“The Joke”

Author’s Note: This is a Take Ten to Write story and has not been proofread for errors. If I feel inspired or if there’s interest in the story, I’ll post a revised, edited, and extended version at a later date. Happy reading!

Prompt: Write a story titled “The Joke”.

It was supposed to be a joke. Like a ha-ha funny joke, not an oh-my-gosh-someone’s-here-to-kill-me-I’m-actually-really-scared-can-this-please-stop-now joke.

I think you can tell which one it turned out to be.

I swear, I never intended for it to happen. How was I to know that the murder mystery party that I ordered would end with my friends all getting murdered because they were too dumb to figure out the stupid clues?!

Okay, I guess I should give you a bit of context. My best friend, Glen, is–was–completely terrified of murder mysteries. He couldn’t even get through murder mystery comedy movies because he’d think that the murderer would jump out of the screen at him and slit his throat.

I remember when I first heard of those murder mystery parties that you can order. Everything’s set up for you, and all you have to do is give them an address. So, when his birthday came around, it was the obvious choice.

I just thought that it would be hilarious for him to actually live out a murder mystery. Okay, I won’t lie; I also hoped that it’d help him see that watching a movie about it isn’t nearly as scary as being in one so that he’d be more willing to watch them with me.

But, as you can see, it didn’t exactly turn out that way.

Why am I the only one left alive? Well, I was the elected murderer by the party company. And I always take my job–no matter how small–seriously.

So, officer, do you have any more questions for me or am I free to leave?

Final Comments: I really liked writing the narration style for this one.

Overall Rating: 😲