WRITING BOOT CAMP - Day 3

* Not sure if it's super rude to upload this incomplete - - but I haven't been able to finish and need to move on to Day 4. So, I'm asking...

How would you end it?

Day 3: Mystery Cookie

One Day you come into work and find a cookie mysteriously placed on your desk. Grateful

to whoever left this anonymous cookie, you eat it. The next morning you come in and find

another cookie. This continues for months until one Day a different object is left—and this

time there’s a note.

            Jon placed his briefcase down on his desk with his usual huff. The train ride that morning had been exceptionally annoying, more so than he was used to. A young mother with a new baby had sat next to him and he knew from that moment on, it was going to be a terrible day. Not that he had anything against women, but babies – seriously? The thought of them gave him the heebie-jeebies. He just couldn’t understand what would possess a person to want to make one of those.

            Jonathon C. Turner never intentionally grew into the cynical, hard man that he was. He simply always had been. Growing up as a morose only child to two middle-class-average parents, he quickly gave off the impression that he was twice his age starting as young as 4. He showed no interest in the usual toys and games that young children adore and his parents were flabbergasted to say the least. He quickly moved through high school flying under the radar as a loner, and as soon as he graduated and had the keys of his new car in hand from his father, he was gone. A phone call once a year at Christmas was the only contact his parents had with him.

            Now, middle aged, unmarried and working as an in house lawyer for what was nationally renowned for being the most insidious bank in America, he was quite content with his life. He had no for a girlfriend or commitment – whenever he needed sex he was quite capable of finding it from one of the girls hovering around the local bars. He had no need for family – the space in his heart that had once held a place for loved ones had grown as cold and barren as his city apartment. He had no need for friends – the social communication he engaged in courtrooms and in the law office were satisfactory enough for him.

            He didn’t know it yet, but this was the start of something new and terrifying.

            On his desk, sitting amongst its’ own crumbs, was a chocolate chip cookie.

            Jon looked about his office in consternation, as if hoping the culprit would be close by. Finding no trace of forced entry or foul play, he returned to the place on his desk where the strange cookie resided. It seemed normal enough, if finding a chocolate chip cookie on your desk in the middle of the morning was normal.

            Jon tentatively took a bite out of the corner and instantly recoiled at the taste. Spitting out what was in his mouth into the stainless steel trashcan beside his desk, he regarded the cookie with mild horror a second time. Something did indeed seem strange about it, upon closer inspection. It seemed, almost, fibrous. Jon broke another piece off and was horrified to find a host of black beetles, dead and with tiny black legs upright and erect, black backs shiny and brown like so many chocolate chips.

-          -

Jon was consumed. Initial emails sent to his fellow employees demanding to know the explanation behind this ‘prank’ turned up fruitless. When similar cookies showed up on his desk for the rest of the days that week, Jon was beside himself with righteous anger. Even though he purchased a camcorder and placed it in his office the cookies continued to show up at different times during the day with no footage of the perpetrator caught.

Jon would visit the bathroom and upon returning, a cookie.

Jon would place a telephone call and when he swiveled his chair around, a cookie.

Jon would open up his notebook in a meeting with clients and there nestled inside, a cookie.

He didn’t know it yet, but this was driving him mad.

Weeks past and Jon could hardly focus on anything other than the mystery of these bug-infested cookies. He regretted throwing away the cookies in the first few weeks, since he now meticulously combed through them for any hint or clue of who was behind this. The cookies, he found, contained different specimens of insects in each one.

In one, bess beetles. In another, blacklegged ticks, carpenter ants, centipedes, click beetles, daddy long leg spiders, dragonflies, ear mites, grasshoppers, crickets, leaf insects, Parnassian butterflies, sphinx moths, termites – Jon’s list of insects grew daily. He filled notebooks with clues and leads that constantly turned up futile. He began to keep specimens of the inedible treats – hoping that somewhere therein he would crack the code.