FICTION – START OF SOMETHING

“You can never trust the things you hear. Blowhards running around spreading rumors like it’s the national pastime – right up there with baseball and avoiding jury duty,” grunted Detective Maclan as he wrestled with an ancient copper kettle that had seen better days, probably during the Roosevelt administration. The first one.

Mac had the droopy eyes of a basset hound that had just been told Christmas was canceled, minus any of the charm that might make you want to pat his head and give him a biscuit. His face was a topographical map of poor life choices, sour mash, and too many late nights chasing leads that went nowhere.

He was from one of those big cities that think they’re God’s gift to civilization – Detroit, New York, Chicago, take your pick, I could never remember which one. You know the type: concrete jungles where dreams are made of, according to the tourism boards, and people who’ve never had to parallel park there in winter. The kind of places that plaster themselves across postcards nobody sends anymore, where the locals wear their area code like a badge of honor and treat their pizza preferences like a religion.

I’d been wondering, if these metropolitan wonderlands were such paradise on Earth, why Mac had spent the last two decades in our little corner of nowhere, where the most exciting thing to happen was that time someone stole the mayor’s garden gnome. Turned out it was the mayor’s wife, but that’s another story.

At least Mac had decent taste in music – Glenn Miller and Count Basie crooned from a dusty record player in the corner. The big band tunes almost made up for his personality, which had all the warmth of a February morning in Minnesota. Almost.

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Prompts Used:

Fandango’s FOWC – Kettle

Ragtag Daily Prompt – Rumor