Detective Benny Blow and the Curious Case of the Character Assassin

INTRODUCTION

The second annual Twitter fiction festival ran from the 12th to the 16th of March this year and this story here was my entry. The idea is to use Twitter functionality to tell bite size stories over the duration of the festival. People from around the world took part and hundreds of authors showcased their amazing talents. Search #TwitterFiction or visit the site here.

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

Detective Blow drawn in my likeness by the talented Lo

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The Alchemist

There came a time, when the magic faded completely from our fickle society. The straws of popular opinion were bundled tight in society’s norms and the proverbial camel’s back broke under the pressure. We had all forsaken the principles and beliefs that actually made us human.

Behemoth corporations bought every advertising space imaginable, from t-shirt sleeves and fronts, to the dirty corners of bathroom floors. Billboards covered the sides of houses and no man was free from the empty promises of primetime adverts.

The tentacles of the spider-squid known as the internet had caught every last human in its vast interweb; draining them of individuality and turning them into shuffling zombie-puppets.

They would absently walk into each other in crowded places, as if they expected to phase through one another. Their eyes focussed solely on their handheld touch screens, taking photos of their faces with the front cameras of their mobile devices. Selfies all resembled expressionless I.D photos because no one could focus on anything outside the rectangular field of their small screens long enough to take a picture that dared to be different. The selfie that looked most like the next one got the highest ‘Like’ count and retweets. Quite rarely, these zombie portraits would make an attempt at change using the veil of a filter. But their faces remained the same—dead and banal.

Music had long lost its aesthetic value. Albums had become things of the past, ghost-like echoes in the wind. Singles took up less effort than full works of music and with the immediacy of the interwebs; they were churned out like knock-off sneakers in a dark factory. These songs had no meaning or depth. The only purpose they served was to drown out the sound of any on coming bodies so that people could walk into each other. No song was deeper than a puddle of acid rain in the polluted metropolises the zombie-puppets called home.

The magic was lost. Nothing wowed. Nothing amazed. And nothing inspired.

Until one day.

The zombie-puppet was terribly confused. He had walked right into a brick wall—a rarity during those dark days—and looked up. Usually one of them would walk into a high definition screen, look up, and be captivated for a few minutes by some repetitive advertisement before a notification on their handheld would relay the same message from the bigger screen. ‘Click here for a more personalised experience!’ and then their heads would lower again; easing them back into monotony.

The puppet-zombie saw for the first time in what seemed like eons, his fellow drones walking to unknown destinations. He saw them bump into each other, look up for the slightest second and show a hint of familiarity. They all somehow knew each other from The Facebook. They amazed him. None of them spoke. They all went about their business and shared nothing but a fleeting moment of meaningless body contact.

The jumbotrons and billboards spoke to him and he had heard it all before, but he had never taken the time to actually LISTEN to the words of the advertising man’s song. He listened attentively and marvelled at the special effects. The words told him to ‘Visit their Twitter page for more interaction’. He slowly obeyed and looked down at the screen in his palm again. He would be immersed in thecommercialised consumerist whirlpool that was his handheld once again. He took a step forward. His sluggish movement was halted again, this time by a large wooden door. The door was a little battered and old. Its wood had yawned into cracks and splinters and its old varnish had peeled into chaffing skin. It was thick and wide, still showing some of its old strength like a proud retired body builder, sloughing a little with age. The zombie-puppet stood staring at it. Inside his mind, something was changing. Little sparks and explosions ignited in a brain that had not been kindled in a long time. He knew not what was happening. A confused look slowly crept across his face. His free hand involuntarily rose to the door’s old handle and turned it. The door cracked open into a dark room frozen in time.

Power Squad!: From Henchforth

Now, your life does not absolutely depend on it, but I suggest you read the first installment of Power Squad! by clicking here.
If you have already, then jump right in!

NOBODY MOVE! This is a stick up!!”

The customers inside the bank took one nonchalant look at Chanda and then continued about their business. Chanda was baffled. Surely the mask he had crafted by cutting eye-holes into the oversized head-sock his grandma had given him last Christmas was menacing. It may have been bright and multi-coloured, but everyone knew that masks were meant to be menacing, didn’t they?

“I said, NOBODY MOVE!! This is a friggin’ stick—”

“Allo, boyi, this isn’t the time or the place for that nonsense.”

Chanda looked back to put a face to the voice that had interrupted him. The large security guard before him towered about 7 nephilim feet over him.

 His muscles bulged and stretched the fabric of his uniform shirt so tightly that if one of his buttons shot free, it could have taken somebody’s eye out. He was clutching a baton in his huge right hand and kept smacking it against his left palm in an intimidating gesture.

Chanda swallowed.

“Do you know how many masked maniacs we get here every day?” the guard continued. “And they at least have the decency to come with a real gun. Even the most bat-eyed customer here can spot that silly kindergarten paint on your BB gun.”

If Chanda hadn’t been frantically blinking and tearing up because of a stray strand of wool caught in his eye from his badly cut head-sock, he would have been looking down at his plastic gun in shame. It was a pretty pathetic paint job he had done, but he had to make do with half a can of black spray paint.

“This is one of the roughest parts of town, super villains bank here and every once in a while they try to start something.  Even the customers don’t take shit.”

“See that sweet old lady over there?” the guard said nodding his head in the direction of a prune skinned old woman standing at the ‘Customer Service’ counter. She looked like she had lived at least a century.

“Why, just last week that very same lady took down Doctor what’s-his-face and his über lazertron gun or whatever because he cut in line and tried to hold up the place.”

Chanda’s eyes twitched and blinked some more.

“So you see son,” the guard said almost empathetically, “if you’re going to rob THIS bank, come with some serious artillery and don’t leave your nuts at home. Now get out of here before I shove this baton down your throat.”

To say Chanda’s caper had failed terribly would be an understatement.  Forget bruised, his ego had been scraped with sandpaper and beaten with a standard issue security guard baton. He sat down on the ground outside the bank with his back against the wall and began to reassess his values. He started to listen to that inner voice that proceeds to beat down your self esteem after you have just received an emotionally scathing verbal thrashing.

 What were you thinking? The voice asked. You couldn’t have pulled that off if you had the devil himself's face for a mask, and a bazooka for a gun! Get real, you can’t make it out here. Grams told you to stay with her. But no, you had to go and move to the big city, didn’t you? You had to become a man. Tell me Chanda, do you feel like a man now? Are you blazing your own trail like you thought you would?

 Leaving everything he knew and coming to the big city was a tough decision for him. His Grandma had tried to convince him otherwise, but she realised it was something he felt he had to do.

“You go ahead and leave good ‘ol granny all on her lonesome,” she had said trying to make him feel a little guilt, “I’ll be fine. I just hope you will too. I’ve heard funny stories about the city. Flying men and scantily clad women are the norm according to the television. But I trust this desire of yours to move is embedded deep in your bones now. Just remember you’ll always have a home here,” she said, and then whispered, “As long as I’m alive.”

 Chanda asked his Grandma to dismiss that kind of talk and assured her she would probably even outlive him. He promised he would visit her often and even send some money every now and then, and then he hugged her.

 Heading back home seemed like a great plan right about then. Grams would probably poke fun at him and be a little cynical, but she’d definitely be glad to see him. She would probably prepare his favourite mash and ribs too. His stomach growled in agreement.

But this was not the time to be feeling sorry for himself, no! This was not the time to tuck in his tail, lick his wounds and cower in fear! It was the time to take action! A time to be proactive! He got up and dusted his rear end. He was going back to the drawing board.

 If luck and coincidence had a love-child, it would happen to manifest itself in the form of a marital squabble that broke out right across from where Chanda was standing. Of course this was no ordinary fight between spouses. Being the town that it was, two super villains were bound to break into a heated confrontation in the street. He would never have guessed that it would be between a married couple.

The two villains had been arguing violently from inside their car and had halted traffic in the process. You could see arms flailing and finger pointing from outside the car windows. When the argument had gotten intense, they both stepped out of their vehicle and began to hurl vulgar unmentionables at each other. But unmentionables were not all they would hurl.

The lady opened the back door of their vehicle, pulled out an M1 bazooka and began to load it with a round. Her significant other guessed she meant business and fidgeted with his watch before it suddenly morphed and wrapped him in a suit of battle armour.

Divorce proceedings would not be necessary between the two, as they simultaneously blasted each other into oblivion within seconds. Their bodies became nothing but plies of human mincemeat with traces of nanobots and metal alloys. The lady villain’s bazooka remained intact. Chanda saw an opportunity.

He quickly ran toward the scene of the violent marriage annulment and picked up the heavy bazooka. It had a camouflage finish and looked like it could take out the hide of any tank. He then proceeded to the car of the now deceased couple to see if there were more rocket rounds. He found only one. It sat right under a diablo mask. How’s that for the devil’s face?

Chanda had to move quickly before the fuzz arrived on the scene, but he contemplated getting a little practice before he could return to the bank. This was no time to practice his marksmanship though, he only had one round. And besides, who could possibly miss their target if they were toting a friggin’ bazooka?

How’s this for serious artillery? Chanda thought as he remembered the words of the security guard. We’ll see who really left their nuts at home when I come knocking at your stupid bank door with this baby!

One or two people fled from Chanda’s path as they saw him walking across the street and struggling a little to lift the canon he’d just commandeered, but it was not unusual for someone to be flaunting heavy duty weaponry and wearing a devil’s mask in this town. It was not unusual at all.

Chanda stood a few meters away from the bank’s entrance and waited for his security guard friend to notice him from inside the glass doors. When they had locked eyes, he brought his bazooka up and flung its length onto his shoulder, mustered up the best Scarface impression he could and roared, “SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!”

The rocket fired from the bazooka spiralled in a corkscrew motion and propelled itself toward the glass doors. The sinister shark head painted on the front end of the rocket made it look like it would chomp right through the glass and shatter it into a million pieces. But as fate would have it, luck had filed for a paternity test on that love-child it had with coincidence and it turned out that child did not belong to luck.

The security guard flashed a smirk as the rocket ricocheted off the glass doors with a ‘thump’, leaving only the faintest trace of a scratch. People would not usually flee from a madman with a bazooka in this town, but they sure as hell fled from a rocket fired from a bazooka. The missile flew wildly and spiralled out of control leaving a trail of smoke while missing a number of passersby and hissing toward Chanda with its menacing shark-toothed grin. He ran for his life.

The rocket exploded on impact and sent him flying across the pavement along the busy street. He landed with his head in between his arms and scraped his elbows as he slid across the ground. The bruises running down his forearms stung a little, but Chanda had expected to be in much more pain if he had been hit by a missile. But the missile hadn’t hit him.

When he got up to see what had happened, he found Captain Justice—the town’s self appointed super champion of justice, and leader of the Power Squad—floating above him. He had taken the impact and detonated the explosion from the rocket.

“You must be new around here son,” said Captain Justice, “everybody knows that those bank doors have reinforced fibreglass. Not even Doctor what-do-you-call-him’s mega lazertron gun or whatever could penetrate those doors.”

Chanda stood there in silence, sweating profusely under his mask.

“Now, regardless of whether you are new here or not, you do know that what you were trying to do is illegal, and you will have to face the full extent of the law?”

Chanda nodded. Perhaps he should have stayed back home with Grams. He had ruined his clothes, he would probably face criminal charges and worst of all, a superhero was carrying him by the scruff of his shirt and delivering him to a police car.

The large security guard slapped some handcuffs on his wrists as Captain Justice removed his mask. That self-esteem-beating inner voice began to speak again as he sat in the back of the police car but was suddenly interrupted by another voice coming from outside the car window.

“Hey, wait!” said the voice. Chanda looked outside.

A man in a perfectly fitting tailor made suit was doing an awkward trot up to the police car window.

“Hi kid,” the clean cut man said. “Looks like you’re in a bit of a fix aren’t you?”

“You think?” sneered Chanda.

“Do you need a job, kid?”

“Well, if you had come thirty minutes earlier, I might have said yes. But now it’s looking like I’m going away for a long time.”

“Not if I can get you legal representation,” said the man.

“Look, I don’t have any money and I don’t think I can afford to—”

“If you promise to work for the organisation I represent, I could get you out of this jam without any difficulty. You won’t even have to pay for a thing.”

Chanda knotted his brow, “Are you the illuminati?”

“Haha, hardly kid. But I would like a devil like you to work with us; we need people with your... tenacity.”

He thought about what the man was saying and weighed his options. What did he have to lose? “Can I at least think about it? I don’t even know what it is your organisation is into.”

“Ha ha, sure kid. Give me a call when you’re in and I’ll explain everything.”

And with that, the clean cut man handed Chanda a business card and left. It read:

‘YOSA GRANDMAN YOSA- LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE  HENCHMAN INC.’

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

 

Wicked art by my cousin Mutale, alias Styles. He came through and saved me with this one!

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