Snitch Cards

“Snitch Cards” are just normal playing cards, functionally. 
Nothing special as far as the things you can do with ‘em. Ace through King, four suits, the works. 
The only difference being that every card doesn’t have the little symbols in the middle or pictures of people on the face cards. Instead, they have the photos, names, and details of cold case victims or missing people on each card. The idea is that you sell these in places where people might be able to help you, like a prison, and there is a chance that those cold cases might be solved.
I remember how I used to use these cards all of the time when I was doing time, and how they used to creep me out. Obviously it wasn’t the worst thing you’d ever see in prison, but it just sat with me the wrong way. 
The way that the pictures all seemed so happy and sweet, but just the fact that you could see 'em at all meant that they were probably dead or worse by now. You’d find people from as far back as the ‘80s on those things (It was 2007 at the time), but people still had hope that one day their family members would be found or brought to justice. 
To my knowledge, they never worked. I know in other places they have proved successful in helping get closure for those families, but as far as I could tell nobody ever confessed anything over those pictures where I was. That's how they got the name “Snitch Cards”, because you’d be stupid to use 'em for that purpose. I knew I never would, I respected some of my cellmates far too much to rat on 'em just because some card told me so. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.
It wasn’t ideal, but the options for entertainment were slim, and you took what you could get. Prison wasn’t extremely hard for me, but I definitely could use a release from it sometimes.
I don’t remember much of the actual cases 'emselves, I tried not to pay much attention to the art, but I do remember one rather vividly.
It was the 7 of spades. On the very top there were the words “MISSING PERSON” in bold letters, and the bottom had a phone number to crime stoppers with the words “If you have ANY information, call:” above the number, and the words “Callers DO NOT have to give their names.” printed below. This was the case for every card in the deck, nothing special there. But the missing person in question is what I remember.
On every card, there was an image of the victim printed in color on the top. If nobody had a picture, that space was filled with a black silhouette with the words “NO PHOTO AVAILABLE”. Every card except the 7 of spades followed this pattern to the letter, but that card must have been tampered with somehow before it was shipped out.
The card had a drawing on it, not drawn on with a pen but drawn on a sketchpad and printed on the card with a photo of it taken with the flash on. The picture seemed as if it were taken in the middle of a puddle or something in the middle of the night, as the sketchbook was covered in mud like it had been dropped in the stuff and left for days. Reeds and tall grass populated the border of the photo, bleeding over onto the page.
The drawing itself was a photo of a woman, but almost every other detail of the face is nonexistent. The drawing seemed to be hastily put together so that you could see how hard the pencil had been pressed down on the page, and the divots in the page shined back in the camera’s flash. The eyes seemed to stare directly forward into nothing, and the mouth looked ripped open into a forced frown. It was unsettling to say the least.
Below the image where the first and last name would normally be printed, it instead held only a single word. “LITTLE.”
To the best of my memory, the information given on the card is as follows:
“ON 9/9/1977, A BODY OF A WOMAN WAS FOUND DEAD IN A BOG IN NORTH HARRISON COUNTY. THE BODY HAD BEEN ROTTING IN THAT MARSH FOR MONTHS AND NO FORMS OF IDENTIFICATION COULD BE FOUND ANYWHERE ON THE BODY, INCLUDING FINGERPRINTS. I MADE SURE OF THAT. LITTLE WAS A CHEATING LIAR AND SHE DID THIS TO HERSELF. NO INVESTIGATION IS REQUIRED. CASE CLOSED.”
Upon finding this card for the first time, one of the guards standing a lot closer then had realized had confiscated (stole) the seven of spades from me, and soon my deck of snitch cards and all of the decks of snitch cards in the prison were recalled for “Inspection.” 
Eventually, snitch cards were allowed back into the commissary shop once things settled down on the back end. The new shipment of snitch cards was a near identical deck to the other, and nobody else noticed any better it seemed. The only difference I noticed was the photo of Little, replaced with a different photo of some missing person from a while ago. Just the same as the others.
Again, I’ve seen much worse things in prison, but this was different in how... different it was. I'd never seen something like that. How did that even get there? I wanted to know really badly.
And what I came across later didn’t make anything any more clear.
During yard time, when everyone gets to go outside, I was sitting by my lonesome on some metal bleachers trying to figure out what to do with myself. I wasn’t scared just yet, just a bit confused.
Looking around the yard and past the confines of the fence, I saw the things I'd seen every single day for months. Some hills, a meadow, the road leading up the secluded prison,
And a swamp.
I’d seen it before, but as I stared at it I noticed something I hadn’t before. It was almost invisible if you weren’t looking for it, and I had to get a little closer myself to see what it was even a bit.
But it was a little splotch of white in the mud.
Yellowed white. Like the color of old book pages.
Paper that had been covered in mud like it had been dropped in the stuff and left for days.
But I’m not a snitch.
Not to myself.
No investigation required.
Case closed.
Category:Items/Objects