode secret messages in his tapdancing.
He started simple, but his skills soon gave him the ability to transmit complex messages without anybody suspecting a thing.
When he was captured by the enemy, they paraded him in front of a global television audience.
Softshoe Kelly performed his act, and cryptology experts determined that he’d been treated miserably but had quite a lot of information on their weak points.
With this information, the enemy was defeated, but Kelly was mortally wounded in the assault.
At his funeral, the military played Taps.

Goodnight

636181

When it was time for me to go to bed, my mother would read to me from the book “Goodnight Moon.”
Even though she read it every night, it was a thrill to hear every word.
When I learned to read, I read along.
One night, when I said “Goodnight Moon,” the moon replied: “Good night.”
“Did you hear that, Mom?” I asked.
“Hear what?” she said.
“The moon was talking to me,” I said. “It said… Goodnight.”
She closed the book, patted me on the head, and left me there in the dark.
Alone.
With the wicked, sinister moon.