This, That, and the Other

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of you earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 10th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

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This was originally published on July 10, 2017. It was my response to the WordPress Daily One-Word Prompt (caper).

Crappy Caper

Two thugs grab me off the street, pull a burlap sack over my head, and toss me into the back of a van. One of the ruffians is waiting in the driver’s seat, starts the engine, and speeds away while the two who grabbed me use ropes to secure my hands and feet in the back of the van.

I hear the driver ask his fellow kidnappers, “Where to now, guys?

The two men in the back of the van look at each other, which of course I can’t see because I have a burlap sack over my head, but which I imagine they would do when confronted with such a question.

One of them shouts to the driver, “Bruno, this whole caper was your idea. Don’t you have a plan or are you flying by the seat of your pants?”

“Dunno,” replies Bruno. “Hadn’t thought that far in advance. Ask the guy we grabbed what he thinks.”

“So, whaddya think?” one of the kidnappers in the back of the van asks me.

“Surprise me.”

“Hey Bruno, he says to surprise him.”

“No way,” Bruno calls back. “I’m going to drive around in circles until he tell us where to take him.”

“Take me home,” I yell back at the driver.

“Ha, ha, very funny,” Bruno replies. “Vinny, break one of his thumbs unless he tells you where we should take him.”

“Okay, Vinny, let’s not be hasty,” I say to whichever one of the kidnappers with me in the back of the van is Vinny. “This is an important decision. Give me a second to ponder it.”

“You got a minute to decide.”

I quickly toss around some options in my head. It can’t be in the city. They could drive the van around to the side of an abandoned building, pull me out of the van, and move me into the building without being noticed. Not a building.

Not a forest either. They could drive the van deep into the woods and no one would be around to see or hear me. So not a forest.

“Break his freakin’ thumb already,” I hear Bruno yell from the driver’s seat. “I’m using up all the gas.”

“Wait, wait!” I plead. “Give me just a few seconds more.”

An island is surrounded by water. You can’t drive a van right up to an island. They’d have to lift me out of the van and move me to a boat in order to get to the island. Surely someone would see a man with a burlap sack over his head, hands and feet bound, being carried by a couple of thugs from a van to a boat, and would call the police. Or maybe I’d be able to figure out a way to free myself and get away.

“Take me to an island,” I say.

“He says an island,” Vinny yells up to Bruno.

“What island?” Bruno yells back.

“What island?” Vinny asks me.

“Oh for crissake. What kind of incompetent, bumbling kidnappers are you three, anyway? This is your goddam crappy caper.”

“That’s right,” yelled Bruno from the front of the van, “but it’s your goddam crappy nightmare.”

My eyes flutter open and I stretch my arms out after waking up from my brief nap. “I just had the strangest dream,” I say aloud to no one in particular.