I'd always wanted to write a hardboiled detective story, film noir has a certain gritty appeal to it. The Twitter fiction festival seemed like a perfect place to do it seeing as I had the #TwitterPolice hashtag. I'd taken a slightly more serious tone with this story; the #TwitterPolice was usually me busting people for committing so called crimes on the network. Hope you like it!
The sky seemed to constantly weep those days; like a broad
whose heart had been broken with a sledgehammer. It was always raining around
these parts. I was pretty certain our little social network was lodged in the
drain of the big blue, because all we got was dirty bathwater. And rightly so,
the timelines had become a mess.
Twitter was overrun with Facebook scum that peddled bad
bios; Instagram divas that flaunted soft porn and nut cases that still thought
cat videos were funny. The grammar Nazis were a link away from going holocaust
on the lowlifes with poor spelling and people’s accounts were getting hacked
with an axe that could split the whiskers of an alley cat. We needed some kind
of regulation.
The #TwitterPolice had been set up to create sort order on
this forsaken network, but that was like making a spider monkey ringmaster in
circus of gorillas. Everyone had gone ape shit, or app shit if you will. The
police had no jurisdiction here. They couldn't keep the sTWEETs safe. I had to
quit the force as soon as I got my detective shield.
I wasn't calling for censorship, not at all. All I wanted
was to scroll down my timeline without having to worry about some two-bit robot
asking me if I wanted to be in a Justin Bieber video. Memes were funny at one
time, but now memes made me want to maim someone. All I wanted to do was meet
interesting people, maybe DM a dame and meet her in person. All I got was more
spam than the canned food section.
I decided that I would play by my own rules; a lone gunman
enforcing the justice that once prevailed when that little blue bird first left
its nest and tweeted. I greatly admired The Batman, but I wasn't about to
become a vigilante. At least not yet. I decided I was going to go into the
private dick game.
I still believed there were some good people out there;
people that would need a shamus to right a few wrongs when they had no one else
left. I didn't get many cases. Half the time I was hired to find out just who the
hell #oomf was.
Being a private detective meant the pay was crappy. I would
live on a shoe string budget, wearing battered shoes to dates and I could barely
foot the bill. It didn't bother me though; most of these broads were total
heels anyway. Until SHE walked in.
She walked into my office with the aura of one of those
Greek goddesses. If I was a lesser man, I would have apologised for my cheap
furniture and humble workspace. I could smell the wealth on her perfume, and
her body was a work of art that would have Zeus himself in thunderous applause.
She was mythology in motion.
“Can I take a seat?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said lighting a cigarette. “But only if you’ll
return the heart you just stole.”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. What can I do you for?”
“I have a problem,” she said.
“You and every other person on this network, doll.”
“Well I’m not used to this sort of thing. I didn't ask for
any of it.”
“Ask? You don’t seem like the type that needs to. Let me ask you something, where's your shield?"
"What shield?"
"I imagine
you have to carry a shield to defend yourself from all the gifts and
compliments men throw at you?”
“Are you always this charming?”
“Are you always this smashing?”
Our eyes met. They locked in what seemed like an eternal waltz.
It’s a shame I had two left feet.
She tore away her gaze and looked down shyly at her clutch
purse, “I have a sensitive issue. Someone has been trying to make me look bad
online and I don’t like it one bit.”
“An assassin,” I said pulling my cigarette.
“Yes. He’s been posting nudes of me. I suspect it’s my ex.
Please get to the bottom of it and put a stop to it at once.”
“Sure thing. I charge twenty twitter credits by the hour,
plus expenses.”
“Money is no object Mr. Blow,” she said as she rose from her
seat, “I just want this to pass.”
I watched her as she walked to the door. I hated to see her
leave, but...you know the rest.
“Wait. I didn't get your name...”
“It’s, Belle,” she sang, “shouldn't be hard to find the pictures
if you search me,” she said smiling.
It wasn't long before I found a trail of the pictures online,
sleazy hashtags akin to the #BoityReaction not too long ago. I could understand
the allure of it all though. Belle had one banging body; gun fights had nothing
on her. The tattoo on her thigh had me staring at her pictures longer than I
should have. I had to take a shower before I left my office.
If there was anyone that could get me on the right trail,
it was Scribe, the bio peddler. He sold Twitter bios to users that couldn't
create their own or just wanted something fancier than the usual ‘fun and down
to earth’. I couldn't knock his act. A man did what he had to keep the lights
on and his phone charged.
‘The type to cuddle afterwards’; ‘I’m the comic relief in
this movie we call life’; ‘You don’t need to use protection on your tweets, I’m
safe’; a lot of those bios were quite interesting. All sorts of people came to
Scribe for his little epithets, so he was bound to know something.
“Belle? Never heard of her,” Scribe said with a straight
face.
I lit a cigarette. “A wise guy huh? Funny. Last one I asked
lost his wisdom teeth.”
“Oh yeah! #TinkerBelle! Smoking hot!” he said wiping his
brow. “What’s a copper like you want with a dame like that?”
“Working her case. She’d like the perves to back off. That
can only happen if I find the slimeball that started this.”
“So whuchu come to me for? I sell bios, I don’t know nothin’
about no softporn!”
I took a long drag of my smoke and looked Scribe square in
the eye.
He couldn't meet my gaze. “Alright! Alright! All I know is
she had a falling out with her ex and he’d threatened to post the flicks!”
“Thanks for your help. Now beat it. Don’t let me catch you
peddling that crap here again.”
This ex guy had a great motive. Dumped by a girl whose body
could be the cause of world thirst, and so got back at her by plastering her nude
online. Made a lot of sense. But I didn't expect that he’d be a reformed
Christian; a bible basher with constant motivational tweets. He sure was
spreading some kinda gospel.
Dames’ll tell you all men are dogs. I couldn't agree more
and I couldn't agree less. Most chumps are territorial. So it was no wonder
Belle’s ex tried to mark his spot.
Motivational Mo, they called him. Followers in the thousands
and some quotes I could actually agree with. But I could never trust a man that
wore a suit from Tuesday to Tuesday. His act came off clean as a whistle. I
just wondered if he would come clean on the dirty pictures he posted.
I had to stake out his account and wait for him to come back
from a campaign. ‘No reTWEET, no surrender’ they’d dubbed it. Apparently it was
an effort to sensitise people on how retweets were actually endorsements. And
if you endorsed worldly things, let’s just say God wasn't going to favourite
your tweets.
“Please, smoking is not allowed here,” he told me as I put a
smoke to my mouth.
I shoved it back into my coat and told him why I was there.
“Belle, you know her?”
“I knew her. I knew her when I still walked in the
wilderness. And now that I walk in the light, I regret having certain knowledge
of her. The body is the Lord's temple.”
“Knowledge is power. Why’d ya do it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, friend.”
“I’m not your friend, pal.”
“Then we have nothing to speak about,” he said.
I’d never hit a man in glasses. Too bad for Mo, he wasn't
wearing any. He and I weren't friends, but his face and my fist were now well
acquainted. And soon we were speaking like old buddies.
“I swear to you! I didn't post the pictures! I did ask
Scribe if he knew someone who could do it for me, but he was no help!”
“So you helped yourself?” I asked letting go of his bloodied
collar. “What pushed you over the edge though? Was it the tattoo? Had she
desecrated The Lord’s temple?”
“What tattoo?”
And those were his last words. Because as soon as he spoke,
Motivational Mo met the business end of a bullet.
I recoiled and pulled out my Colt .38 all in one motion. She
was the only dame I had ever trusted, and she was louder than my mother with a
bottle of wine on Christmas Eve. When she spoke, people went dead silent.
Mo’s shooter sent more lead hornets my way. A couple of
inches closer and I would have been stung. My lady had something to say about
that. I fired three rounds and ducked behind a table. Unfortunately the shooter
had already buzzed off.
Mo was dead now and I couldn't pin the guy on intent to post
pictures. Plus Scribe’s word wasn't as good as that of the gospel so I needed
something as solid as St. Peter. I picked up Mo’s phone and took off. The fuzz
would be there soon.
Every man, no matter how low on the totem pole they are, has
an ego. Some egos have been beaten into dark and dirty corners, but they’re
still present. You just have to throw the right scraps at them to feed them.
I told the Joe at the internet café down on Cairo that I was
part of a special task force trying to eliminate social network spam and
phishing. I told him our inspector general believed in this Joe but I needed to
know whether he was worth any salt.
Half a bottle of Jack and a sluggish internet connection
later, this guy had shown me more than enough. All the trending topics in this
part of town for the last three months and Motivational Mo’s paperless trail.
Turns out Mo had deactivated a previous Twitter account and
then set up a current one. Funny thing was he did that about a year ago, but
the Joe showed me the old account had tweeted the pics around the time #TinkerBelle
was trending. That was only weeks ago. Something wasn't quite adding up. There
was obviously ‘Mo’ to this story.
Light showers, drizzles, precipitation, rain; whatever you
wanted to call it, it never stopped. Sunshine was foreign around these parts,
but Belle was a close substitute.
I could hear her long heels tapping the pavement as she ran
through the rain and reached my car. She quickly flung the door open and hopped
into the passenger’s with the grace of a cat. Her trench coat was dripping with
the tears of the sky and the seat made a great shoulder.
Lightning tore up the sky and someone in the heavens drummed
something to usher the light show. My ashtray was only half full, so Belle
hadn't kept me waiting long. She knew how to make an entrance.
“Do you have something for me, detective,” she said with her
eyes wrenching the life out of me.
“That depends. Do you want the bad news or the bad news?”
“Give me the bad news.”
“Well, your guy got bumped last night. It’ll probably be all
over the newsfeeds soon.”
“Oh my Lord,” she said gasping.
“Yeah. And I couldn't get much out of him. Trying to
interrogate his corpse was a dead end.”
“That is highly inappropriate, detective!”
“Not as inappropriate as those pictures of you. Tell me, why
did you break up with Mo?”
She looked at me scornfully, “Many reasons. One of them was
my tattoo.”
I stayed silent.
“When I got it, he was just getting into his Christian
phase, said my body was the Lord’s temple.”
“I see. And when you were together, did you send him any
pictures?”
“What is the point of all this?” she asked.
I tossed Motivational Mo’s phone in her lap, “Everything
points to those.”
She swiped her finger across the soft glow of the phone
screen, looking at the tasty treats she’d sent that poor bastard.
“None of those has a tattoo in them. And Mo seemed to be
clueless about your ink,” I said igniting a cancer stick.
“So? You don’t need to be a private DICK to know these are
from before I got my tattoo.”
“True. But this dick did some poking around. Mo’s old handle
hadn't sent out any tweets since he’d switched religions from you to
Christianity. Then a year later, out of nowhere, the same handle posted tweet pics
and went dormant again?”
“Yeah, easy cover for him,” she sneered.
“Maybe. But the ISP says those tweets came from an address
in Rich Hills. YOUR address.”
She was silent.
“Mo had actually turned over a new leaf and you weren't
happy that he’d gone to worship at a new temple. You knew his password and so
you posted those images yourself in an effort to assassinate HIS character. You
brought me on board knowing I’d find the trail, but you didn't count on me
actually doing my job.”
She raised her head and looked me in the eye, she was no
Greek goddess. I saw her for the Medusa she truly was. I turned stone cold
towards her.
“What can I say, I love the attention,” she said smiling.
“Oh, you’ll get all the attention you seek where you’re
going. Mug shot photo shoots and cuddles from Gorilla Grace, your new cellmate.”
“I guess you've done your job then, detective Blow. How much
should I write this cheque out for?”
“Doll, I wouldn't accept a cheque from you if it was the
coveted blue one. Your money is dirty.”
“You’re an honourable man,” she said looking at me with
sinful eyes.
“If only honour paid the bills.”
She kissed me long and passionately. The rain tapped the
asphalt, making that constant shushing sound it always did. It flowed down a
dirty drain somewhere and soon its sound was drowned by sirens.
THE END
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| Detective Blow drawn in my likeness by the talented Lo |
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