(Wheeee! Here's my draft. Thanks so much for the work out! )
Exercise Response:
It was Thursday, raining hard, and growing close to midnight. The veil between the living and dead was said to grow thin on November 2nd. All Souls' Day, he had heard it called. When the dead would return to visit the living.
Private detective Potate Finkbuttum nursed his drink (ignoring the glare of the bartender) and blearily wondered if that was really true. It was 2017 and people still believed these things. He hoped to hell to never see any ghosts!
He absent-mindedly shook his glass to distribute the dregs of the whiskey over the melting, stale-tasting ice cubes as if that would renew it and make it palatable. (He absolutely hated the taste of alcohol. But he had to blend in.)
He straightened up and threw his shoulders back a little as he surveyed the bustling nightclub with what he hoped was a jaded knowing expression. He was a detective. A private dick. A gumshoe! Crafty, sophisticated, slick. Sure, he'd had some bad luck in the past, but that could happen to anyone. He was headed for success.
A gorgeous doll with a figure that would put a man's eyes out had come to the office in his basement that afternoon. A damsel in distress! His very first!
She had hired Potate to get back her missing kitten, whom she claimed her ex-boyfriend stole from her out of revenge because he caught her kissing his younger brother in the men's restroom of the bowling alley one night. Weeping into a bag of McDumbo's take-out, she told the tragic story of how this villain would take her kitten to nightclubs and make it perform unnatural acts, crimes against nature.
"Say no more," puffed Potate potently. "I'll take care of it for you, sweetheart."
And so he had trolled the clubs. And waited. And watched. And tonight, tonight was the jackpot! Some big, flashy young blood was swinging a kitten around the dance floor while his cronies laughed and hooted.
Potate couldn't contain himself. Patting his concealed weapon surreptitiously, he raced over to the scene of vice.
"Hold it right there, scumbag!" he shouted over the roar of music and babbling of the crowd. "That kitten doesn't belong to you. Hand it over!"
"Who the hell are you?" retorted the kitten-dancer with a sneer.
Potate pulled out his ASPCA card and flashed it in the lout's face, watching it fall.
"Awww," his opponent groaned. "Can't a guy have a little fun? Tell you what, you can have the kitten if you can guess what's in this pocket." He pointed to his right pant's pocket while holding the squirming kitten motionless with his other hand. "Otherwise you'll have to fight me AND my buddies for it."
Potate was 5'2" and this nasty piece of goods was well over six feet. He wavered momentarily, caught between self-preservation and the drive to solve the case. His anxiety spiked. The room seemed to grow gray and everyone faded into the shadows.
A familiar voice spoke into his left ear, "An old brass key. And tie your shoelaces for the love of God!"
"Ma? Ma, is that you?" Potate swiveled, but no one was there. A ghost?
He turned and faced his opponent, the room and its inhabitants once more in focus.
"An old brass key," he said authoritatively. He had no idea if that was right, but when bluffing, bluff with style!
A few minutes later, a diminutive gray-haired woman at the bar watched the oblivious private investigator walk off with a yowling orange kitten who was intent on tearing his jacket to shreds with its sharp little claws.
"Bless the boy, he was born with half-a-brain, I swear. If I didn't watch over him…" The aged woman sighed and motioned for the bartender to pour her another. She definitely deserved it. It was getting harder and harder to take care of him, now that Potate had crossed to the other side.
