"Ingenious" she said "Who would have thought the Solomon Islands would have made the perfect evil villain hideaway?"

Troy looked over. "That is what you are most surprised at?" She nodded her affirmation. Troy shook his head. "The fact he used a ferret to grab a black sharpie which in turn triggered the button doesn't surprise you?"

"Afraid not but there's another twist for you darling."
"Really" Troy replied deceptively calmly. She pulled the pistol from her bag just as Troy shot her. "Surprise, nothing is surprising in these old crime novels..." said Troy ending the book.

“Erica, PLEASE! Not the ferret too!”
Sherrita wasn’t about to let her older friend take everything without a fight.

Erica pulled the black sharpie from her purse and inked the address on the pet carrier. She wasn’t certain how the rodent would adapt to life on the Solomon Islands, but she did know one thing. In a few years, Sherrita would be old enough to understand it all completely—and that was enough for now.

So there we were, flying over the Solomon Islands, just me and the ferret together at last, when the pointy tooth little bugger grabbed the last black sharpie right out of my hand and, to my astonishment, wrote on the surface of the lowered tray table next to his vodka tonic in perfect bloc letters, "Oh look, a baby squirrel!"

THE END

The future of the human race had been decided by a lone ferret, scribbling with a black Sharpie on a rock in the Solomon Islands.

"Before you sail ... why is the ferret named Gomez?"

"When he hops around playing, he looks like Gomez Adams dancing.

"Ah. That explains his mustache."

"Yeah, Gomez didn't much like it when I drew it on with a black Sharpie, but I couldn't resist."

"So what happens now?"

"After Gomez saved my life, I promised him all the papaya he can eat, so we're bound for the Solomon Islands. After that, where ever the trade winds take us."

From my forthcoming (but yet already best-selling and critically acclaimed) avant-garde work, Hey, You Over There! Hand Me That Garden Hose!: A Study In Abstraction in The Peculiar Style of E.E. Cummings (copyright Kyle C. Lent). Here is the dramatic close of the work:

----------------------------------------

Ferret.   F -     E - rret. (Fer-ret)

The...
     ...(Solomon)...
                      ...Islands, (for this is our destiny) - or perhaps only a desti-NATION?

ABLACK SHARP - sharpprahs .    E (a black sharpie.)

The End

----------------------------------------

Excellent offerings, one and all, although Kyle's will serve only to reinforce certain unfortunate stereotypes applied to musicians.

I particularly like:

*Deborah's allusion to Gomez Addams (the intentional misspelling was designed to throw us off-track), who dances a mean tango...

*Kelly's optimism about the willingness of a long rat to care about the human race...

*Jim's inclusion of a reference to a vodka tonic, and the clues to the overarching theme of his story contained in the resulting acrostic...

*Sherrita's--um, Sherry's recognition that old people are just ruthless enough to do whatever in the Sam Hill they feel like doing...

*Rachel's obvious channeling of her inner Texan, including as she did a pistol, which I'm pretty sure was a blue-steel Colt Python .357 Magnum with a 6" barrel. But, that's just a guess.

Now, if you'll kindly collaborate with one another to tie all of those themes together, I think HBO might have another hit on its hands.

sigh...

I know, Kyle. ee was misunderstood, as well.

How did you ever guess that's which pistol I was talking about Eric? hehe.

The ferret struggled free of the cage and escaped just as the Cessna twin engine plane wobbled to a halt on the Solomon Islands' asphalt runway that was as short and thin as a black Sharpie. And that's how we knew, Eric was the real killerl

I win! I win!

Eric! You closed comments on the "Key" contest, just as I found it. Dagnabbit! Please add mine to it. Oh, come on, be a sport. For old times' sake.

"NO!" she cried as the snap of the key breaking in the lock echoed off the walls of the porch above even the crashing of the surf breaking on the keys behind her."

Points for a head-shaking image?

John, I would have given you bonus points had you used "cays," since it can be pronounced "keys" but only the truly gifted and insightful know it.

Oof, you have educated me. So the Florida Keys, Key West, Key Largo, all are misnamed! Curses! Foiled again! I fall into the depths of cliché. (I hope that accented 'e' displays properly). Cays. . . Keys. . . Let's call the whole thing off.

No need to shred your writer's guild card just yet. "Keys" with a long e is an acceptable alternative pronunciation.

But, I am pretty sure we've thoroughly thrashed that dead horse!

Uh... you're going to have to help me out on the whole acrostic thing. Now if you had said Lacrosse Stick, you would have been right on. One of those appears in the scene right before that one.

I'm not responsible for what I read between your lines. ;-)