The Fulton Scribe
Date: November 21, 2024
Headline: “From Cult Conspiracy to Community Kindness: Unmasking Fulton Hills’ Not-So-Sinister Food Thief”

By Huxley Drake

From the archives. Contributor: Spence Hutchins, Curator of the Fulton Hills Historical Society

Ah, Fulton Hills. Where a couple of stolen frozen microwave meals become the groundwork for an alleged ritualistic resurgence of the Dun Maylock. Where leaving your garage unattended by security cameras is an invitation for cultists to ransack your fridge in the dead of night. Where food theft, apparently, must be tied to some grand, sinister design instead of, say, a much simpler explanation.

And what is that explanation? Brace yourselves, dear readers. The food thief—the one who allegedly slinked through the shadows, leaving “no evidence” (read: walked through wide-open garage doors)—has finally been unmasked.

Turns out, the nefarious perpetrator isn’t a robed cultist, nor is it a rogue faction of the Dun Maylock crawling out of the depths to bring Fulton Hills to its knees with stolen frozen chicken nuggets. No, the “thief” is actually a 15-year-old kid whose family fell on hard times and didn’t know where their next meal was coming from.

Yeah. That’s it. That’s the big mystery unraveled.

The teenager, whose name won’t be published because unlike some papers (cough The Fulton County Advisor cough), we actually care about journalistic integrity, had been quietly taking food from garages left wide open. Not breaking in. Not sneaking through windows. Just walking up and taking what was needed to keep his siblings fed.

The worst part? It took a week of sensationalized cult nonsense before anyone thought to actually ask why food was going missing. Turns out, a neighbor in Laurel Glen noticed that the “thief” had only been taking what could be prepared quickly—easy meals, things that didn’t require much more than a microwave or stovetop. No booze. No expensive meats. No valuables. Just food.

Did someone say deep freezers were “completely raided. Whole roasts, slabs of bacon, frozen vegetables, even entire holiday turkeys—vanished” while talking about this story? I don’t remember, but if so, that someone needs to (shocker) vet their sources. Or perhaps actually find some.

So, instead of grabbing their torches and pitchforks (or writing irresponsible, fear-mongering articles), a few neighbors finally followed the trail—right to the family’s doorstep. What they found was a struggling single mother, blindsided by medical bills, trying to keep her household afloat. A mother who was working three jobs and had no idea the food wasn’t purchased with her own money. The 15 year old had been running errands, paying bills online and trying to make up the difference so that his tired mother would actually get some sleep.

And once actual human decency got involved, the problem solved itself.

The community came together. Groceries were delivered. A food drive was organized. A Go Fund Me set up to help with the medical bills. 

People helped, instead of panicked.

But you won’t hear about that in the Advisor, will you? Not when there’s a shadowy, wholly fictional resurgence of an old cult to push instead.

So let’s set the record straight. There was no grand conspiracy, no bloodthirsty cryptic organization lurking in the night, no eerie cult ritual unfolding in suburbia.

There was just a hungry kid worried about his younger siblings and his mother.

And maybe, just maybe, if folks spent less time looking for monsters in every shadow, they’d see the people who actually need help standing right in front of them.

Huxley Drake
The Fulton Scribe