A False Alarm

Nighttime hush fractures when a single thunderous crash ricochets through clapboard walls, jolting a nosy neighbor into lurid fantasies of foul play; convinced he’s eavesdropping on a homicide, he speed-dials the sheriff, whose badge gleams like a tin god under flickering porch-bulbs. The lawman, all starch and skepticism, tromps through the threshold expecting bloodstains but finds instead a Rube-Goldberg chain of domestic mishaps: toppled coat-rack, shattered aquarium, a terrified tabby ricocheting off furniture, and a half-dressed homeowner clutching a feather duster like a rapier. Realizing the scene exceeds both his modest jurisdiction and IQ, the sheriff whistles up a cavalry of officious specialists—fire marshal, health inspector, even a twitchy postal clerk—each arrival draped in more absurd regalia than the last. Their bureaucratic ritual spirals into carnival as every clipboarded expert discovers a newer, wilder layer of chaos until the original “crime” dissolves into farce, culminating in the revelation that the first thunder-clap was merely a warped screen door slamming shut, leaving the entire brigade red-faced beneath the moon’s sardonic wink.