The Interpretator, Part Two

It was a shame the woman (it had to be a woman - no self respecting man I know would write like that...and the legible handwriting was a pretty clear clue, too) hadn't given much hint as to where the hat was.
But I had an advantage. She was a parent. Parents always hide things in closets. Sometimes the attic, but seriously, no one likes going in the attic, and she was probably afraid of spiders or something, so she probably put it in a closet; likely hers.
That's how my parents were.

So, I was digging around: I found all sorts of things - unpaid bills, Christmas cards separated into two piles, some hole-filled clothing that someone must've meant to fix, bank statements, and some stuff that convinced me most everyone's more kinky than they let on. Man, you just never know someone till you dig through their closet.
But there was no hat. At least, there were hats, but I couldn't find a way to make any of them dangerous. The closest I got was, I looked dangerously queer wearing them. I guess that's something. Maybe they were concerned about the kids cross-dressing or something. Who the hell knows?
I took one last look at the closet.
Yep....
It was a closet.
Odd corners and all. Full of junk, like a closet. Maybe more dented than some - one of the corners looked like it'd been poorly repaired - but, hey, not everyone's an expert.
Ah, maybe they sold it.
So I went downstairs to my couch. And sat. If closets were only full of junk, then I guess couches were only good for sitting. Nothing interesting was going to happen tonight. Same as ever.


I'd been counting the specks on the ceiling. It wasn't one of those sprayed on ones that some houses had, but nonetheless, there were quite a few spots. Must come with having kids. It wasn't entertaining. It beat TV. I was just counting again, even assigning constellations, when something occurred to me. The bedroom, and closet, were directly above this room. There were no odd corners here. In the closet, of course that'd happen on the one side, since there's always some machinery or odd angle in the attic, but on the side where the load-bearing wall was, if there was something there, it should continue down to the ground, unless it was done as some sort of post-modern commentary on the structure of houses, and society, and the family in general. I doubted it was. Unless the whole point of it being hidden away and never seen by anyone was...
No, that was dumb. How many frustrated postmodern architects were there, anyway?
I would check out the closet again, because there was something odd about that angle.

The Interpretator, part 1

Well, I said I'd write for an hour every day...but my mind is not cooperating much right now. How's this for an extremely terrible story? Odd that an unproductive mind has born some fruit.

• THE INTERPRETATOR. INTERPRETATING CRIME.

It was a dark, drizzly day. It always was. Shouldn't even be called day around here.
I was just settling in for a dark, drizzly evening of couchsitting. I wanted to make sure it didn't go anywhere, and, while I wasn't getting paid good money to do it, I was getting something: the opportunity to watch TV in someone else's house.

You might wonder why I don't go home and watch the tube. Well, home doesn't have Japanese game shows. Or Korean soaps. Poorly translated Chinese everything. No, this was definitely a perk of this particular job. And this was a job I intended to see through to the very end.

So, yeah, I was being paid to sit on my ass. Not a bad deal. And not one I was going to leave.

I guess I should mention I was also broke. That also helped make the job.

So I had pretty well settled in, watched a bunch of trash - the usual poorly budgeted soaps from Taiwan, complete with ghosts and insane people setting their homes on fire, some puppet shows, a transcendently beautiful Korean soap that nonetheless was indistinguishable from every other Korean soap ever made, a Japanese show that, as far as I can figure, was about humiliating both children and their parents, and probably some other stuff while I was half-dozing.

I woke up a little when a kung-fu drama came on. It had some guy flying around in what looked like a big red tube. Not sure what that was, but at least it was different. For the hell of it I dug around in the cushions. I'd like to say dag. I really would. But, you know, I'm just real regular about some things, and I guess I'm just gonna keep saying dug. All the usual accumulated crud was back there. I pulled some of the less gross stuff out to see if it was worth anything.

There were the usual keys, bits of popcorn, coins, dead bugs, dog's/children's toys, the remote, just very mundane stuff. I'd wondered about that remote, before. I supposed I could change the channel now, if I wanted. I didn't, though. There was a note, too - "honey, I am putting the speed hat away. I don't want you letting the children near it. It's much too dangerous."

I looked at the crumpled, (soda?)-stained paper again. A dangerous hat?

Well, that sounded better than whatever shit was on TV.