The NYC Midnight Reunion

And curative green tea

One of my many annoying habits is signing up for things I either don’t realize I’ve signed up for, or immediately forget I’ve signed up for. This was the case with last weekend’s NYC Midnight challenge.

I’ve often thought I should try it someday, just for fun. But I’ve never written fiction, and time is something I’m very short on right now, so finding hours to do anything extra is a stretch.

And yet there it was in my email:

Dear Marjie Alonso,

Thank you for participating in the Flash Fiction Challenge 2024! Since there are only 48 hours to complete your story, we wanted to send an additional email with some important reminders in case you had any issues with the assignment email or finding your assignment on the website. As a reminder, your assigned group is:

GROUP: 30

GENRE: Mystery

LOCATION: A carousel

OBJECT: A bottle of medicine

What the hell?

Logic told me I must have signed up and this was not some fluke, still I combed through past emails to find any hint of when I might have done so. The original “assignment email” was in the pile of unread (ignored) emails in my in box. Turns out I’d signed up just the week before.

I’ve really got to stop buying shit on my phone in the middle of the night.

So there I was, with 24 of those 48 allotted hours gone to a trip to the Cape and other necessary errands, leaving me only Sunday to complete the assignment: no more than a thousand words, and the randomly-assigned required genre, location, and object.

The first thing I did was name all the suspects after members of the Provincetown town boards. I killed off the building inspector. It kind of went like that. But it turns out one can’t just kill off people who need killing when one writes mysteries. One also needs a plot. Bummer.

At any rate, after almost giving up many times throughout the day, I finished my absolutely terrible mystery, complete with all the criteria, in 998 words. I include it below for your amusement. The winners of this round, of which I will absolutely not be one, will be announced at some point in the future, but I don’t know when. I didn’t know I’d signed up. How much detail do you think I have on this thing?

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The Reunion

The horse whipped his head around, biting at my legs and bucking the reins. I could see the bit cutting into his mouth, flecks of foam hitting me, ropes of it flying past me as he ran. I looked ahead in the dark. One low branch and I’d be as dead as the guy renting for the weekend.

I felt dizzy. At the same time I wondered if this was going to affect my AirBnB ratings.

Going in on a “rentals and riding” business with Rob had seemed like a great idea. He had the horse farm, I had Willow House, the place my grandfather had left me. Rob had lent me the money to fix my place up, right after he’d bought the farmland next door. Short-term rentals in the country by the lake, with access to riding, had been a cash cow, but there had also been endless clogged toilets, broken appliances, and stained towels. People were so gross sometimes. And now a corpse. 

Slumped against the large willow tree in front of the house, legs splayed, the guy was gray and cold. I’d found that out when I touched him to see if he was maybe just asleep. His arms hung at his sides, a bottle of Ivermectin in his right hand, a fallen snifter of brandy by his left. A couple more bottles of Ivermectin lay empty by his side.

“Maybe you can fix stupid,” I thought. Then I called 911.

The dead guy’s name was Jim, and he’d rented Willow House for the fourth of July weekend for a reunion, he’d said. I was going to have to rename the place.

“Alice, they want you at the house, and they asked for info on the guests,” Rob said, walking into my office. 

“What about you?” I asked.

“I’ve got to take care of the animals. They’ll talk to me when I’m done.”

I printed out the contact stuff from the lease:

Rita Schwartz, 43

Martin Risteen, 41

Tony Iannacci, 42

John Dowd, 42

Jim Nickerson, host, 44

I walked down and was escorted into the house by a cop who introduced me to a detective named Binder.

“Sit down in here with the others,” she said.

“The others” were getting hammered. Rita and Martin sat on the love seat holding tumblers of screwdrivers, while Tony and John took up the side chairs. Orange juice and vodka covered the coffee table and rug below it. There went their security deposit.

They’d been there for an investment club reunion from their days at UVM. Coincidentally, I’d met Rob when he’d rented a room in my house in Burlington twenty years before. He’d gone to school there. I was working, no college tuition possible for me. We’d been best friends ever since. Did we know them, Detective Binder asked? 

Never laid eyes on them before, I said.

They were celebrating five million dollars. While they’d all gone on to lead lives of easy money, their investment club had lost big. Jim, President all those years, had insisted that they keep the original club alive and only end as winners. Finally, they’d recouped the five million they’d lost in college.

He’d invited them all to Willow House for a surprise announcement.

When they’d arrived the previous evening, Jim had given them all embossed wooden boxes containing bottles of cognac reading, “Five Million Club.” Today, they’d been scheduled to go for a ride around the lake, and then come back in time to rest before going to the fourth of July celebrations at the fair.

It was clear I had nothing to add, so the cops let me go. I walked back to the farm. Five million dollars, twenty years ago. Around the same time my grandfather had died, and when Rob had come into his inheritance. Right around the time Rob had bought the horse farm, and helped me rebuild my property. 

I found Rob and filled him in, telling him Detective Binder wanted to talk to him. That would have to wait, he said. We had a lot to do to get ready for the fair. Rob was giving pony rides, and I’d promised to help run the carousel and caramel corn concession while our neighbor, Michela, was laid up with a broken ankle. We loaded the ponies into the trailer and went to the fairground.

It was a busy night. Clear skies and 70 degrees meant big crowds, and it was hours before I figured out what was bothering me.

Five million dollars. That had been Rob’s windfall inheritance. What had he been doing at UVM for his work-study? It was IT. He’d been helping students with their computers. I remembered him telling me how many people had “password” as their passwords, bragging about how he could get into anyone’s accounts with no effort at all.

Five million dollars to buy a horse farm next to my place.

Why had Jim picked Willow House to celebrate?

Rob found me at the carousel, but our easy closeness felt different now.

“What’s up with you?” he asked, handing me our traditional end-of-fair beer..

I told him what I’d been thinking. 

“Did you really get an inheritance?”

“They had plenty, and their daddies were going to bail them out no matter what,” said Rob, his disgust showing.

“So you stole from them?” He looked at me. “Did Jim realize what had happened? Is that why he came here? Was he going to tell the others? Was he going to turn you in?”

“The pigs have too much as it is. He was going to ruin everything,” said Rob.

I started feeling woozy. 

“Up you go,” he said, putting me on a wooden horse and starting the ride, his voice trailing behind me. “Sorry. I can’t have you ruining things either, and your insurance will help run things when you’re gone.”

The beer. 

The wooden horse seemed to buck, biting at my legs as we flew.

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Morning Teaistisms

As my back and ribs have continued to vex I’ve been trying to avoid too many NSAIDs and heavier drugs by using heating pads - always great in 80 degree weather - and drinking lots of green tea, which the internet swears has anti-inflammatory properties.

I like green tea very much, so I choose to believe in its medicinal qualities, which is how faith healing works.

As you might imagine, I have at least five types of green tea in my kitchen, which I’ve been drinking on rotation. Sure enough, with enough green tea, and time, my back is starting to improve! It’s definitely the tea doing it.