Scared? No Silly!

Chapter One, Fishy Clues

In the strict sense of the word, the house was haunted, haunted with a scary sense of humor. The old house was out past the bogs where even cranberries dared to grow, beyond the point of no return, it was said. Old timers swore when gray clouds were low, and the warm breeze blew just right, the sound of raucous laughter and an occasional hiccup seemed to sneak out of the old mansion and stumble through the soggy meadows over the wind-swept dunes and waft its way into town. The most vigilant residents insisted that drifters who wander down that way could be heard laughing off in the distance. Those drifters were never heard or seen again.

Although never proven, the jaw-dropping rumors became so believable that even on the brightest of summer days the boldest big kids dared not go out there. But most serious and sensible adults thought the giggling was nothing more than the rough ocean waves crashing onto the treacherous loose cliffs, which were common in that area of the shoreline. As for the drifters and their disappearance, the sensible explanation was they were likely drunk and probably stumbled over the cliffs in a stupor or perhaps weaved their way down to the unpredictable shoreline and drowned in the tumultuous suds of the sea. No body ever materialized and nobody cared enough to search for drifters, so none were ever found.

These mysterious and debatable stories might have gone along as wild tales if it were not for a real mystery that began one humid, foul smelling, day. On that cloud infested late summer day the air lay low and was critically quiet like the dead silence an audience gives off when a punch line falls flat. Without any fan fare, a smothering stench snuck into the little beach town. It stank worse than a rotten joke told by a bad egg and gagged the inhabitants of the little shoreline town, leaving a very bitter, sweet-tart taste in everyone’s mouth. This time it was a repulsive smell not giggling sounds that gave the old timers and the skeptics’ cause to wonder. The local Police were dispatched to sniff out the putrid cause.

The Chief of Police and his Deputy happened to be in the vicinity and took the stinking emergency call. They drove their dodgy old patrol car along the narrow rutted road that twisted and snaked from the treacherous beach up to the mysterious cliffhanger home. As they neared their pungent destination, the roadside looked like a wild party scene. Ripped T-shirts, torn trousers, and men’s and women’s undergarments were scattered all around, some hanging limp from limbs like moss. As they drove slowly closer they wondered, “Were the rumors about the drunken drifters and the laughing true”?

At the tipsy top of the hill the Deputy jammed on the brakes as they came to a fork in the road. The local peace officers looked at the mysterious fork in the road. It was a large rusty old pick fork with a sun beaten Mexican sombrero on it. The engine rattled and knocked as their car tentatively idled just outside of the entrance to the fenced property. They wondered about the Y in the road.

The Deputy got out of the hesitating vehicle and tossed aside the fork in the road. He got back in and said.
“It was a pitch fork Chief”
The Chief nodded. He was looking down the other fork in the road, and then pointed. The Deputy turned and looked. This fork of the punishing dirt road continued down the steep cliff, hugging the loose palisades. It dead-ended at a short rickety pier. Prominently displayed on its rotting pilings were tattered garb remnants waving happily like flags at an amusement park. Under the decaying pier the writhing waves swirled and crashed relentlessly, making mounds of sea froth look like cotton candy. Flotsam and jetsam moved up and down and looked like candy apples bobbing in the waves or lollipops being licked by the sea. Seaweed glistened over the waves like party streamers as the undertow tugged at them and tried to coax Neptune’s party favors out to sea.

From within the roughly idling dusty cop car the two law enforcement officers looked nervously down at the menacingly amusing scene. Speechless, they looked back at each other and shut their open mouths then turned their attention to another bewildering site, the locked entrance to the cliff side manor. Round rocks and sandstone columns anchored the gates to the property. Atop each was a plump sculpted circus seal, one balancing a beach ball on its nose, the other standing up clapping its flippers. Between them was a pair of whimsically crafted wrought iron gates. Braziers from triple A to double D and men’s athlete underwear from skimpy jockey shorts to heavy weight boxers were impaled on the comically ornate fence. There was also something odd hanging on the fence.
“What the heck is that?” The Chief asked.
“Looks like chickens, Chief?” The Deputy replied with matter-of-fact bewilderment.
“Hum, let’s take a closer look,” the Chief suggested as the two peace officers opened the squeaky doors of their patrol car and went for a up for closer inspection. It turned out the odd adornments were chickens, rubber chickens!
“What do you make of that Chief?” the Deputy asked but only got an emotionless shrug from the local police department head as the Chief pointed his bullhorn toward the fence and called out a demand for anyone inside to come out.
“Anyone inside - come out with your hands up”
With no reply, the Chief took two giant steps forward planted his feet and clicked the bullhorn again and bellowed out,
“Come out come out where ever you are.”
Hearing the “hide n seek call”, the Deputy’s eyes popped wide, his head shook fast, and he gave his superior a very peculiar look. The Chief, quickly put the bullhorn to his side, scratched his head, also surprised by his choice of words, but shrugged it off with no explanation. They waited for a response but only got an eerie feeling and a gagging down wind smell from the deathly quiet house. The Chief said to the Deputy.
“OK - Let’s bust it open”
“Gotcha - Chief” the Deputy said obediently.

With the back wheels spinning up dust and gravel like confetti, the car busted through the gates and drove onto the playful looking grounds. The Chief followed on foot and looked around at the swing set and the rusted metal Jungle Jim. At the far end of the yard was what appeared to be a dunking tank but it was too entangled within mysterious weeds to tell for sure.
The two looked away for overgrown spot as they eyeballed the main house. It seemed to grow a bit taller and prouder as it loomed over them. The stinky domicile was a moderate sized Victorian mansion or maybe it was more of a good-sized Cape-Codder, hard to say. It was certainly of the style one would see in a scary movie, usually with lightning flashing behind it. However, in this case the house had a cheery sunny disposition, even in this partially dark and somewhat foreboding weather.

With six steep gables and one round cupola it was certainly a distinctive, almost silly looking structure. The roof and the siding were made from finely crafted, curved cedar shingles. As sunlight pushed through the thick overcast sky, shafts of bright summer light streaked across the house as though spotlights were hitting their mark. It made it seem like the house was on stage grinning hundreds of little smiles wanting to do an encore. However, the old house showed its uncared for age and most of mellow yellow shingles had moss between them, making it appear as though the smiling house should floss.

It was quite an unusual sight and the Chief and Deputy’s jaws dropped again as they took it in but they also needed to hold their noses to keep the smell out. The specific origin for the halitosis of the house was still uncertain, but the fetid scene smelled awfully peculiar and gave them a very queasy uneasy gut level feeling.
“Let’s go in,” said the Chief, in high pitch nasal voice as he held his nose and tried not to gag.
The Deputy replied with a squeaky nasal voice
“Now?”
The Chief nodded and took a deep breath through his mouth but said nothing.
The Chief and his loyal Deputy suspected the worst as they opened the creaky old French doors. The heavy doors had big knockers, which had a risqué almost embarrassing look and feel. They were each shaped like a hand cupping a breast.
“Look at those knockers” the Deputy said in a nasally tone, as the doors sashayed open, with a loud creaking sound that gave the two even more apprehension. Two tentative law enforcement officers stepped inside.

The door slowly swung shut behind them with an echoing closure. They didn’t notice. They were preoccupied by what they saw. Throughout the house were cob webs and piles of things, funny looking things, like clapping monkey toys, Joe Palooka punching bags, Gorilla costumes, dribble cups, whoopee cushions, and fake bloody hands. Their eyes stopped scanning. Their pupils opened wide and their heads shot back as they saw what they hoped they wouldn’t see. There in the middle of the dusty dinning room floor was the stark frail frame of a withered old man. He was naked and had a comical look on his face. Next to his cracked skull was a shattered jar of Gefilte fish. The white fish contents had mixed with the blood of the grinning dead head giving the Gefilte fish cakes a pink party like color. Fuzzy mold had grown over them and they looked like Hostess snowballs. Tasty looking but they smelled terrible.

One of skinny old man’s arms was outstretched and it pointed a finger.
“Hey, Chief, it looks like he’s giving us the finger,”
The Chief, ignored the Deputy’s comment, and said in a deathly serious way,
“Don’t disturb anything,”
“Oh don’t worry I won’t, I won’t ” said the Deputy with a quiver in his nasal reply as he continued to hold his nose.
“But it sure is odd for him to be pointing that particular finger”, the criminally inexperienced Deputy mumbled.

Perhaps the middle digit the decaying old guy gave them was a clue to foul play, or a last expressive hand gesture to speak from the dead-zone with blunt emotion.
“Weird, really weird - man” the Chief blurted out as he pondered the scene.
“Looky there Chief,” the Deputy said, with a southern accent and a smirkish smile that came out of nowhere. A few feet away from the decaying old hand was a note that read,
“I did it!"

The short distance that stretched between the extended middle digit and the poorly scribbled note was undisturbed, except for small rodent footprints. But, before the senior officer and his subordinate could absorb the clue, the Chief of Police, who was normally a stern no nonsense cop, began to chuckle uncontrollably. So did his tag-along Deputy. Neither knew why, and would not get the time to investigate. They chuckled more, and more.
“Get a look at his kisser,” muttered the Chief wiping back tears.
“What” said his Deputy with a snicker as he snorted in some air?
“His kisser…” repeated the Chief, “Get a gander at his kisser. He looks like he ate something funny”
“Yup, he’s all puckered up all right. Looks like he wants to give someone a kiss,” the Deputy said with a smirk and another chuckle.
“Well he won’t give one to me with that fish eating grin on his pus” the Chief shot back uncontrollably and with visible surprise, then quickly slapped his hand over his mouth to stop it from blurting out any more unexpected remarks. The Chief tried to hold his tongue. His Deputy held his breath and tried not to hiccup from silly excitement. They tried to be professional in spite of their humorous handicap, but could not hold back the laughter as they began to look around for evidence.

They sniffed around the stinking place for clues, sometimes getting down on all fours like bloodhounds looking for evidence, giggling at nearly every point. When they got to the kitchen pantry it was filled with rubber knives and more rubber chickens hanging everywhere, but oddly the only food they found was in the old Frigidaire. There they found three jars of the pickled fish, two big jars of kosher dill pickles, a half empty jar of matzo balls and a hard-boiled egg, but nothing more.

“Interesting, very interesting” the Chief said as they went back to deadly crime scene, still clueless and laughing.

Back at the fishy scene, in spite of their police procedural training, they continued to laugh uncontrollably at the corpses kisser and smirked from the smell of their own bad taste jokes. They moved closer to the deadly scene. As they bent down to examine the mess they knocked their heads together with a bonking sound that started them laughing even more. It was very inappropriate and unprofessional to laugh in a situation like this, they knew that, but couldn’t stop. They were helpless. Something was forcing them to laugh.

Holding back tears, the Chief said, “I want to get to the bottom of this twisted caper,” then burst out laughing. The Deputy took one look at him and said,
“Caper? Where the heck did you get a word like caper?”
As the Deputy looked down at the body of evidence, he snorted out a laugh and said to his tearful Chief,
“OK Copper, lets get to the bottom of this caper - Yah got me Topper.”
The Chief gasped for air and slapped his thighs but he managed to blurt out, in a very poor Mexican accent,
“Ah Carumba, will you get a load of his keyster, seester” and pointed a finger at the big ass on the floor.
The Deputy snorted a very distinctive laugh and noticed it was true. The deceased had a rather large rump. However, it became clear the peculiar posterior profile was not what caused him or the Chief to laugh. Their laughter was caused by the preposterous peccadilloes of the place. They howled. Everything in this house made them laugh. They couldn’t stop. They tried.
“Interesting, very interesting” said the Chief, still fighting back the giggles and the tears.
“You better take some notes,” he said to the Deputy.

The Deputy, still snorting, pulled out a pad from his back pocket. He flipped open his pad and tried to take notes on case #1,001. 1,001 happened to be the next number in the town’s relatively uneventful police case log. The Deputy giggled as he tried to hold his note pad steady and write the case number. Accidentally, or perhaps on purpose, he put the comma in the wrong place and wrote 10,01. He cracked up and showed it to the Chief,
“It looks like a happy puppy face,” he said while laughing.
The Chief looked at 10,01.
“By golly, it does.” the Chief said and grabbed the note pad and jotted, “1o,o1” then shoved it back to his hysterical Deputy.
“Now it’s a surprised puppy! He said and dropped to all fours and began to bark and lift his leg.

No words were necessary. They were both out of control and for several more minutes they laughed far more than they should, at jokes that would only be mildly amusing in an otherwise normal house. But, this zany house, they now knew, was imbued with an unnatural force, an inexplicable, uncanny way to squeeze humor out of every part of them, whether they thought it was funny or not. The place was a riot. The law enforcers laughed so hard they felt sick with silliness. The two coppers were forced to high tail it out of the joint in hysterics. They seriously ran for their lives.

Once, outside the gag emporium, away from its tickling influence and gnawing gut wiggling antics, they realized it was not a laughing matter. The breathless duo tried to catch their breath and knew if they entered this house of six gables and one cupola the fun house had them - had them in stitches.
“This case is interesting, very interesting” the Chief said analytically as he sniffled, and snorted back laughing lubricants sneaking their way out of his nostrils. He regained his composure and started to revert to the degreed criminologist he was and said in a calmer more controlled way,
“Interesting, Very interesting.”
“Veeery interesting…. But SCH-TWO-PID!” the Deputy said in a laugh out loud, Laugh-In sort of a way. He gasped for air unable to regain his Deputy demeanor.
“The Chief, still lighthearted and under the influence, yelled out”
“Sock It To Me- baby!”

The Chief and the Deputy, overwhelmed by hippie era humor, flopped down to the ground, pulled their knees into their chest, and rolled around like schoolboys staring up at the haunted house that seemed to be smiling at them. It seemed to be enjoying itself very much. This was one funny scene, or was it?


Chapter Two, “Like pulling taffy”

The two laughing coppers managed to escape the snare of the rapid-fire gags and the “bar-rump-pump” rim shots the haunted house drummed at them. Back in the sanctuary of their station they knew why the house smelled. But, a decaying stiff lying in a dry pool of blood and rotting Gefilte fish pointing to a note that said, “I did it.” made for a very twisted crime scene.
It was twisted way out of proportion like a balloon wiener dog blown way up and ready to pop. It was hard to get their logical criminologist heads into this peculiar case and the implications ballooned out as they thought of their next steps. They knew something fishy was up, something mighty fishy. They smelled foul play - foul play or worse, - shenanigans! They knew they had a serious problem and knew they needed to sniff out the cause.

Wanting to act fast but play it safe with this potential homicide scene, they decided to call in the big guns, the rural Counties only straight-laced Homicide Detective. By chance, he happened to be in their sleepy seaside town on the old boardwalk just about to purchase some delectable candy at the oldest salt-water taffy establishment on the cape. His cell phone, which was not on vibrate mode, as he liked it to be when in public, rang and his personalized ring tone Dum De Dum Dum - Dum De Dum Dum – Dumb, came in loud and clear. The Dragnet theme startled him into action. He jumped up and yelled, “WOO,” which startled the others patrons at the taffy shop.

“It must be an emergency,” he said to counter kid as he moved away from the glass counter and fumbled around in his pocket for his cell phone that was repeating the Dragnet ring tone. Smiling nervously at the other taffy lovers while he seemed to be frisking himself to the suspenseful music, the large framed, sweet toothed, undercover cop pulled his cell phone from inside his pants. He turned away, cupped the flip phone with his meaty hands, and answered in a low secretive Detective like voice,
“Helllooo?”
The Chief on the other end decided not to give the skinny about the stiff over the phone. He only asked the Detective to come over quickly.

“I’ll be right over” the Detective said with calm experienced homicide seriousness.
Then shut the phone, slid in back in his pants, turned back around to the clerk and self-consciously grabbed his bag of taffy and said,
“Thanks, keep the change” and left a five spot on the glass counter.
The candy was $4.95 and the clerk said, “Thanks Dick”
The determined Homicide Detective thinking the boy was referring to his occupation said nothing but smiled and nodded. Then he twisted his taffy bag tight, and left the classic pulled taffy palace in a very serious heads-up kind of a way. However, he didn’t notice that he had a sticky taffy wrapper stuck to the back of his left shoe and was picking up other litter as he walked down the hot Boardwalk. With seaside board walkers and boom box skateboarders laughing in his wake, he added to the sticky situation when he picked up a piece of juicy bubble gum on his right shoe. The gumshoed Detective walked the walk clueless of the wrappers. He got into shinny new undercover cop car, started it up and sped off unaware of the mess that awaited him.

When he got to the small old red brick and mortar town police station and started to get out of his black unmarked cop car, he felt the pull of taffy and the stick of gum. He looked down and said,
“Darn! These are brand new shoes!”
The impeccable investigator sat back down and yanked and pulled at the gum. When he tried to toss it away the bubble gum twirled around like a hot pink jump rope and landed on his brand new wingtips.
“Darn!” he said and grabbed the taffy wrapper from the other shoe in frustration and wiped off the bubble gum. With the pink mess wrapped up he waved his hand repeatedly left to right and eventually shook off the sticky bundle, then rubbed his fat fingers on the asphalt, and licked off the last stubborn pieces of taffy.

The well-dressed Detective stood up outside the squad car, which he parked in the handicapped zone, and looked around in a quick detective like way. Then, he straightened his tie, glanced at his feet and started to walk up the concrete steps wiping his gumshoe along the way. At the top landing, he took a deep breath, put his sticky hand on the jailhouse door, rocked it open, and sauntered inside. Having been there more than once before, the confident Detective marched directly down to the Chief’s empty office, sat down, put his feet up on the desk and began to enjoy some taffy, and gazed out toward the light blue, dark gray shoreline sky.

“They sure can pull their taffy,” he mused to himself as he slowly chewed and thoroughly enjoyed his butterscotch taffy with peanut butter inside. Still chewing, he reached his pinky-ringed hand into the taffy bag and rummaged around its colorful individually wrapped innards for his next piece of salt-water delight. With a keen sense of awareness, he felt something odd. He paused with caution and quickly looked up. The Chief was standing at the door with arms' crossed staring at him shaking his head awaiting the Detectives’ attention.

“Oh, Hi, want one?” The Detective said and stuck the bag of taffy out and offered the Chief one of his salt-water taffy morsels.
“No thanks, I’m on duty,” the Chief said.
“Suit yourself, they’re good,” the Detective said, as he unwrapped a piece of stripped pink taffy and popped it in his wide-open mouth. The Chief looked at the taffy lover and said,
“Yes, well we have another sticky situation to deal with. We got a stiff stinking up the place. Let’s chew on that for a while, shall we.
“Is that what that fishy smell is,” The Detective said with a slobber as he pushed the un-chewed taffy to one side of his multicolored mouth.
“Yes, and it looks like he might have been murdered,” The Chief stated bluntly.
With a gulp, the Detective swallowed his taffy and stared at the serious Chief with morbid Homicide Detective curiosity.
“OK give it to me, fill me in”, he said.

The Chief briefed the absorbent Detective on the funny business and the potential danger the grippingly comical death scene presented. The Detective, a well-seasoned crime professional, was trained to be empirical and skeptical and had a hard time taking in all the deadly serious humor. Nevertheless, if the Chief of Police and his Deputy both said there was deadly funny business, then it was his business to find out how deadly funny it was.

“OK. Let’s go visit this stinking crime scene,” The ready for action Dick said as he stood up and left his taffy bag on the Chief’s cluttered oak desk.
“This was no time for taffy,” he thought. He knew it was time to deal with a seriously sticky situation.


Chapter Three, “Dummy it up”

As the Detective drove his slick new car up the steep cliff he pushed the pedal down hard and sensed an uncomfortable, sticky sensation. He looked down and saw he had managed to pick up more bubble gum on his shoe.
“Darn!” He said and drove on fuming at the sticky mess.

The two cars slowly drove past the open gate and seemed the get the approval of the seals as they pulled into the cliff side playground. They looked up at the six gables and the one cupola with giddy amusement as their cars rolled and coasted to a stop by the fun house entrance. Each had a forced smiled at the mere sight of the place. The house grinned its yellow, mossy green smile back at them, as though to say, “Welcome back Coppers.”

The Chief and the Detective covered their noses. The Deputy used a nose clip from his swim gear. They quickly entered the house and made their way directly to the fishy scene. With one look at the corpse, they all busted out laughing. The Chief and Deputy knew the danger and quickly ran out in a sidesplitting panic. The Chief was holding his mouth, the Deputy holding his stomach.

The Detective stayed and braved the infectious haunting humor swirling through the place and tried not to gag or be stricken by a bout of laughing influenza as he hovered above the corpse with a funny look on his face. He valiantly fought back contagious giggles and his pent up laughter. He tried hard to hold back that snorting noise that was pushing up through the roof of his mouth and sneaking into his nostrils. He tried not to laugh. Unfortunately, he was unable to keep it all in and he didn’t. With a burst, he let out a far too expressive a laugh and quickly grabbed for his hanky to clean up his exuberant nasal release. Then, he used the snotty linen to filter the putrid smell of bad humor coming from the house, the stiff, and the Gefilte fish.

He looked away to catch a breath and calculated his next move. Slowly he turned as he tried to control the Niagara Falls of laughing tears streaming down his face. He was a professional Homicide detective and knew he had to continue. So, slowly he turned and step-by-step he made his way over to the cryptic handwritten note that read, “I did it”. The three-word admission was lying on the dusty floor near some fake vomit. Carefully, so as not to disturb anything, he went closer. As he squatted down to get a better look he heard a ripping noise. The seat of his pants split wide open.

“Gol-darn it! This is a brand new suit.” He said angrily shaking his head and feeling ripped off. He stood up, straightened his tie, and surveyed the gapping damage with a pat down to his hind end. It was evident his Dick Tracy boxer briefs were now exposed through the rip in his pants.
“Darn,” he said and angrily made his way out of the dank dinning room and down the hall, laughing again at everything as he sniffled for clues.

Pensively, he roamed through the low-lit hallways lined from floor to ceiling with tacky purple and white tulips wallpaper. His head looked left then right as he made tiny timid steps and tiptoed through the tulips like he trying to sneak up on someone, or something. Old vaudeville billboards, carnival posters, and funny caricatures were slapped up here and there. There were several heavily framed pictures of tearfully sad clowns painted on black velvet and happy faced ones on bright canvas. There were portraits of overdressed female looking men, or scantily clad bearded-ladies. All of the highly stylized and cross-gendered images were strategically hung and every one of them had mysteriously watchful eyes.

The gum shoed clue-sniffer continued to succumb to the euphoric effects of the slapstick palace and began to walk in a rather unmanly sashaying way. He seemed in a trance and began to talk a gibberish talk and spontaneously started to mumble risqué limericks.
“There once was gent from Kent, who was nearly out of luck …”
He tried to stop but couldn’t and all the while was wondering what was happening to him. Then, all of a sudden, he spotted a door at the end of a long dark hallway. It was ajar - a pickle jar. The partially opened door had a poster of a big jar of pickle pasted on it. It was an old advertisement for “Millie’s Dills,” with a caption that read “Dills to Die for” He knew something wasn’t kosher as he walked closer and closer and closer to the compellingly mysterious door. He was scared; scared of what he might find, scared he might get into a pickle if he dared to go through that door that was ajar. But, like a good dill pickle, it was hard to resist, and Millie’s dills beckoned him in.

He walked right up to the door grabbed the pickles handle, took a deep breath, and swung it opened. He screamed. “Ahh – Ahhhhhh – Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
His eye popped wide and his head shot up.
Behind the green pickle door were dozens of ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets and marionettes, sitting, hanging and laying all over the dill pickle room. His scream was so loud it loosed up several of the dummies closed eyes. With their eyes popping open some marionettes began dangling up and down and some looked like they were coming toward him. He shut his eyes, opened his mouth and swallowed his heart. The Detective went psycho, and screamed louder than that lady in the scary Hitchcock shower scene.
He screamed out at top of his lungs, “Let me outa here, Let me out of this nut house, AAAHHHHH.”
He slapped his hands over his face then separated two fingers and peeked through as he shot off like a stray bullet. He ricocheted of the walls as flew through the tulips. He was trying to make a beeline to the egress, but was so buzzed he wound up taking a wrong turn and ran into a room filled with fake false teeth. He froze.

When he looked down he saw a sea of upper and lower choppers all around him. His jaw dropped, adding one more set of choppers to the ones all over the floor. His eyes popped again and. he screamed. “AHHHHH”.
The teeth started to chatter and move all around the room. His teeth chatter too. Then across room he saw the light of day through a back pantry door. Like a scared bunny, he hopscotched across the parlor with chattering teeth nipping at his heal. Once beyond the yuck-yuck dentures room, the gumshoe Detective ran as fast as he could to the door. He grabbed the doorknob to the Dutch door and with a twist swung open the bottom half and ran into the top half and fell to the ground with a thud.
“Darn!” He cried half from pain, half from embarrassment as crawled out into the backyard. He got to his feet adjusted his tie, and ran around to the front of the spooky house screaming, giggling and almost peeing.

He saw the Chief and the Deputy playing on the grass and was thankful he got out alive. He was sweaty, winded, and a lot worse for wear. Panting, the Detective bent over, rested his hands on his knees, and tried to catch his breath, and then felt a cool breeze. He stood up quickly turned around. The Chief and his Deputy were rolling on the ground, laughing and pointing to the comical strip of his exposed Dick Tracy boxer shorts. Embarrassed again, the Detective stood up straightened his tie and said,
“That whole place is ridiculously scary; you know there’s a bunch of dummies in there!”
The Chief and Deputy paused, looked at each other, and burst out laughing again. The Detective seeing his folly of his comment just followed their humorous lead. The three rolled around the playground yard. The Chief and Deputy got dirt and grass stains all over their uniforms and the Detective stained his undercover clothes.

Slowly, they sat up, dried their tears and regained some control of their remote out of control serious side. After a few moments of calm had passed, the Chief, Deputy, and Detective got to their feet and gumshoes, dusted themselves off and began to walk to their cars. The Detective was the first one to speak and said,
“You know, I hate dummies and clowns, they scare me”
The Deputy turned and said with surprised agreement,
“You know, they scare me too, what about you Chief?”
The Chief just looked at their sorry kissers, shook his head, and only said,
“Let’s go”


To be continued...