Bald Knob, had never pretended to be normal. It was the kind of town where lawn ornaments outnumbered people, gossip traveled faster than broadband, and the annual Lawn Flamingo Festival was treated with the same reverence other places reserved for national holidays. Folks still talked about the Glitter Incident of ’22 like it was a natural disaster, and the synchronized‑chicken scandal of the previous mayoral term was spoken of in hushed tones, as if the birds might overhear.
It was, in short, a place built on warm chaos.
Which is why Mike Turner, Bald Knob’s most overworked electrician, didn’t even blink when the mayor called him at 7:14 a.m. screaming about “a flamingo emergency.” Mike’s van rattled down Main Street like a dying shopping cart, the horn wheezing like a kazoo with asthma. The passenger door only stayed shut because Mike had prayed over it that morning.
He pulled up to the town square to find Mayor Kensington pacing like a man awaiting ransom demands. The patriotic, solar‑powered, synchronized flamingos—his pride and joy—were blinking erratically, spinning in place, and one appeared to be signaling Morse code for help.
“They’re malfunctioning,” the mayor whispered, as if the flamingos might take offense. “This is sabotage. It has to be sabotage.”
Mike crouched beside the wiring. “It’s a squirrel, sir.”
“A squirrel?”
“Fried itself on the transformer. Happens every festival season.”
The mayor stared at the charred culprit like it was a foreign agent. “We’re being targeted.”
“Yep,” Mike said. “By wildlife.”
He patched the wiring while the mayor muttered about conspiracies, rival towns, and possibly the Rotary Club. Mike didn’t argue. In Bald Knob, denial was a civic tradition.
Across town, Eleanor Whitfield was preparing for her big break—or what she insisted was her big break, even though it was a toothpaste commercial for a regional dentist’s office. Her apartment looked like a shrine to almost‑success: old playbills, dusty trophies, and a cat named Humphrey who had perfected the art of judgmental silence.
“Radiant! Gleaming! Dazzlingly white!” she declared to the mirror with Shakespearean fervor.
Humphrey blinked slowly, unimpressed.
Eleanor relocated to the community theater for better acoustics, only to be shooed out by Frank the custodian. “It’s toothpaste, Eleanor. Not Macbeth.”
Teenagers filmed her in the parking lot, whispering, “Is she summoning a demon?” She took her performance to the park gazebo, undeterred. Art demanded sacrifice.
Meanwhile, Robert Harlan—former airline pilot, current town spectacle—narrated his grocery trip like a flight announcement. His suspension after the karaoke incident hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm; if anything, it had amplified it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching the soup aisle,” he said, selecting a can of tomato like it was a critical mission component.
Shoppers stared. Robert saluted them.
Casandra Ruiz, Bald Knob’s reigning queen of gossip, breezed into the aisle with the confidence of someone who knew every secret within a five‑mile radius. The Busy Bean Café was her kingdom, and she ran it like a talk show with unlimited refills.
“Robert, you’re scaring the tourists,” she said, handing him a coffee.
“Just maintaining altitude.”
She rolled her eyes. “Did you hear about Carol’s dog eating a garden gnome? Whole thing. Gone.”
Robert nodded solemnly. “Tragic.”
Back at the café, Casandra mediated a heated debate about Elvis versus Sinatra while scribbling notes in a spiral notebook labeled “TOP SECRET.” She called Mike to fix the breaker—again—and he arrived still smelling faintly of electrocuted squirrel.
“You hear about the mayor’s flamingos?” she asked.
“I lived it.”
“Perfect. I’ll add it to the morning report.”
Their lives were separate, but Bald Knob had a way of weaving people together whether they liked it or not. The flamingos, the gossip, the drone Robert later crashed into a neighbor’s inflatable bird, Eleanor’s gazebo performance—all of it was drifting toward the same inevitable collision.
Later in the chapter, their backstories would unfold: Eleanor escaping the frog‑themed tyranny of Toad Suck; Casandra fleeing her destiny as the Sausage Queen of Weiner; Mike leaving Lick Skillet after a fireworks mishap earned him the nickname “Sparky”; Robert returning home after his karaoke‑related grounding. Even Mike and Robert’s first meeting—when Robert’s drone knocked out power to half the block—was a preview of the chaos to come.
But for now, Bald Knob hummed with its usual absurdity.
And as the sun dipped behind the water tower, the mayor gathered his staff for an announcement.
“AMSTAC is coming,” he said gravely. “The Association of Mid‑South Town Administrators and Chairpersons. The mayors. All of them. Here.”
Casandra gasped. Robert saluted. Mike sighed. Eleanor, still practicing her toothpaste monologue, didn’t notice.
Bald Knob was about to become the center of attention.
And that was never a good thing.