How funny I wrote this a while back. It was in 2021. I was going to include it into a short story or novella of some kind. I guess for now it will hang out as flash fiction. Enjoy.

This whole thing started with the never-ending mint in his mouth and the theme song to Family Ties heard through his headphones.  It was about as crazy as the story I heard about how an unloved wife hit her husband over the head several times with an icicle.  She tried to stab him with it too, but the rounded edge served its purpose.  He lived long enough to be taken to the emergency room, only dying shortly after the staff removed him from the gurney to the bed. What she did not know is if she had let nature take its course, her husband would have died within the year.  Her sentence might have been shorter had she not vocalized how she should’ve pried his eyes out like gumballs with her nail filer.  It was the easiest case my friend had solved. On the other hand, I never got so lucky, not even once.  The man who murdered his elementary teacher because she wouldn’t let him use the bathroom and more than once he wet himself in front of the other students was one of my first cases.  He carried this grudge because the nickname of “willy pissypants” followed him to high school.  He never went to graduation because of it and after he received his diploma in the mail, he decided it was the right time.  After watching her pick up a few groceries and following her home in his car, he didn’t account for her husband being there.  He was murdered too.  Her face was unrecognizable.  The husband’s was half recognizable.  It was the one of the quickest interrogations I conducted, and one of the few where the suspect cried.  He didn’t mind being locked up in prison for the rest of his life either.

This case, which would be my last, appeared to be straightforward case.  Long after the mint dissolved and I had gotten the stupid theme song out of my head, it kept unraveling.  The more people I interviewed and the more the evidence brought positive results, the complexity of it turned every which way.  It turned out to be the biggest opportunity to advance one’s detective career, and it was a shame it was wasted on me.  I never got into this to prove myself or for the off chance I would be interviewed by someone other than the local newspaper.

I’ve never had that much of a positive outlook with millennials.  They’re glued to their phones and expect everything handed to them.  You’re thinking I’m being unfair, but they have no patience waiting in line and the young girls who wear those Daisy Dukes.  There’s too many instances of them now licking ice cream in grocery stores for everyone to see.  It’s the harsh truth, and I wasn’t surprised by his behavior when I arrested him.  He told me to mind my own business. 

I abide by the notion of if you respect me, I will respect you, but this little punk made sure I knew what he thought of me.  He spit in my face and screamed to get the fuck out of his room.  After I handcuffed him, it took him a while to get his words out.  I’m not saying I broke anything on his face because I’m not that type of detective, and he thought twice about saying anything threatening to me again or so I thought.  On the way to my car, he screamed how his lawyer would nail my ass to the loser bench.  I guess you can’t expect much decency from someone who never had to work a day in life.