footprints

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — April 12th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your 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.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on any day this past year and link to that post in a comment.

How about it? 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 Flashback Friday 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.

This was originally posted on April 12, 2018 on this blog.

#writephoto — The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Footprints

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“This is weird.” Pointing toward the rocks, Jon said, “These footprints in the sand seem to start over there at rocks, but they end right here in front of us.”

“Not only that,” Jon’s buddy, Steve, said. “But look how far apart they are. It’s like the guy who made them was running.”

“But what could he have been running from?” Jon asked. “This place seems to be deserted. I haven’t seen another soul all day.”

“They’re pretty large footprints,” Steve observed. “They are from a man’s shoes.”

Both young men looked around, concerned that perhaps they weren’t alone on the island.

“What happened to him? Why did the footprints disappear?” Jon wondered aloud. “It’s not like the high tide washed them away. We’re too far from the water’s edge for that to have happened.”

“I think we need to head back to the boat and get off this island. Something weird is going on here,” Steve said.

“Fine by me,” Jon responded. “I’m thirsty, anyway.”

As the two started heading to where they had left their small boat, they noticed a whirring sound coming from overhead. They both looked up simultaneously to see a strange looking, cigar-shaped object hovering above them. “What the hell is that?” Jon asked.

But before Steve could answer, two beams of light engulfed the two men and they suddenly found themselves becoming elevated and carried up toward the cigar-shaped object.

At some point later Jon awoke to find himself strapped to a table with some strange looking creatures staring down at him. He looked over to his right and saw Steve similarly strapped down. Steve was also waking up.

“Well,” Jon said. “I think the mystery of the disappearing footprints has been solved.”

Written for this week’s Thursday Photo Prompt from Sue Vincent. Photo credit: Sue Vincent.

MLMM Saturday Mix Lucky Dip — Stranger on a Train

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Detective Fred Morrisey had his eye on the mysterious man wearing a fedora and reading a book at the other end of the train car. After a while, the man put down his book, looked at his watch, took out a pipe, lit it, and started puffing away. Morrisey found this strange as the car they were in was clearly designated as a no smoking car.

As if on cue, another man stood up from the middle of the train car, walked to the back of the car, and handed a filmstrip to the man Morrisey had been watching. The other man left the train car through the door at the back, while pipe-smoker put down his pipe and held up the filmstrip to the light.

The train headed into a tunnel and the interior lights went out, leaving the passengers in total darkness for a few seconds before the lights came back on. The man Morrisey had been watching was gone.

Morrisey ran to the back of the car, pushed open the sliding door and looked outside. He saw footprints in the sandy ground leading away from the tracks. The train was going around a sharp curve at maybe five miles an hour. Morrisey figured the guy he was after had jumped and Morrisey decided to jump and follow the footprints.

Morrisey jumped, rolled on the ground, and just missed coming to rest on a spiky cactus. He stood up, brushed himself off, and started to follow the man’s trail.

It didn’t take long before Morrisey found the man’s body lying face down in the desert sand, a large knife sticking in his back. Morrisey searched the dead man’s body looking for the filmstrip he was handed on the train. It wasn’t on him. No wallet, no ID, no watch, either.

“Shit,” Morrisey said out loud. Then he thought, One dead body and not a step closer to the truth.

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Saturday Mix Lucky Dip, where the story cubes are knife, pipe, person in a hat reading, tram/train, stopwatch, filmstrip, cactus, and footprints.

MLMM Saturday Mix Lucky Dip — Sabotage

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The thickening clouds covered the moon, making it necessary for the saboteurs to break out their flashlights as they climbed the steep hill. Chuck used the chainsaw to cut away the thick underbrush leading up to the radio tower. Ed tapped on his satchel to make sure he’d brought the dynamite. He had.

When the two men finally finished the long, arduous climb to the top of the hill, Ed strategically placed the dynamite around the base of the radio tower while Chuck set up a receiver to respond to a remote signal from his laptop that would trigger the explosion when the two were safely down the hill.

At midnight, the radio tower at the heart of this major city’s communications was destroyed and the city was in chaos.

As luck would have it, heavy thunderstorms hit the area shortly after the tower fell, and that pretty much obliterated any of the footprints of the saboteurs, who, to this day, remain at large.

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Saturday Mix Lucky Dip, where the story cubes are a flashlight, dynamite, footprints, chainsaw, radio tower, heart, and clouds

#writephoto — The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Footprints

Fandango27 Comments

img_1204“This is weird.” Pointing toward the rocks, Jon said, “These footprints in the sand seem to start over there at rocks, but they end right here in front of us.”

“Not only that,” Jon’s buddy, Steve, said. “But look how far apart they are. It’s like the guy who made them was running.”

“But what could he have been running from?” Jon asked. “This place seems to be deserted. I haven’t seen another soul all day.”

“They’re pretty large footprints,” Steve observed. “They are from a man’s shoes.”

Both young men looked around, concerned that perhaps they weren’t alone on the island.

“What happened to him? Why did the footprints disappear?” Jon wondered aloud. “It’s not like the high tide washed them away. We’re too far from the water’s edge for that to have happened.”

“I think we need to head back to the boat and get off this island. Something weird is going on here,” Steve said.

“Fine by me,” Jon responded. “I’m thirsty, anyway.”

As the two started heading to where they had left their small boat, they noticed a whirring sound coming from overhead. They both looked up simultaneously to see a strange looking, cigar-shaped object hovering above them. “What the hell is that?” Jon asked.

But before Steve could answer, two beams of light engulfed the two men and they suddenly found themselves becoming elevated and carried up toward the cigar-shaped object.

At some point later Jon awoke to find himself strapped to a table with some strange looking creatures staring down at him. He looked over to his right and saw Steve similarly strapped down. Steve was also waking up.

“Well,” Jon said. “I think the mystery of the disappearing footprints has been solved.”

Written for this week’s Thursday Photo Prompt from Sue Vincent. Photo credit: