The Case of the Missing Red Stripes

A Stoner Christmas Mystery

A Budville Mystery Theater Original

Nobody noticed at first.

That’s how these things always start.

It was December 23rd, the kind of cold that makes the smoke hang in the air like a bad decision. I was posted up in the back room of Benny’s Bodega & Tree Lot, rolling something medicinal and pretending not to listen to Bing Crosby for the fifth hour straight.

That’s when I saw it.

A candy cane.

White.
Minty.
Clean.

Too clean.

No red stripes.

I checked another. Same thing. Then another. Whole damn box looked like it had been bleached by the Ghost of Christmas Sobriety.

I knew then—this wasn’t a supply chain issue.

This was a job.

Scene One: The Evidence

Candy canes don’t just lose their stripes. Red’s not decorative—it’s structural. Tradition. Balance. The sweet meets the sharp. Yin meets yang. Without red, it’s just a breath mint with a hook.

Someone had stripped the stripes.

And if you follow the stripes…
you follow the money.

Scene Two: The Suspects

I made my rounds.

Big Peppermint said it was “a printing error.”
The Elves Union blamed automation.
Karen from PTA said red was “too aggressive for children.”

Yeah. Sure.

Then I heard whispers—something about extraction. About a new product flooding the market. Red syrup. Seasonal. Festive. Potent.

They weren’t removing the stripes.

They were harvesting them.

Scene Three: The Stash

I found it behind Santa’s Village, tucked under a reindeer feeder that smelled like alfalfa and broken promises.

Barrels of it.

Liquid red.
Candy cane concentrate.
Holiday spirit—distilled.

They were cutting it into everything: gummies, drinks, even those weird peppermint vapes nobody admits to buying.

Christmas wasn’t being canceled.

It was being monetized.

Scene Four: The Revelation

I lit up, because some truths don’t come sober.

That’s when it hit me.

The stripes weren’t stolen.

They were removed for our own good.

Red wakes people up. Red questions authority. Red makes you ask why Santa only surveils poor neighborhoods.

A white candy cane is compliant.

A red-striped one remembers.

Final Scene: Case Closed

I put the stripes back where they belonged—metaphorically, anyway. Posted the truth on a corkboard nobody reads and left a candy cane on the table.

Half white.
Half red.

Balance restored.

Christmas morning came anyway.

It always does.

And somewhere out there, a kid noticed the stripes were back—and didn’t know why it felt like hope.

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