8

“Thank you, Irving,” she faintly whispered as she closed the door behind me.

What an intriguing offer. A lifetime supply of medicine and free sexual satisfaction from the blue-eyed maid in exchange for the “disappearance” of the famous mr. Detective, who happened to be quite a nuisance to him as well. He had never been a lascivious person, but he always craved more medicine, like the tiny lad in the supermarket hungrily reaching out for the out-of-reach sugar canes. He actually really liked sugar canes, and he liked the colour red. It was his favourite. He also enjoyed teaching small rodents a wide scale of impressive acrobatic tricks until they could no longer survive in the wild due to their newfound obsession with the mid-air region, but he abhorred the colour red.

In order to fend off his hatred for sugar canes, he took a metro. It was not very crowded today, with only the few obligatory passengers rarely not encountered in a suburban metro sitting on the blemished seats. He took place next to an Asian woman who was sternly looking through the glass on her right, and paid no attention to her new neighbour. With a deep rumble, the world outside began to move.

He took out the file on mr. Detective that he had neatly tucked away in his oversized overcoat and read some words. It appeared the detective had done close to nothing to obtain any kind of respect or honour in any form, except for one major roundup of a federal drugs syndicate, earning him the “legendary” status. His colleagues described him as pretentious and proud, and also as smelly, demanding and tall. Most importantly, he always urged his assistant to get him donuts without sprinkles, because he had the deepest suspicion that the colourful fragments might suffocate him. The dismissal of his assistant had been because of the fatal mistake of bringing the detective a sprinkled donut, which he had only noticed after taking a big bite. Hm.

It didn’t matter. He would soon have to go to sleep, for sleeping is a general phenomenon that occurs throughout all layers of society. A few years ago, Irving had been shocked to learn this and had quickly taken a mouthful of pills and a striped sugar cane to calm his nerves. On top of this all, he decided the detective would soon be dead.

He took a small photograph of his target in hands and studied it closely. Then he took a bit of stuffing from his seat between thumb and index finger and smelled it. He glanced around to avoid detection by any witnesses and proceeded by inserting the stuffing into his mouth. The taste was a bit unsavoury. He continued reading the file while munching away. To his greatest surprise he discovered that the detective had recently acquired the need of an extra assistant. Curiously eyeing the picture of said assistant made him chuckle. She looked exactly like his neighbour.