FanStory - FlashFiction Contest - The Missing Ingredient

The theme this time is "Missing." 

Here is my entry

Here is the winner. A Sherlock Holmes inspiration.  Not much else to say, just clever, although in my opinion not a very creative take on the prompt.  "The case of the missing (fill in the blank)" seems too easy to me.

This is my second attempt at this particular theme.  Apparently FanStory will use the same prompts over again.  My first attempt was about a guy who was missing the birth of his first child.  I also wanted to explore diffent connotations of the idea "stuck."

My second attempt as noted in the title takes a cooking angle.  I feel that this theme has been done before - emotional cooks who find comfort in their creations - (Waitress, Simply Irresistable, Like Water for Chocolate) - so I wanted to take another slant at it. 

I went a little darker. I'm beginning to wonder if the tone of a piece affects how it is reviewed.  I'll try putting together some lighter comedies or at least warmer works and see how that goes... 

Being able to resonate with the emotions of a reader is a writers number one job, and sometimes clever and witty just isn't enough.