The Prize Patrol

Someone was knocking at the door. Clem and Elvira had recently retired, and were relaxing in their his-n'-hers recliners, watching "Wheel of Fortune" on the Game Show Network and eating their lunch when the visitors came calling. As usual, it was Elvira who got up to answer the door as the knocking continued.

Elvira peered cautiously through the peephole in the solid steel door. Through the distortion of her cataracts and the fish-eye lens in the door, she could make out a group of three people surrounded by colorful globes, with the one in the middle holding something large, white, and rectangular. She decided to open the door as far as the security chain would allow to get a better look at them.

"SURPRISE!!!", shouted the smiling trio standing in the shade of the front porch. Now, Elvira could clearly make out the images of two pretty, well-dressed women, each holding a bouquet of balloons, flanking a nice-looking, well-groomed man in a three-piece gray suit holding a giant check with the Publishers Clearinghouse logo in the lower right hand corner. Elvira couldn't believe her eyes as she looked beyond the three to see a smiling man with a large video camera emerge from behind the nice, clean cream-colored minivan parked by the mailbox marked Culpepper.

"CLEM!", Elvira excitedly called to her crotchety old husband of 45 years, "CLEM! We finally won the Publishers Clearinghouse!! After all these years!" Clem jumped from his La-Z-Boy as nimbly as his old joints would allow, and joined his wife at the front door. His toothless jaw dropped wide open as he read the entry for "Ten Million Dollars" on giant prop check.

"That's right, Mr. and Mrs. Culpepper!", exclaimed the smiling man in the gray suit, "Today is your LUCKY DAY as we award you the GRAND PRIZE of TEN MILLION DOLLARS on behalf of the Publishers Clearinghouse! Congratulations!"

"Oh, my Lord!", exclaimed Elvira once more. "Come in, everyone! Come in!" She then toddled off to the kitchen to bring her much-welcomed guests some coffee, while Mr. Culpepper stood with his toothless grin, offering his guests his own personal recliner to sit in (which said volumes since not even Elvira was allowed to sit in "his chair").

Elvira had returned with an old wooden tray with several coffee mugs as one of the pretty ladies of the group closed the door behind them. Neither of the elders had noticed as her nimble fingers turned the deadbolt, locking them all in. Suddenly, something seemed very out-of-place to both of them.

"I notice that Ed McMahon and Alex Trebek isn't with you", Elvira said with a slight edge of skepticism to her words.

"Ed and Alex ain't comin', Lady!", said the man in the gray suit as he dropped the giant cardboard check that had concealed his .45 Auto with a silencer affixed to the muzzle, causing a startled Mrs. Culpepper to drop the tray she was carrying. The mugs shattered as they hit the floor, scalding her ankles with the splash-back from the boiling hot coffee.

He ordered them both to lay face-down on the floor of their living room as the pretty ladies tied their hands behind their backs with the many long strings of their balloon bouquets while the cameraman began ransacking the house, filling his camera bag with anything of value he could find. But frustratingly enough for the thieves, the Culpeppers had only a few antique figurines and a few pieces of jewelry, making such an elaborate heist hardly worth the effort.

"Where's the money? You old people always have money hidden away, so cough it up, ol' man!"

"We don't have any money here," Elvira tearfully replied. "We're broke! That's why we even let you in!" Then came the weird muffled sound of a silenced round fired into her husband's lumbar spine, paralyzing him instantly.

"I ain't jokin', bitch! WHERE'S YOUR MONEY?" the man yelled to the now hysterical old woman.

"Geez, Bill! Someone's coming up the back door!", said the male accomplice. "Let's beat it!"

And then the quartet made haste in their escape through the door they entered, but not before the ringleader fired another slug into each of their heads, killing them instantly.

A concerned neighbor (and fellow retiree) had seen what had transpired, and thought the celebration had been taking too long, and called the police. As he entered through their back door to witness the gruesome sight of the elderly corpses in a spreading pool of blood, bound by the tethers of the huge, gaily-colored balloon bouquets, the escaping murderers were greeted by several squad cars full of armed officers, and surrendered without a fight.

Truly tragic that the celebration was so short-lived, even if the would-be thieves got theirs in the end!