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 a darker thought struck: what if someone had broken in and harmed my pets? I rushed inside, heart pounding, but found my cats and dog peacefully napping, blissfully unaware of my panic. Relieved, I checked the floors and carpets for more blood. Nothing. The blood seemed to be confined to the outdoors.

Returning to the porch, I inspected the blood drops and noticed a massive splash on the white porch post above the handrail. It looked like someone had flung a blood-soaked sponge at the wall. This was no minor mess. Then, in the corner, I saw it: my wicker chair, its seat smeared with blood. It looked as though someone with very bloody pants had sat there for a while. Drops of blood pooled beneath the chair and splattered across the front window. My porch was starting to look alarmingly like a crime scene.

I tried to make sense of it. Could an injured animal have sought refuge on my porch? It would need to be something agile enough to perch on the handrail, but there were no bloody paw prints. Maybe it was a bird? But do birds even have that much blood? Perhaps two birds had an MMA-style showdown right on my porch. Still, there were no feathers, no tracks, no signs of a struggle. Just blood. Lots of blood.

Feeling increasingly uneasy, I decided to call the police. Maybe there’d been a nearby incident, and this could help them track the killer’s movements. Perhaps the culprit had considered knocking on my door to borrow some Lava soap and a Tide Stick but thought better of it. I’m no expert on how criminals think, sane or otherwise.

The dispatcher seemed moderately concerned, which I took as a good sign. I emphasized the blood in my explanation, wanting to sound credible and not like a neighborhood crackpot. Dispatchers are hard to impress, but I think I managed. She assured me an officer would be out soon.

Now I faced a dilemma. Should I wait inside or meet the officer outside? How would “a bloody porch” sound over the radio? Would they send two cars? Three? When the squad car finally appeared, I stepped onto the porch and waved him in.

In hindsight, there’s probably nothing more suspicious than a 6’5″ hairy man in a kilt standing on a bloody porch waving at the police. It’s likely the exact scenario they use in Police Academy training videos to demonstrate when it’s acceptable to fire without warning. The officer cautiously approached as I explained the situation, pointing out the blood pools and splatters. I even shared my amateur detective work: no bloody fingerprints on the doors or windows. I might have even used the word “perpetrator” a couple of times. Meanwhile, I cleared junk off the porch, making space for the mobile crime lab and its fancy equipment.

The officer didn’t seem impressed. If anything, he looked more exasperated than concerned. “It was probably some animal,” he said with a sigh that practically added, ‘you dumbass.’ “Maybe a fox or coyote dragged something up here.”

“Like what, a roadrunner?” I wanted to ask but held back. As his interest visibly waned, I started feeling sorry for the imaginary family who’d been gruesomely murdered the night before, their crime forever unsolved. I wondered which house they lived in and if their lawn looked better than mine.

That’s when it hit me: I’d just become this officer’s story at the station. “Did I tell you about the guy in the skirt who called in because a sparrow cut itself shaving on his porch?” he’d say, igniting uproarious laughter. “Maybe it was just ‘his time of the month!”’ Cue the holster-gripping belly laughs and cigarette tosses. Some might even Google my website for a visual to match the story. Police bullying at its finest.

Early this morning, I awoke with a phrase ringing in my head: “a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” Quietly, I crept to the living room window overlooking the porch. There, on the stained wicker chair, sat a big orange cat, staring hungrily at the bird feeder. His eyes darted with every fat morsel that flitted by. He was clean. No blood. Perhaps he’d been unlucky in the hunt. I opened the door, and he bolted, pausing behind a tree to peek at me before disappearing into the dawn.

“Mystery solved,” I thought.

Then, in a flash, a hooded man leapt from the bushes and plunged a knife into my chest 37 times. Blood splattered across the porch, the walls, the windows, and the stupid wicker chair. My lifeless body collapsed as the man fled into the night.

Of course, that last part didn’t happen. But it’s the story I’m telling next time I call the police dispatcher.