[ WP ] You 're a low class detective washing clothes one day when one of your socks go missing . So like any good detective you decide to slip a sock onto your hand as a puppet and interrogate the other socks .

A standard laundry room, one of the fluorescent lights is flickering, giving the room an eerie feeling to it. The walls are painted green, and the laundry machines are green as well. One of the five machines is turned on. The clock ticks just past ten in the evening and midnight is just around the corner. Someone is sleeping on the table in the back, a man with a classy brownish fedora over his face and a matching trench coat rolled up as a pillow beneath his head. He is quite fit, he has a shabby beard and long, frizzy hair. He is snoring loudly, almost wheezing, like he has been smoking since he was ten years old. He looks like he is about his mid-thirties, probably single since he reeks of booze on a Tuesday night like this one. 
 
 The man on the table is Detective Ace Hardy, a private eye who hasn ’ t worked in two weeks now. He ’ s finally taken his time to do his laundry, imagining that it will be like the start of a new chapter in his life. As the loud machine comes to a sudden stop, which leaves the room in a very unnerving silence. He comes to, sits up, and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He gazes over at the machine, wanting it to continue its soothing lullaby and hoping that he could sleep for just a few more minutes. Ace stands up, and walks over to the machine. He looks at it with an angry frown, like he hated the machine. 
 
 He grabs his purple basket, which he brought his laundry down here with. And starts to pick his clothes out of the machine, and after he ’ s made sure everything is out. He picks up the basket, and kicks the hatch closed with a loud bang. Then he walks over to the dryer, and hauls the clothes inside before starting it. Then he takes a seat on the table he slept on, finds a small bottle of bourbon in his coat, and sits there and sips, while the dryer does what it does best. 
 
 The sound of the machine is falling away, further and further away, until he can ’ t hear it at all. His mind is completely blank, the headache from drinking too much is silencing every other thought. He almost feels the sleep coming back to him, but just as he is about to fall asleep again, a loud crash makes him snap out of it. 
 
 He dashes up, and looks around him, trying to make out what that crash was. The dryer has stopped, he fell asleep after all. He notices his bottle of cheap alcohol lying in pieces on the floor. He ’ s first relived by the fact that there was nothing more serious, but when he realizes he smashed his bottle of liquor, he gets sad and angry. He mumbles some curse words through the corner of his mouth and steps over to the dryer. Starting to pick out his warm clothes. He takes a handful of shirts and socks and buries his face in it, feeling the warm cloth on his face is nice. He imagines it to be the bosom of Emily Bonnet, his fine next door neighbor who he has a little crush on. 
 He takes the basket of clothes out on the table, and pours all the clothes from the basket over it. Starts sorting it in piles across the table, shirts, underwear, socks and pants. Then he starts folding the pieces one by one, and putting them in the basket again. Until he reaches the socks, then he stops and looks at the pile of black and white socks. There is something wrong, six black socks, but only five white ones. He spreads out the socks across the table. And looks at them with a puzzled face, then he smiles and takes up some valium, swallows a handful of pills and then he takes one of the black socks and puts it on his hand. 
 
 “ I know you have something to do with this Roy! I can feel it. ” Ace yells at his socks, wearing one sock on each hand, both black. 
 
 “ I don ’ t know what you ’ re talking about, Campbell. This is insane! I haven ’ t done shit, I want my phone call! ” he replies to himself, moving his left hand like a sock puppet. 
 
 “ I know you know what I ’ m talking about, the sudden disappearance of Felicity McSockly! ” 
 
 “ I know nothing of this! ” He keeps using his hands as sock puppets, and shouts their lines with different voices. 
 
 “ We ’ ll see about this, I ’ m going to crack this case wide open tonight, and you ’ re not going anywhere. “ 
 
 He rips the sock on his left hand off and he takes on of the white ones. He puts it on, and has the black sock questioning the white. 
 
 “ Mrs. Thorne, you ’ re a smart woman, you wouldn ’ t lie to me would you? ” His right hand say ’ s to his left. 
 “ Why I would never! ” the white sock replies. 
 
 “ Where were you between eight and nine this evening, before the laundry room? Did you see Felicity anywhere tonight? ” 
 
 “ I was minding my own, coming home from doing some grocery shopping that ’ s all. But I did see a man entering Felicity ’ s apartment somewhere around that time. ” 
 
 “ Describe the man entering her apartment please. ” 
 
 “ Well, he was a man with a black suit. It might have been that boy Duncan from the second floor, he seemed like he was up to no good. ” 
 
 “ Don ’ t you worry Mrs. Thorne, I ’ ll have a talk with Duncan right away. ” 
 
 Ace pulls of the white sock, and picks up another black sock and puts it on his hand. 
 
 “ Hey, Duncan, wait up! ” Ace yells with his right hand to his left. 
 
 “ What ’ s up detective? ” His left answers. 
 
 “ What where you doing in Felicity ’ s apartment earlier this evening? ” But as soon as he finishes that sentence, his left hand starts moving away quickly and he is yelling in a high pitched voice like a madman. 
 
 “ Stop in the name of the law! ” Ace yells as he pulls out his gun with his right hand and aims it at his left. The left hand raises all five fingers and freezes in place. 
 
 “ What the fuck? ” comes from a female voice over by the entrance. It ’ s the young and beautiful Emily Bonnet. As Ace looks up and sees the lovely young woman, and the way she looks at him like he ’ s a freak. He too freezes in place. Aiming his pistol with his right hand at his left hand, and looking at Emily dead in the eyes. There is only one way out of this situation. 
 
 Ace shoots himself quickly through the eye splashing his blood across the ugly green wall. And that is the story of Detective Ace Hardy. 
 
 

