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“I’ve got nothing. What about you, Munoz?”

Alicia Munoz shook her head. “Beats me, Lambert. My Abuela said she was a Bruja and did some pretty strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Secret Service Agents Munoz and Dallas Lambert were investigating the objects in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Eleven small pots, burnt wood, a collection of stones and bricks, a bag containing feathers, and a plastic water bottle.

“The eclipse maybe?”

“Maybe. The crazies are coming out of the woodwork over it.”

“Has the suspect said anything, Munoz?”

“Hunt and Murray are doing the interrogation. Let me call in…”

Alicia’s cell rang. “Munoz here.”

“It’s Hunt. You won’t believe it. Suspect’s told us everything.”

“What?”

“He’s Stephen Keller, homeless, in and out of state mental hospitals.”

“So what’s this crazy shit in front of the White House.”

“Get this. He was cursing the President. He was cursing Trump with blindness.”

“What, he wants Trump to look at the eclipse without his protective glasses? That is nuts. Oh, Hazmat’s here. Gotta go.”

I wrote this for the FFfAW Challenge for the Week of August 22, 2017. The idea is to use the image above to craft a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long with 150 being the ideal. My word count is 174 and I had to do a lot of editing to get my original story down to that size.

Yesterday, the “twitterverse” went nuts because President Donald Trump really did look briefly at the solar eclipse without his protective glasses. I saw the video and he glanced up just for an instant and may not have looked directly at the sun. Still, it was a foolish thing to do since even the tiniest bit of exposure can result in eye damage. Nevertheless, I’ve not heard any subsequent reports that he’s suffered from vision loss.

I made up all the stuff about a curse and I have no idea what any of the objects in the photo are used for. I had to think of something, though.

By the way, “Abuela” is “Grandmother” in Spanish and “Bruja” means “witch”.

To read more stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.