The man had caterpillar-like eyebrows framing his forehead, creating a deep shadow over his inset eyes. He looked a bit like the monster in Frankenstein, or those paintings of Neanderthals that you see at the Natural History Museum. His ill-fitting suit, cut too short at just above the ankles, with sleeves that showed his wrist, undermined his intimidating posture at around six foot seven (give or take). He was the sort of man who almost never shouted, but the threat that he might was enough to instill fear in anyone. He towered over the desk and said with a calm, stern tone, looking downward with an intense stare:
“Where were you on Friday night around 8:15 pm?”
I responded timidly. “I was at home, sir, except for a few minutes when I went out with Rusty.” “Rusty?” “My dog, Rusty. He needed to take a walk.” He sighed.
“Can anyone besides Rusty confirm that you were home on Friday?”
I gulped. It was at that moment that it occurred to me that I may just be fucked. I may end up having to go down for this thing. The reality was no, nobody can confirm anything. It didn’t look good at all. The last time that anyone had seen Krystal alive—except for her killer, of course—we had been fighting. It wasn’t an extraordinarily bad fight; nothing worse than the ones we had when we were still together, before we had decided to take a mutually agreed upon break. Just some freshly hurt feelings. But the alcohol certainly hadn’t helped matters, and Krystal wasn’t thrilled to see that I was already dating again. I get it. I’d be upset too. The reality was that I still loved her just as much as I had on our wedding day, and I’m sorry that I put her through that on her last day on Earth and desperately wished I could take it back. Fuck.
I wiped away a tear and shuffled through my memories of that night. Had I stopped anywhere on my way home? I took an Uber, but it was much earlier. At least it’s a start. I think Rusty and I passed someone on the street, but I have no idea who they were. I was posting on Reddit when I got home, complaining about Krystal. “My bitch of an ex wife.” Doesn’t look great in context, but at least it shows that my thumbs were occupied. Even still, Krystal lived so close by that even if they tested the dog shit in the trash can and confirmed the IP posting from Reddit or whatever other NCIS-like magic tricks they had up their sleeves, it was going to be hard to definitively rule out that I wasn’t there during the whole time that she possibly could have been killed.
“I… don’t know. Look, I’ve seen enough Law & Order or whatever to know that I should probably get a lawyer now. But just for the record, I really didn’t do it, and this hurts beyond belief. I love my ex wife. Well, loved, I guess. I hope I can convince you of that. So, lawyer, now. Please. And thank you.”
I had a feeling that he might actually believe me. Or was this guy just playing Good Cop? Was I about to meet Bad Cop? The man exited the room without a word.
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Crap, I'm upvoting at zero again, but I am reading and appreciating. I can see this cop character with his caterpillar eyebrows and how scary that he'll be the one deciding in which direction this case will go.
If only dogs could talk.
Again, I love your pics and how well suited they are to each of your posts :)
Have you checked out steemauto.com at all? I use it to set a timer on my upvotes on authors that I know post good stuff consistently. Go to "Fanbase" and you can add people from there. I would recommend setting the post limit to 1 per day and set the minutes to vote between 15 and 29 depending on the popularity of the poster. For someone who doesn't have too many followers (let's say, under 200), 28 or 29 works well, but if you're autovoting someone with thousands of followers, you should consider between 15 and 18. It's not a hard science but that's about what I do. I would also stop the autovote at around 80% voting power. You don't want to put more than 20 or so active posters on your autovote list or else you'll run your voting power down to 80% consistently.
If you want to maximize the rewards, the best people you can put on there are people who aren't very popular yet but consistently post great content, because a. there's a good chance that they'll get voters randomly discovering them after 30 minutes, and b. those are the people who are best to support anyway. :)
Let me know if you have any questions! And thank you for reading!
Thanks, Mallory. No, I haven't checked out steemauto, but will now :)
Do you have Discord? If so, you should add me—malloryblythe#8139. I have more tips I can give you. I think you’re really talented and I want you to stick around!
omg, caterpillar eyebrows are going to be my favorite descriptive phrase :D
A great read <3 I love how it seems current and raw, it's just like I'd imagine speaking to a cop in a situation like this
Wow very interesting, I like it...
I don't know if that cop is going to believe him...
Is there more? I wanna keep reading!!!
There isn't! This was just a five minute short story. I could continue it though... hm... I have a bad habit of purposely ending things on cliffhangers hahah. Thanks for reading!
Lmao, interesting character trade, getting people worked up and leave them hanging screaming for more...
Well in reality it’s probably that I don’t ever really know how to end stories and I would rather quit while I’m ahead hahahaha
Ha, at least you're honest. I tried writing before and getting the whole structure of the story down is the hardest part. So much back 'n forth, you change one little thing and you think you're good until you realize that one little change has an impact on the logic of the whole shebang. Gotta keep pushing though, visualize yourself on the NYT bestseller list. Wooofuckinghooo.
These are all five minute freewrites. I do them every day, and then I polish them a bit and post it if some kind of story materializes. In truth, I don't actually know where I'm going with a story until I get there. I start with sentence #1 and then I just go. I'll stop when I write a sentence that sounds like it could be an ending sentence, if I don't really have any particular ideas or I feel like I've run out of steam (no pun intended). In this case the prompt was "caterpillar," and I thought of big dudes whose eyebrows look like caterpillars, and described a guy who kinda looks like a Neanderthal, and then I thought he sounded like he'd probably be a cop. Then I asked myself why would the character be talking to a cop, and I thought of a cliche interrogation room. I hadn't written a story in first person before, so I thought that could be kind of cool.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't worry at all about structure. I might later on if I'm editing it and I realize something should probably move around or belongs somewhere else. It's actually a lot easier if you make no commitments in advance and just kind of go with wherever your mind takes you, without holding yourself to any standards.
I think it would be cool if you wrote a little more with your paintings so we could hear more about your inspirations and your process!
Wow, thanks for explaining that, very interesting approach which gives you a lot of creative freedom. I almost envy that because a s a trained graphic designer I've been so used to always think conceptionally and when it comes to creating art that often gets in the way of really just letting go and to just put on the canvas/screen whatever I feel at that moment. I need to try that more often. Thanks again!
And yes, I'll keep in mind to get more verbal about my artwork, good point.