Scavenger Hunt

In between commercials, Jeffrey looked up and saw a note taped to the sliding glass door. He didn’t remember hanging anything up there. Oh wait, it’s on the outside.

“Who would leave me a note?” he thought aloud. He’d been sitting there for the past two hours watching reruns of Cops. Surely he would have noticed something as unusual as a note taped to the door for two whole hours.

Actually, it was quite possible that he just wouldn’t notice, as that was the truth. Unbeknownst to Jeffrey, the note had been there for eighteen hours, forty-seven minutes, and nine seconds.

Summoning his curiosity and willpower into a white-hot ball of motivation, Jeffrey stood up and walked the six paces to the door, then pulled it open, then walked the three paces outside to retrieve the note, then the nine paces back to the couch, then the six paces back to the door that he’d left open, then the six paces back to the ass-cratered spot on the sofa once more.

Jeffrey released a well-deserved grunt as he sat down, followed by a savage, guttural yawn. So powerful was this yawn, in fact, that he fell right asleep as soon as his mouth shut. At least he’d closed that door first.

Four hours later, a man on TV was being chased down the highway by seven police cruisers. In his drunken state, the man didn’t notice that he’d lost his rear passenger-side tire, nor did he notice the torrent of sparks and molten metal the raw wheel was vomiting all over his pursuers. With a stretch and a scratch and a yawn, Jeffrey woke up just in time to see the police perform a risky maneuver to knock the man’s car off the road and into a ditch.

“Blah blah blah behind bars blah blah blah,” the announcer blathered before the show returned to its regularly scheduled shampoo advertisements. Jeffrey’s eyelids started creeping back into their lazy state of drowsy matrimony, but his hands thought otherwise. They issued a full-body state of alert after the discovery of a foreign object in the lap region.

With lightning-quick reflexes, Jeffrey grunted, rolled his head downward, and said “huh?” Bag of Cheetos? No, that’s on the table. Erection? No, he hadn’t had one of those in four days. What could it be? Synapses fired, neurons collided, suns collapsed, and Jeffrey remembered. “Oh, that note.”

There was no mark, no label, no address nor name on the white, legal-sized envelope. The only thing that suggested that it had even been outside its factory womb was the fact that it was sealed and still had a small piece of invisible tape — they called it invisible, but it really wasn’t — sort of transparent — or translucent even — left over from its previous half-assed crucifixion on the outside of the glass door.

Jeffrey slid a fat finger between the flaps and sloppily destroyed their life’s work. Anal-retentive people all over the world moaned and clutched their hearts (all with their left hands) at the lack of order or neatness exhibited in Jeffrey’s act of letter-opening.

Inside the envelope was a single sheet of white printer paper, somehow bleached whiter than white except for a single mustard fingerprint in one corner. “That’s creepy,” Jeffrey pondered, “whoever sent this must’ve been eating something with mustard too!” The gears clicked into place. “Oh wait.”

He continued to anti-dexterously unfold this mystery correspondence. It was typed, as if on a typewriter. Or some other device whereby a person uses mechanical or electronic means to transfer ink in pre-formed letter shapes onto paper without the use of a pen or pencil.

The stress was growing unbearable. First the appearance of the letter, then the opening, and now reading too? Jeffrey needed a nap. Wait, no. No, now wasn’t the time. First, read the letter. Then a nap.

“Go to the payphone on the corner outside your house before nightfall tonight. Take this letter with you, and keep this to yourself.”

“My, wasn’t this interesting?” Jeffrey thought. “Maybe it’s some sort of contest! I better rest up beforehand.” Jeffrey rolled his head to one side, resting his chins on his meaty shoulder.

“Stop! Before nightfall! If I fall asleep, I could miss it. Maybe I should set an alarm…clock…” Out like a 350-pound light. Sleep well, Jeffrey. You’ve earned it.

Meanwhile, down at the phone booth at the corner, there was another note sticking out of the rain-raped yellow pages. The same style as the first – white paper, blank envelope – almost enough to lead one to believe it was written by the same man (which would, in this case, be God’s honest truth). On this piece of paper was typed another set of instructions. “Go to the park on 4th Street, to the bench near the duck pond. Take both of the letters with you, and keep this to yourself.”

Down at the park, where the geese had been trained by years of screaming children to be vicious, unforgiving monsters that feast on the stale, unwanted bread of stale suburban families, there was another note taped beneath the bench. Those who weren’t too busy harassing the waterfowl might find it, pick it up, even read its message. “Go to Andy’s Burgers on Waterfront Drive. Sit in the booth nearest the window, and look in the menus. Take all three letters with you, and keep this to yourself.”

The author would have been tempted to add “and don’t order any burgers, fatty!” if he’d known anything about Jeffrey and his torrid love affair with all things beef.

Aside from a wide variety of made-to-order artery plugs, the menu in the booth at Andy’s Burgers also contained a letter. “Go to the warehouse across the street. Walk in through the alley door next to the dumpster. Take all four letters with you, and keep this to yourself.”

Inside that warehouse – gosh, it could be anything! A camera crew from some reality TV show waiting to give a million dollars! A whole boatload of clowns with balloons! An army of horny strippers on birth control pills and crystal meth!

But it wasn’t any of these things in the warehouse. Detective Foster at the police station would have been happy as a corset-trained anorexic to have seen what was in there. He’d been looking for the contents of that warehouse for over nine months, with no luck. Somehow it had stayed out of the press, and because of that he still had his job.

Yes, if Jeffrey had been adventurous enough, had been energetic and lively enough, had been willing to get off his fat ass, he would have walked into that warehouse to find a man with an axe, poised by that alley door like a coiled cobra. Big man. Big axe, too. His balding skull wouldn’t have stood a chance.

If Jeffrey had been more lively, he would have ended up dead; his cranium split, his brains spilt. That chunk there, that’s fifth grade math class. That little spot on the wall, that’s the (incorrect) lyrics to the Beegees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” Clearly Jeffery’s death would have been a crushing blow against humanity (not to mention against Jeffrey himself).

Luckily, Jeffrey was a lazy bastard. Lucky for Jeffrey, anyway. Unlucky for Detective Foster. And certainly unlucky for curious little nine-year-old Tommy Brown and his three buddies who stopped by Andy’s Burgers on their way home from school. No sobriety for Detective Foster this week. No sir.