The Case – Flashback Friday – February 7, 2019

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — February 7th

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Here’s a little story I wrote back on February 7, 2019 from a picture prompt.

The Case – Fiction Photo Prompt for February

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this photo shows a large elephant pushing on a small blue house that is up in a small tree and it is snowing heavily.

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The Case

Early this morning, while fetching my morning newspaper by my front door, I noticed a slip of paper there on my porch step.

The images glued onto a piece of copy machine paper was amature at best. Random bits and pieces cut from a magazine, showing a gigantic elephant, almost as tall as a tree, and a tiny little house was stuck in the branches.

And what was this white stuff spattered all over the page…globs of paint with cotton fluff? Was that supposed to be snow? I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

I never expected to get my next assignment in this fashion. As chief code interpreter for the FBI, I was used to solving all kinds of strange missives, but this…this just took the cake. What was I to do with it?

I notified my superiors in the agency, of course. They had no explanation, so I was on my own with this one.

There were no words or letters on the thing, so I tried dusting for fingerprints, even running it through a special computer app, to no avail. Was this a serious warning of some dire future event, or a hoax?

Taking a break to think, I sipped my hot coffee. Think…think…what else was in the picture? Mice? Was that what they were up in the little house? I got my magnifying glass to have a closer look. Hmmm…kind of looked like mice, but still not clear. They looked more like Siamese cats, to me. Okay, here’s what we have…elephant, tree, tiny house, mice/cats, snow?

The first letters of each were E T T H M C S. Was it an anagram? METH, SETS, CHET, THEM, SETH? I sighed…no clue. I really needed to get to work, go into the downtown office, and get my mind on other cases for awhile. So, I ate breakfast, showered, and left my house for the day.

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Returning home, later that afternoon, I greeted my little neighbor, Lucy, sitting on my porch.

“Hi, Lucy, how are you doing?” I asked the little six year old.

“Hi, Ms S,” she said and smiled, looking up at me. “Did you get the picture I made for you? I left it right here this morning. I know you like animals, and we went to the zoo and saw an elephant, and he was real big, and it’s gonna be winter soon, so I made some snow, and there’s cats and mice, and a little house for them all to live in when it’s cold, and…”

Lucy went on explaining all the things in the picture, the way all six year old kids do, going on and on.

I smiled and nodded.

Case solved.

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