Today's #flashfiction #LeftInTheOpen

“Don't share your personal information online.”

Rumpelstiltskin* #quote

        Mom left for a quick vacation trip doohicky thing with a few other family members so Dad and I are left alone to have crazy wild shenanigans. So today I worked on my book. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Left In The Open

      “So the scene of the crime?” the commanding officer of the scene asked.

      “One of the ugliest I've seen, only reason we really got an ID was some hair and a wallet a few feet away from the body.” The subordinate officer looked onto the scene. The lay body next to a dumpster, not even dumped in. The body was burnt up, black like a bad barbeque. Only the shape made it look human. If it was to hid evidence it didn't make much sense to just drop it there in the open with a wallet next to it. “The man's name is Tom Babil according to the hair and driver's license. No money or credit cards were in the wallet. If this was a mugging it's the strangest I've seen.”

       Later the officers spoke with a few witnesses around the area.

The superior asked his subordinate, “So what were your discovers, anything that wasn't a dead end like mine?”

       “Well I did talk to some witnesses with something. Yesterday they saw a man with long brown hair enter the area with a large, full bag. Then a short brown haired man leaving the area. Both of them were probably the same height or at least very close said the witnesses. They said they never got looks at the men's faces, their backs were turned away from the apartment buildings they saw it from.”

       The commanding officer thought for a second. “Well the man who left had to have been our killer. And the man entering had to have been our victim right? Get a sketch artist on the hair of both of them. At least we can get the back of the heads.” The commanding officer scratched his beard, a habit of his when things didn't connect. Something didn't feel right. The statement he made didn't just didn't make sense. When scratching his beard didn't help him enough he would switch to scratch the top of his bald head. The body was burnt to an ugly black. Yet if the victim entered the scene alive and was burnt surely people would have heard screaming...

        “Sir? You have that look, the puzzled look, and you're scratching your head. Again. Something bothering you?” The subordinate officer knew his boss.

       “Well, the scenario I put together doesn't sit right with me...”

       “Then, Sir, I hope this isn't too blunt, but couldn't it mean that you're just wrong?” He gave him an awkward smile. “I mean maybe you're assuming something? Or somebody got something wrong?”

The boss started to think, what had he assumed, and what did he know. He made assumptions on who entered and left the scene, and although the body had been identified, it only had been identified second hand, by hair a few away from the body.

        The commanding officer smiled. “I understand now. The truth of the matter is, our 'victim' isn't dead at all!”

         “Sir!?”

         “The witnesses never got a good look at the men leaving the scene. But really it was never two men, it was one man, who probably knew where witnesses were and left his back properly turned on purpose to obscure himself. That one man was our supposed 'victim' Tom Babil. It explains why the two 'men' were about the same height. What the 'long-haired man' was carrying in his large bag was the burnt body we discovered. It was left in the open meant to be found, which is why the body wasn't bothered to be hidden in the dumpster. Tom Babil cut his hair between entering and leaving view, and left some on the ground for us to discover along with his wallet. For some reason he wanted to disappear and that's what I want to find out next.” While the commanding officer prepared all the paperwork and proper utilities for searching for Tom Babil he hoped the body they found was dead before Babil burnt it and whatever reason Tom had disappeared for didn't lead to anything difficult for the officers.

       Turns out it was a bunch of gambling debt. Some mysteries are a lot simpler than others.

Author Comment: Well I think this is my first try at a pure mystery story if I remember, no fantasy or sci-fi here!. I hope I did well. I wasn't sure how to spread out clues and stuff. I wanted the mystery to be reasonably deducible by the audience, so if you figured it out before the character did that was kinda intentional. I don't like how in some cop shows suddenly at the end they're like “It's this random person because of this random evidence that only the characters found out about until the last second!” Kinda makes wondering or thinking about it a bit moot when the pieces of the puzzle aren't there?