By ED Nobody
We start off our story about a world, a little different then the world you may be accustomed to.
In this world everyone has a special ability, most of the abilities are useless or can only be used by doing something else. Many people never figure out what their ability is in their life time because they never figured out what they had to do to trigger the power.
For example, a thirty-five year old man had the ability to fly, but only if he was falling from a great height, so when this guy went skydiving with his wife he in for a shock as he was able to swoop through the air at will, not even needing the parachute. But the moment he lands on solid ground, he has to fall from a great height again to trigger the flight ability. So it doesn’t come in handy as much as you might think.
Although sometimes the ability can be triggered by something as simple as the wind blowing or if a certain word is said. This is how at times babies display their ability before even getting out of the womb. Since infants can hear within 24 weeks in the womb. So a word could make them turn blue if that’s their power.
Understand?
If not too bad. I’m moving on to the actual story.
One of our main characters is a little girl, about six years old, named El, who has a very interesting ability, she could easily make Tacos appear out of thin air.
All she has to do to trigger this ability is imagine the taco and it will pop into her hands like magic. She can’t make anything else appear, only tacos, and only hard shelled plain tacos. But it isn’t a useless ability, and it is easy to make happen.
So this little girl decided to do what anyone would if they had this power, become a taco sailsman.
Her family decided it was a good idea and her father bought a taco cart to hold other ingredients in case people wanted to dress up their tacos.
Child labor laws do not exist here so don’t complain.
We will come back to that little girl in a bit, but now we’re swinging over to another main character, Keven Crip, a young man in his early twenties, now this character is a detective and a pretty good one at that. Well most of the time.
See this detective has extreme paranoia. He is always worried and paranoid about everything. He can’t pay attention to the world around him long enough to figure out any clues or signs at a crime scene before worrying about stepping on some evidence or thinking about the possibility that he might have left the stove on at home.
This as you can imagine should not have made Keven a good detective, and it didn’t. But his ability gives him superhuman sight did. His ability allows him to see the crime as if it were taking place in front of him when in the room. (This is not just with crimes it also can happen in everyday settings, who ate the last waffle in the freezer, bam he can find it out.) So in other words his ability can solve any mystery as long as he can walk into that room. And of course as long as he has his trigger.
What is his trigger?
Kevens can not use his ability unless he is eating a taco.
I know, that’s a weird trigger, but actually not uncommon, eating a specific type of food can often be someones trigger for their ability.
Well that is enough introductions and information for now, on to the story.
Detective Keven Crip blinked down at the six year old standing in front of him. She was glaring at him with her hands on her hips.
“Wait, sorry… what?” He said, confusion clouding in his light blue eyes.
El rolled her dark brown eyes at him, “I’m making you a deal here. I’ll follow you around and give you tacos whenever you need them, and you’ll pay me by the hour.”
Again Keven just blinked dumbfounded.
The six year old sighed, “you’re the one who comes here like almost every hour,” she exaggerated, “so I’m just trying to help you out. You need tacos to do your job and I make tacos for my job. It’s a win win.”
“It’d be easier and cheaper to just come here when I need more tacos.” Keven quipped his eyebrows drawn together in worry.
“Nope.” El replied with a shake of her head causing her pigtails to flop back and forth.
“What? Why not!?”
“Cuz it’s getting cold, and we’re gonna pack up shop until it warms up.”
This caused a panic to swell up inside of Keven, “wait but where will I go!” He gasped without thinking, just what the manipulative little girl wanted.
She grinned and shrugged, “you could take my offer.” She said, implying that it was the only option.
Panicking, Keven tried to think about his options, he could still go to the other shops and fast food places right, it wouldn’t take too much out of his day and even if they didn’t taste as fresh and good as this places it would still make his ability work.
Unfortunately Keven does not think well under pressure and all throughout his thinking the little girl in pigtails was making clock sounds to further stress him out.
“Times up.” She exclaimed, causing the grown man to jump.
“Ahh!” He yelped, “wait! I was still thinking…”
The six year old held up three fingers, “My offer is going once, going twice,” She now only held up to fingers and as she put down the second finger, the poor detective agreed to her offer, terrible under pressure.
She grinned, “great, I’ll tell my dad.” And then she turned and ran over to her father, who stood by the cart pulling out the ingredients ready to start the day.
“Dad, we aren’t selling tacos today, I got a better idea and decided I want a break over the winter,” El explained, “I’m gonna go learn how to be a detective now, see you at home, bye.” And then she ran back to Keven and forced him to take her to his work.
Her dad just stood there bewildered.
Keven got the short end of the draw that day at work, he was given one of the crazy cases, that only nuncases send in. And of course by law they still had to investigate.
Usually these cases are about someone stealing something from the victim and it turns out to just be misplaced or the culprit being their own cat. A true cat burglar….
Anyway, this case was a little different from normal.
Upon arriving at the victim’s home Keven and El were greeted at the door by a woman in a ghillie suit. Practically no skin showing.
It was a little alarming at first.
Kevens eyes went wide as his mind jumped at the unusual sight while El laughed at how silly this woman appeared in her outfit.
Unfazed the woman quickly ushered them in looked around outside suspiciously and shut the door and locked it. Before turning to her guests, eyeing them both, Keven had his detective badge up, but was still too shocked to say anything.
The woman took off her head piece and narrowed her eyes at them both, “They sure are making young detectives these days,” she griped.
“Ah” Finally finding his voice, Keven gestured to El, “she isn’t really a-” the older woman cut him off.
“I was talking to you sonny.” She snapped, “your partner may be physically a baby but she’s got an old soul. I can just tell.” The odd woman smiled before scowling eyes back on Keven, “you on the other hand have a baby soul that will never be older than five.” She shook her head.
Keven just blinked wondering what she was even saying while El puffed up beside him. Taking over for the poor man, “my names El miss and this young kid here is Keven. What can we help you with?” The little girl’s eyes gleamed with anticipation, bursting to see a crime scene.
“Awe what a sweet child you are.” Replied the ghillie suit wearer, not knowing how wrong she was. “I’m Dr. Sydney Dray and someones trying to kill me.” She said completely serious.
Keven frowned, “do you have any evidence to support this claim?” He asked carefully not wishing for her to snap at him again.
The older woman rolled her grey green eyes and huffed, “the evidence I have is over here.” She lead them down the hall of her large home into the garage where there was no floor.
Since the level of the house went up before coming to garage there was a set of stars that should have lead to the floor of the garage. But where the five set of stairs ends there was still no floor. It looked like the floor had been dug up to the basement.
“Wait I don’t understand, what happened-” Keven began to ask before Sydney flipped the lights on and down in the whole were many crocodiles, now moving about because of the sudden light.
They growled and hissed looking none-too-happy.
“What the…” Stuttered Keven eyes wide.
“Cool!” Gasped El wanting to pet one really back, as she made her way down the couple stairs even though, if she got there she would have to jump several feet down to get to one of the crocs.
“Hold on there girly,” the gray haired woman grabbed the back of El’s hoody pulling her away from danger. “They aren’t toys kiddo.”
“I just wanted to pet him”
“Yeah, and all he wants to do is swallow you whole.”
“Excuse me.” Interjected the detective after taking a couple healthy steps away from the edge. “Why do you have a bunch of alligators in your garage?”
“Crocodiles.” Corrected the woman. “This is the evidence you asked for.” She reminded, rolling her eyes at his daftness.
“Crocodiles are trying to kill you?” asked El.
“Yep. I mean no. someone is sending crocodiles to kill me.” The old Woman explained.
“Someone is sending Crocodiles after you to kill you and that’s why you have… crocodiles in here?” Keven asked slowly.
“Yes, please do keep up David.” The 87 year old woman said exasperated, waving her hand at him.
“Uh it’s Keven actually…” muttered Keven, but the woman wasn’t listening.
“Whenever I am exposed anywhere but home one of those reptiles shows up and chases me! I’ve moved millions of times! This even happened when I was a baby! Someone really wants me to eaten!”
Keven side eyed her, “have they ever hurt you?” he asked, she waved him off, “of course not, I’m too fast for them! Too smart!” She laughed like mad scientist, then shrugged glaring at him, “why do ask.”
“It doesn’t sound like they are trying to kill you, it sounds more like they’re drawn to you or something…” Keven said looking uncomfortable as she stared at him.
“You want a taco?” El piped up.
Keven glanced at her with a frowned, his face showing his stress. “I suppose we can find out why there’s so many crocodiles…” He muttered.
El grinned and made a taco to appear in thin air. She handed it to him and he looked down at the crocs before taking a bite of the taco trying to forget the eyes that were just staring at him.
What if for some reason his power just stopped working, he worried before his ability started working showing him that the reason the crocodiles were there.
He snapped out of his trance and looked at Dr. Sydney Dray.
“So I was right with my hypothesis” He said meekly, “kinda.”
“What? What did you find out?! Is it Doug, my neighbor? I always thought it was Doug…: Sydney said shaking her head hatefully.
“Um no… It’s you…”
“I’m not trying to kill myself with crocodiles you ibicile!” Yelled the weird woman, waving her hand in Kevens face.
“Not-not to kill you…” He gasped ducking away from the vicious woman. “It’s your ability! Everytime you see your reflection it summons a crocodile. That’s why wearing that silly outfit stops you from having a lot more crocodiles show up!”
The scientist frowned, “what? Really?” She tapped her chin for a long moment before shaking her head and laughing, “Mystery solved then!” She grinned, “thank you detective.” she shook his hand demeanor completely changed, making Keven even more anxious and worried.
“What?” He asked confused.
“Now with that problem solved. Who wanted Cookies?” She asked.
Keven just blinked at her, trying to figure out how she could all of a sudden be nice and sweet.
El raised her hand happily, “Me! I love cookies!”
So they had to go eat cookies, and Keven had to write a very odd report that his chief would definitely question him on later.
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