The Daily Wit

The Daily Wit set us a task to write a story using a (very bizarre) list of words. Time has been short and I wasn't going to attempt it, but over a lunchtime beer I had second thoughts. The required words are in bold. Oh, and I'm on holiday now, I will be MIA for two weeks, please come back and I'll be back on your blogs in two weeks' time.

The room was bare. Well, almost. The body had been removed, a chalk outline marked where it had lain. There was pool of blood on the floor. Beside the pool were a pair of toothpicks, their tips read with blood. On the mantelpiece was a solitary statue of Torquemada and an empty mug.

"What sort of sick low-life would do this?" said Inspector Smith, sniffing the mug.

"Do what?" replied Inspector Jones.

"Kill a man with a pair toothpicks before relaxing with a cup of Ugandan coffee."

Jones glanced out of the window. The bears were still trapped in glue. Bear-glue is a bit like mouse-glue, but stronger. Like its rodent counterpart, bear-glue is designed to hold the victim fast until death. Although clearly frustrated by the glue, which prevented them from moving and was irritating their tootsies, the bears were engaged in a furious debate about micro-lending. The credit-crunch is affecting everyone.

"Revenge?" suggested Jones, with a certain sardonic emphasis. He took a hip-flask out of his jacket pocket and knocked back some Jack Daniels, probably about a fifth.

Smith lit his pipe, assumed his favourite Sherlock pose and then cursed suddenly, a curse so deadly I'm reluctant to repeat it here.

"Neptune's Bathtub!" he swore, "it has to be so simple. I went on a 12 step program once, a course on detective work given by some twit dressed in a stupefying purple suit. He had horrible yellow skin, anyone would think he'd been eating radioactive isotopes or bitten by a tarantula or somethin'. He was a nut-case. One of my colleagues found him in a vacant lot blowing bubbles and pretending to play netball. Anyway it's all about reading between the lines."

"And?"

"There are no bloody lines and I don't have a bloody clue."