New Story Start!

This is the unedited, un-proofread version of the story I began writing today under the duress of the ONE HOUR CHALLENGE.
The ONE HOUR CHALLENGE is an exercise that consists of unplugging the internet from my machine, opening up wordpad, and typing for sixty minutes nonstop. This is the first time I have done it in a long time, so I wanted to let you guys know I am still writing here and there. Hereafter follows the story bit, cut off authentically at the one hour mark.

The last time I saw her, we had both been much younger. The light had been a yellower shade, and the music had been scratchier. They used different techniques to capture images back then, but even after seventeen years I could recognise her on the screen that was once silver and now just an axpanse of white.

I'd never met her, personally, but I knew all about her. She was the most enchanting actress of my childhood, the princess with the flirty eyes and the pouty, slightly-moist lips. She was the subject of every young boy's imagination, every director's vision, every late-night businessman's lust. Her body was a measure of sheer perfection, skin the colour of cream and hair that floated about her shoulders like gossamer. She was everything a boy of thirteen years could have wanted in a woman, but everything he could not have. I grew up on her films the way most children grow up on milk and bread.

I'd written her letters, of course. Every self-respecting boy wrote her letters. Once in a very long while she would appear on a radio show or the like and read one or two of the letters she received, talk about them, and always wish a kiss to the boy who wrote it. She never read any of mine on the airwaves, but I always hoped that she'd wished a kiss or two my way on her own time. When I turned seventeen, my father took me to see the opening of her fiftieth film, "Sleeves on my Heart," an absolutely riveting tale about a girl who loses her way in Paris only to be saved by a dashing young gumshoe who was fleeing the mafia. I imagined myself as that hero, that agile, quick-witted lad who never missed a single clue to who had murdered his father.

I knew it right away. I wanted to be a detective. I'd become a private eye, and have an office with a door that would have my name painted on it. I'd be taken into the confidence of beautiful ladies like her, or sweep them from harm's way, or do whatever else detectives did until the last scene when they get the girl. My father gave me the information I wanted about how it was done (he, himself, was a carpet layer, but he'd had a friend back when he was younger that had run the same race as I wanted to run. I made a few contacts of my own over the next few years, and when I hit twenty-five, I'd gone through the police academy and done my time as a beat cop long enough. I quit the force and started on my own business venture.

My office was small and wood-panelled, but it was everything I had wanted when I was a kid. The problem was, now that I was older, I had more... sophisticated tastes. It would do, but only until I could afford something better. Something with a glass door, maybe, and a desk with a bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer that was never empty. During the time it took me, though, I never missed a single release of one of her films. "Midnight Trigger," "A Rose in the Mist," "The Orchard Letters," all of them. What we call her best films now. But then, for me, her best will always be Sleeves.

When I woke up this morning, I had a headache. My television played light static, an empty bottle lay next to my couch, and my ears played the song you hear when you think you are dying. Out of the VCR stuck a black casette with a white label across it: "Hold the Door for Me," the last movie she'd done before she just sort of dropped off the radar three years ago. I pulled the blinds shut, alleviating at least a bit of the headache-inducing reality to which I was subjected, and put my old copper kettle on the burner for coffee. Like any story you will hear any private eye tell you, business had been slow around then. I'd had a few cases here and there, but nothing really big for almost two months. My tiny office was still the same as it was four years ago when I first rented it, except I did have a bottle of some horrible booze that smelt like paint thinner in my desk. I was not looking forward to the prospects of sitting in the office all day again, but it was better than sitting in my drafty flat -- at least the office had a radiator to help stave off the winter's fingers.

Two cups of coffee, an aspirin and a short worry about my rent later, I pulled the collar of my jacket up and started for the office.

The landlord had left me another pleasant note reminding me about my rent stuck in my mail slot. I put it with the others she had so finely written me (in the trash bin), and sat heavily in the leather chair that had been both a business conductor and insomnia relief to me. With weather like this, I didn't expect many visits, and only perhaps one or two telephone calls. Winter seemed to dull the crime scene in this city to no more than a trickle, which was paradoxically both good and bad. Still, I fully intended to spend the first half of the day second-sleeping off the remainder of my hangover until the call came in.

"Yeah, what is it?"
"Is this Detective Lory?"
"...yeah. What is it?"
"Detective, this is Officer John Holloway. We received a... package at the station, think you should come take a look at it. Looks like someone's looking for you."
"What? What's in the package?"
"Maybe you should see it yourself."
"...fine, give me a half hour."

The boys in blue and I never really had too good of a reputation since I quit the force. For a while I though Sergeant Harris was out to step on my toes at every opportunity, pulling the police tape excuse at every case I got. Harris was the kind of fellow you'd expect to eat his cereal without milk, a real macho-man type, who wasn't terribly fond of being beaten to the punch, not especially by one of his former subordinates. If he had the chance to stick his fat thumbs into my pie, you bet your coat he'd do it. So, really, I didn't feel like going to see him or officer what's-his-number or anyone else at the station.

But then, what were the chances I'd just spend the whole day sitting at my desk drooling otherwise?

I arrived a little later than I'd said (on purpose, of course), and strode behind the receptionist like I was the boss. She started to protest, but just then an officer with the nameplate "Holloway" hurried up to me.

"Detective, what took you so long? This could be a real serious case here."
"Sure it is, kid. All right, what's the skinny?"
"Well, Detective, it seems someone has got some pretty grand plans laid out, and you look to be part of them. Here, let me show you."

I followed him into the back, where of course Sergeant Harris stood. He had his back to me, and was leaning with both hands on a table, stuying the items thereon intently. I approached the table and nodded a sort of half-greeting, half-"oh, you're here too, are you?", and he grunted and smirked in return. The table was strewn with polaroid photographs, pctures of what appeared to be places in the city. Normal lighting, people in the frames, nothing really odd about them, but...

"Well, mister hot-shot, what do you make of it?"

...but in every single shot, a man in a long white coat was in the background. He was always facing the cameraman straight-on, no matter where the location. He seemed to be wearing a sort of opera-mask-looking disguise in all of them, covering the top half of his face. He was tall, but not overly so, and not buiilt in either extreme. A relatively normal guy, it looked like (well, excepting the mask and the jacket).

I perused the photographs again, making sure to look over every detail. Plus, it gave me an excuse not to have to talk to Sergeant Hairy-Ass just yet. In all of the photos, one person seemed to be the focus of the photo. The locations were definitely in the city, and I recognised many of them. A seedy bar on Main street. A news stand on the corner of Fourth and Grand. The cinema down by the docks.

Then I saw it properly. One of the photos showed me, in the cafe by my office, staring into space while