Hooverville: 500-word Flash Fiction

Duct Tape Is For Amateurs (Comedy)

Harvey is an idiot, and I told him so through the wire mesh last Wednesday during visiting hours.

Just what had he been thinking, kidnapping some rich banker's wife like that?

He'd been sneaky about it, though, had to hand him that. None of us'd noticed he'd broken up the concrete floor of his tool shed, converted it into a subterranean cell with a pinewood roof and padded it with old blankets to muffle the lady's screams for help.

Guess he thought he'd only have to keep her down there for a couple of days tops before her husband coughed up a nice stack of ransom money and he'd be rolling in it for life. Ha.

When he'd placed the ransom call, the guy told Harvey his wife was in Cancun on vacation, thank God, and that he finally had some well-deserved peace and quiet. Piss off. Or better yet, keep her.

I can just imagine. Harvey, hands sweaty on the phone, trying hard to convince this guy that his wife wasn't in no damn Cancun, she was locked up in a cell under his tool shed! And he'd better pay up, or. . .or. . .

The guy hung up on him. Laughing.

And what does Harv do? Gets drunk. Doesn't even notice when a cavalcade of black & whites with a canine unit in tow clogs up his driveway. The lights and barking had all of us at our windows and twitching curtains within seconds. All of us except Harvey. They surprised him in his Laz-y-Boy, surrounded by a carpet of empty beer cans, half-eaten microwave burrito on his lap and a cop show blaring from the TV.

See, Harvey had thought he'd thought of everything -- even to tie the lady's wrists and ankles with duct tape -- but he'd forgotten to take her purse. Left it in a corner of the cell. Once she'd worked her hands free, she'd gone right for her phone and called her boyfriend, five of her best friends, her lawyer, her mother and the police.

In that order.

Then she just sat and waited. While Harvey planned his next brilliant move through a haze of alcohol fumes and cop dialogue.

On the other side of the mesh in the visitor's room of the county jail, Harvey's slumped form and orange prisoner's suit made him look like a depressed traffic cone.

"Bye, Harvey," I said to him, rapping my knuckles on the scuffed wood as I got up to leave. "Oh, and -- message from the neighbourhood -- next time, use clothes-line wire like a normal person, okay? How many times do we have to tell you? Duct tape is for fucking amateurs."