Challenge: “Write a story where we’re told one thing but shown another.”
One hour to write and polish the story using either a photo, a word, a situation or a story where we’re told one thing but shown another.
Bill was the kind of guy who always held doors open for old ladies. Maybe it was because Bill had been trained to hold the door open for his elders. Or maybe it was because his mother beat him with the broomstick after he raced into his aunt’s house without holding the door open for his grandmother. That was a lesson he’d never forgotten.
Bill also picked up litter in the park. After clocking out at the grocery store for lunch, Bill liked to walk around alone. Mrs. Oliver, the retired schoolteacher who sat on the park bench and fed the squirrels, told everyone how nice Bill was.
“He even picks up the sticky litter, like the popsicle papers the children throw down on the ground,” Mrs. Oliver told Det. Nancy Riddle.
The 31-year-old detective had been promoted a few months ago, and she’d been assigned to find out who was terrorizing women in the nearby grocery store parking lot. Riddle, who was naturally curious, decided to check out the areas around the parking lot. Today, it was the park. Mrs. Oliver’s voice turned huffy.
“Children these days are left to run wild by parents who are so buried in their cell phones they aren’t paying attention to the little hellions they’re rearing.”
Waving her hand at the detective to come closer, Mrs. Oliver whispered something to Riddle.
“Of course, we all know Bill’s kind of slow,” she said, her voice dropping an octave from when she was praising the middle-aged man known as Bill.
“It’s because of the accident, you know,” she said, wrapping her sweater around her bony shoulders, pity in her eyes.
“Accident” the detective penciled in her notebook, circling the word three times.
Yes, Bill was that kind of guy Det. Riddle discovered over the past couple of days. Bill carried groceries to cars for customers who were elderly. He didn’t say much to them, which was fine for many of those wore hearing aids or who simply wanted to get home to watch “Wheel of Fortune.”
Young mothers would say Bill was the kind of guy who’d let their toddlers ride on the back of the grocery cart, his long arms on either side of the child. He didn’t walk quickly to the minivans, their rear windows covered with “I love soccer” stickers, because of his limp.
“My kids just love Bill,” one mother told the detective as she was buckling her toddler into the car seat. And, just like Mrs. Oliver, the mother motioned for the detective to come closer.
“You know, I heard he had an accident when he was a teenager,” she whispered. “Car accident. Bill was the driver, and his mother was killed instantly. That’s where he got that limp, you know. The accident. Poor Bill.”
Everybody seemed to both love and feel sorry for this middle-aged man with the slight paunch, a narrow space between his two front teeth and shoulders that were a little rounded instead of muscular like many men his age. No siblings, no wife, no parents – just a once-elegant home that was slowly falling into disrepair.
Because Bill was a nice guy, a group of teens from the local Methodist Church asked Bill if they could come over and help him clean out the clutter that filled the porch and, they figured, probably the inside of the house.
Bill had immediately turned down the offer. He even refused the offer the 10th time it was made. People could’ve thought Bill was being rude, but he told the teens he couldn’t bear to part with anything that had been his mother’s. For over 30 years, no one had been in the house, but because Bill was a heck of a nice guy, they let him live his life without interfering.
Bill never had loud parties. Neighbors said he was quiet except for the nights when Bill ran power tools in the cellar. Days later, someone would find a small wooden table on their front porch, and they figured the gift had come from Bill.
Yes, everybody thought Bill was a heck of a nice guy.
Why then, Det. Nancy Riddle wondered for the hundredth time since she’d started this case, was she convinced Bill was anything but nice.
Perhaps it was the late-night reports from women coming home after closing time at the local bar. Reports of a strange man hovering in the parking lot away from the glare of the bright lights. The women’s reports stated they often sprinted to their vehicles as the man approached them in the dark.
“But he couldn’t catch me because of the limp,” they all told the desk sergeant, their voices still uneven and frightened. “Even with that limp, he was faster than I thought he’d be.”
Riddle’s thoughts returned to the present, and she said good-byes to Mrs. Oliver. Then she followed a safe distance behind the ambling man, watching how he picked up bits of trash and put them in the bins along the way.
Riddle thought she was wasting her time, and then she saw it. The snake. It was a long, thin brown snake, the kind her father loved having in the garden.
“These rat snakes will eat all the mice and rats in the yard if you let them be,” he’d told her over and over.
The detective watched Bill stop in front of the snake, and she stopped as well. She saw him look around, and she ducked behind a tree where Bill couldn’t see her but she could see him. Riddle thought perhaps Bill was fascinated by the reptile. Until he raised his right foot and stomped on the snake. His foot came down again and again and again until the snake was nothing more than a smear on the sidewalk.
And then Bill, the nice man, the man who opened doors for old ladies, the man who picked up litter in the park, resumed his shuffling trek toward the parking lot.
Riddle was stunned. A nice guy doesn’t obliterate a snake. A guy who’s afraid of a snake might walk a little faster to avoid the reptile. But Bill made it a point to stop and stomp that creature to death.
The detective turned and hurried back to her unmarked police car. Inside, she turned the key and, as the car idled, she called a friend in the records department and asked Bridget to look up information on an accident involving a Bill McLeod.
“I’m not sure when, but it would’ve been a motor vehicle accident at least 30 years ago,” Riddle said. Bridget said she’d get right on it. Ten minutes later, Riddle’s cell phone lit up and she answered immediately.
“Got what you need,” Bridget said. “William Richard McLeod, aged 19, involved in a one-vehicle car accident. He was the driver of a Vega station wagon, and the car went off the road, hit a tree and his passenger was killed. He was banged up and taken to the hospital.”
Riddle heard a few more clicks of the keyboard.
“Says here the driver was driving too fast for the road conditions, but he wasn’t charged with vehicular homicide,” Bridget said. There was quiet for another couple of minutes.
“Seems like Bill’s a nice guy everybody felt sorry for,” she said, her voice as if she was reading a story. “He stayed in the hospital after sustaining a head injury and his right leg was crushed in the accident. Guess nobody had the heart to charge him with his mom being killed and all. Back then, this place was still a small town and the police could make those kinds of decisions.”
Riddle thanked Bridget, but before disconnecting the call, asked another question.
“Does it say the cause of death for the mother? I mean, did she die at the scene or later?” she asked.
“Let me see,” Bridget said. Another few minutes passed.
“She died at the scene,” she said slowly. “Traumatic head injury. Appears the mom’s head was pretty banged up when the police arrived.”
Another quiet minute passed as Bridget kept reading the report.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Says here one detective questioned the extent and viciousness of the injury from just a car crash, but like I said, nobody wanted to prosecute a young guy whose father was gone and now his mother. You know small towns 40 years ago.”
Yes, Riddle did understand. She knew what towns thought of nice guys like Bill. Nice guys who open doors for old ladies. Nice guys who terrorize young women in parking lots. Nice guys who run table saws at midnight.
Riddle decided to swing by the McLeod house. Everybody knew the house. Avoided it on Halloween, knew there’s never be a “Yard of the Month” sign in the yard. There were never Christmas lights in the windows or a tree visible in the front window. But, the accident, you know. There were reasons.
Detective Nancy Riddle decided she’d find out those reasons.
Nice guys, she knew, weren’t always so nice.
Denise Adams – January 15, 2026