The light flickered twice before it came back on.
The blanket of silence that covered the room was so thick you could have cut it into neat little slices with a good, sharp knife, bleeding no more than a sigh or a gasp here and there, perhaps a brief whistle of wind from the storm that raged outside. Ten figures stood frozen around a dinner table laden with enough food to for an army of half-starved urchins. There was everything there from the traditional stuffed turkey to fois gras on tiny, crisp little bits of toast, glistening mounds of black pearls heaped on uneven circles of home-made blinis, crowned with just a touch of sour cream. Platters and bowls of butter-soaked vegetables and various incarnations of potatoe crowded the space between the two parade-lines of plates on either side of the table. Everything glittered and glowed in turn as the lights flickered and the light of the candles gained importance and lost it again.
Not one of the perfectly-turned out figures surrounding the table spared the food a glance, though. Ten pairs of eyes were fixed on an eleventh form, slumped in its chair, cheeks still ruddy from too many toast of red wine, a stain that looked like wine but was not slowly spreading on his bleached and starched shirt like a demented Rorschach test. There was a hole there, right in the middle of all that red, but nothing in the vincinity that fit it.
A single scream ripped apart the silence, breaking the spell.
Hours later, little numbered plaquets grazed between congealing, graying food. The ten live figures and the one dead one had vanished, along with the herd of policemen that heeded their call. The only movement in the room was a single drop of condensation meandering its way down the outside of a vase of crimson roses.There! That's what I came up with. A mini who-done-it (or maybe what-done-it?). Like?
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