Who Killed the Muffin Man? (Flash Fiction)

#WP You’re climbing into bed, trying not to wake up your sleeping spouse. Suddenly, your spouse sits up and says “I killed the muffin man,” and then falls back to sleep.

– Jacquelyn Gilchrist
– 1/10/2018
– Posted in Writing Prompts Group on Facebook

Would you kill for these?
Well, if that didn’t beat all! The best end to a miserable day! My sleeping husband confessed to murdering my favorite pastry baker!

It wasn’t bad enough that the subway stalled this morning and I was 45 minutes late for work. Then someone jammed the copier and walked off, leaving me to clear it before I could use it. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The cafeteria was out of chicken salad. I got ink all over my hands while loading it into the date stamper. The train was re-routed on the way home, and the trip took an extra hour.

On the walk from the subway stop to my home, I passed my favorite pastry shop, The Muffin Man. I was surprised to find it closed, with police tape over the door. I supposed that someone had burglarized the place, and determined that I would find out the next day what happened. This place made the best carrot muffins in the world. I could not imagine life without them.

My husband had made dinner and left a plate of it for me to warm up in the microwave: macaroni with half-melted gouda cheese, pinto beans and mashed potatoes. I’ll have to remind him of the five food groups. I ate about half of it before my stomach told me not to send any more of it down my esophagus.

George was already in bed when I got home. I had to climb over him, trying not to wake him. He sat up, startling me so that I fell over to my side and banged against the wall. Staring straight ahead, he said, “I killed the muffin man.” Then he fell back and went back to sleep.

This was nothing new. George often talked in his sleep. On the other hand, he had never confessed to murder before.

This was the proverbial final straw. I lay awake the rest of the night, thinking and plotting what I would do to George if I found out the next day that he had killed the owner of the store and deprived me of my daily carrot muffin. It would be slow and it would hurt — a lot!

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4 thoughts on “Who Killed the Muffin Man? (Flash Fiction)”

    1. Well, it’s a toss-up between carrot muffins and pumpkin muffins as far as I’m concerned, but I didn’t want to confuse my readers with too much to take in! 😉

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