Yesterday when I came home from the studio I noticed drops of blood on my front porch.

I immediately joked “Oh, look! A killer came to visit!” Then I thought of my pets inside the house. What if the house was broken into and my cats and dog were harmed? I opened the door, checked the animals and found everyone sleeping, unscathed. I looked around on the floor and carpet for signs of more blood but saw nothing. It seemed to be confined to the outdoors. I went back out to the porch to examine the blood drops and noticed on the white porch post, right above the hand rail, a huge blood splash. The kind of splash you’d see if someone took a blood-soaked sponge and flung it against a wall. Now it was looking more serious. I walked across the porch to a wicker chair in the corner and noticed the seat of the chair was covered in blood. It appeared that someone with very bloody pants had sat there for awhile. Huge blood drops were also under the chair and splashed all over the front window. This was starting to look like a crime scene.

I tried to determine what would cause all of that blood. I didn’t even want to consider it was human. Did an animal get hurt and run onto the porch for shelter? It would need to be an animal that could somehow get up on that handrail. But there were no bloody paw prints. It could have been a bird, I suppose. There was too much blood though. Do birds even have that much blood in their bodies? I guess a couple of birds could have had an MMA-style melee on the front porch. Still, no signs of feathers, prints, drag marks, anything. Just lots and lots of blood.

I decided in order to be safe it would be a good idea to call the police. There might have been an incident I didn’t know about where one of my neighbors had been murdered in the night and the police would gain additional information knowing what direction the murderer went after committing the crime. It could be the killer pondered knocking on my front door to… I don’t know… borrow some Lava soap and a Tide Stick then had a last minute change of plans. It does sound silly but, contrary to popular speculation, I have no idea how an insane person thinks.

I dialed the police and the dispatcher did seem somewhat concerned. I didn’t want her to think I was just some nut, so I tried to play up the part about the blood. It’s difficult to impress a police dispatcher so I felt I really needed that prop in order to be taken seriously. I think it might have worked. She said an officer would be out soon.

I wasn’t sure if I should meet the officer out front when he/she arrived. I’m not sure how alarmed he/she would be when the “bloody porch” call came across the radio. Maybe they would send two cars. Or three. I didn’t want to appear overly anxious or suspicious but I also felt like I should help the officers in locating the house. When I saw the squad car come up the street, I went onto the  porch to wave him in.

There probably isn’t a more suspicious looking picture than a 6′ 5″ hairy man in a kilt standing on a bloody porch waving at the police. In fact, I think it’s the very scenario they use in Police Academy for determining when it’s okay to fire your weapon without giving warning. The officer cautiously got out of his car and walked up the driveway to my house. I explained the whole situation to him and showed him each giant blood pool. I thought we’d bond a bit if he knew my detective work was solid so I told him I had already checked for bloody fingerprints around the door and windows but found nothing. I think I may even have used the word “perpetrator ” a couple of times. While he looked around I cleared away some of the junk on the porch to make room for the mobile crime lab technicians that would soon arrive. I’m sure they use a lot of big, fancy equipment.

Almost immediately I began getting the feeling the officer wasn’t impressed with the rivers of blood flowing from my front porch. In fact, I think he would have been more concerned if the porch was dripping with marshmallow creme.

“It was probably some animal,” he said in an exhale; the kind that usually precedes “you dumbass.” “Maybe a fox or a coyote drug something up there.”

“Like what, a roadrunner?” I asked.

I mean, I didn’t ask that but I wish I did. I started feeling sorry for the family who had been ghastly murdered the night before and would not be getting a proper police investigation. I wondered which house they lived in and if they had mowed their lawn more recently than I’d mowed mine.

At that point it hit me. I could see it in the police officer’s eyes. I was going to be that guy’s story down at the station for the next several weeks. All the officers would be standing around their cars telling  crazy perpetrator stories about arresting meth-crazed homeless men and drunk, braless women in filthy, “beater” tank tops. His new kilt story would top them all.

“Hey, here’s one!” he’d say. “Did I tell you about the guy in the skirt who called in because a sparrow cut itself shaving on his porch?”

They would all cackle loudly and instinctively grab their holsters to steady their gun butts, preventing the wobble of their bellies from accidentally firing off a round. “Judging by that dress he had on maybe it was just ‘his time of the month!'”

That would be the evening’s big closer joke. They would roar again, toss down their cigarettes and get in their taxpayer-funded police cars to drive home for the evening. Most of them would take a few moments to look up my website so they could get an actual image of the person they were cruelly laughing at. Seriously, people this kind of police bullying has got to stop!

Early this morning I awoke remembering that “a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” I got out of bed and quietly walked to the living room window that overlooks the front porch. There on the stained wicker chair was a big, orange cat staring up at the bird feeder on my porch. His eyes darted around the sky every time a fat little morsel flew around the feeder. He was clean. Must have been unlucky in his hunt at that point. I opened the front door and he quickly darted off. He hid behind a tree and stuck his head around to give me a final look. “Go on!” I said and he scampered away.

“Mystery solved,” I thought. In a flash, a hooded man sprung out of the bushes and plunged a knife into my heart and upper torso. Probably around 37 times. Blood pulsed all over the walls of my porch, the doors, the windows and on that stupid wicker chair. My limp body dropped onto the porch and the stranger ran off into the night.

That last part didn’t happen, of course. But it’s the story I’m telling next time I have to call the police dispatcher.

Late August of 1972 my entire family was brutally tortured, then slaughtered by a teal and beige casual sport dress. It was a thigh-length, sleeveless with round neckline and princess seams on the front and reverse. Authorities said the dress buttoned all the way down the back. To make matters worse, it was a size 8. By all accounts, a very high-end, quality garment. Before 1980 crimes by dresses were rarely reported in this country. Most victims of dress crimes were too embarrassed or intimidated to come forward. I had no choice. My entire family laid scattered throughout our modest ranch home in pools of their own blood, victims of outer-wear violence. I alone was spared that brutal day. I had spent the summer at a special camp for children who couldn’t tan. Little did I know, before that summer was over I would be orphaned, severely depressed, and gain an intense distrust of women’s clothing. The investigation of the crime took almost three years but eventually the perpetrator was discovered on a rack at a consignment store in Atlanta. The dress was tried, convicted and given the death sentence. In April of 1986, after serving almost ten years on death row, the dress was cut up into hand towels and various scraps. Even though I know justice was done in this case, you now know the reason that, to this day, I can not wear a dress.