Pinches – Your favorite worst investigator (part 2)

storytllng.rocks (40)in #freewrite • 6 years ago

Everyone who has been following the #freewrite adventures and especially the activities of the @FreeWriteHouse during the last weeks knows @felt.buzz’s Inspector Dash. He investigated the FreeWriteHouse Murders during week one and – since they unfortunately continued – also the FreeWriteHouse Murders during week two.

In the middle of week one, PI Pinches jumped in (sometimes quite literally) and you can still find the efforts she took during week one (and which she made look pretty effortful) here.

Bildschirmfoto 2018-03-26 um 22.08.08.png

Now it’s time to have a look back at her second week ...

It was late. Maybe too late. Pinches didn’t know what time it was. And what did it mean, anyway – “Being too late”? She shook her head. It was not like she had an appointment or was invited to a press conference like Inspector Dash. She was always standing a bit in the shadows, like during the second week of these stupid murders.

2018/03/28

Pinches yawned while she tried to open her eyes. She felt like she had slept at least two days in a row. And she had these crazy dreams. First, she had walked through a canyon, she didn’t have water, there was no cell reception, she didn’t have a clue how she had gotten there. After what had felt like hours of walking, she saw a sign that said Storytelling Rocks. The last thing she she remembered from that dream was how she thought this was such a stupid name that this could only be a dream, and then she heard noise that sounded like thunder or huge boulders rolling, she didn’t know if it came from the left or the right or both sides, and then it was all black all of a sudden.

Crazy dream, Pinches thought. Though she considered the second one even crazier. She had met Dash and - argh, the name of his assistant? Dash was munching as usual, but she somehow heard the echo of him telling his assistant about an affair that she, Pinches, supposedly had .... with Captain Disguise. She couldn’t believe it. This story was even chasing her in her dreams now! Why would everybody still think they had an affair? Just because he had run out of her hotel room completely naked? That wasn’t fair! No one would ever have found out about this if there hadn’t been the “Special surveillance class” in that exact hotel next day and they decided to use authentic footage from the hotels surveillance cameras. And there he was, in front of all trainees and detectives-to-be, completely naked running out of Pinches hotel room, while she, Pinches, was waving and shouting something after him which had not been recorded.

It didn’t get better when Pinches had stood up and explained to everybody with near-sunburn-red face that Captain Disguise had only run out of her hotel room because he had entered it moments earlier through her window – after having climbed up the facade from his own room located exactly one floor lower, in which he had only just spotted a spider when he came out of the shower. And he hated spiders. He didn’t even get the irony of this Spiderman incident, and to be fair, neither did Pinches right until today as she lay in her bed and burst out in laughter.

Anyway, time to get up, Pinches thought, and get rid of those horrible nightmares. While she was slouching toward the bedroom, she suddenly smelled something that seemed disgusting and familiar at the same time. She froze and looked around. What the hell was this? She sniffed like that old Bloodhound they once had, Dandelion. It was the scent of ... Pinches looked down to her jacket that she had thrown onto the chair. Her eyes widened in horror. No, no, that can’t be. She gasped. Her fingers approached the left pocket and its repellent content. Greasy, mushy fries – and the worst part: They were still packed in paper from Freeville Frying Pot, Dash’s favorite fry place. Well, together with all the most of the others in FreewriteVille. But Pinches was sure of one thing – these weren’t her fries. Because she always and exclusively went to FreewriteVille Fairy Fry. She wasn’t sure if it actually was because of the quality of the fries or because she secretly hoped that she might be granted a wish after she had bought a certain amount of fries, but anyway.

Pinches felt a shiver running down her spine and back up to her head where it seemed to convert into dizziness. She sat down. Was it at all possible that all that she remembered hadn’t been a dream? That she really had been walking through a canyon? And above all – and she didn’t dare to think this loudly – that she had not only met Dash, but that she ... oh God! That she had really gotten into a car with him?

Pinches felt like she needed two more days of sleep to get over this. At least.

2018/03/30

Pinches woke up. Again. Only this time she didn’t have to yawn. Instead, she wondered why she felt like she had woken up more often in the last days than she had fallen asleep. Weird.

The last thing she could remember was that she had met this dubious CEO of a cloning company in the Club 100. Maybe she should go there one more time to ask the bartender if he knew what had happened.

Pinches decided to walk instead of taking the car. For some reason she felt like she had spent way too much time in a car the last days. Weird again. Pinches’ phone croaked and she had a brief look at the screen. Great, now Thurman was even sending photos. She opened the message and regretted it immediately. Two tap dancing Chihuahuas. As if one wasn’t one too many already. Pinches stopped walking for a moment and turned the screen. There must be a mirror somewhere, she did remember Thurman once saying that he didn’t have room for a second Chihuahua in his apartment. She turned the screen again, held it closer. She couldn’t spot any mirror, that was really weird. Anyway, she thought, she would see what this was all about when she got back to the office. Just when she put her phone back into her pocket, she saw from the corner of her eye a familiar looking car passing by on the street. And the people in the car looked even more familiar, especially that woman on the back seat. Pinches froze and stared at the back of the car until it had turned right, taking the road that would lead to that FreewriteHouse and to the FreewriteHouse only. There was pretty much nothing else, apart from Mr. Thompson’s cactus collection that he had started after his boyfriend had taken off with the local rain dancer.

Pinches looked up into the sky. Blue and sunny as usual.

Pinches had no clue how she had ended up at the FreewriteHouse. The last thing she remembered was sniffing on the blossom of a weirdly shaped cactus – Mr. Thompson came running out of his shed in the shape of a giant vulture right away – and then she must have passed out, she thought. She suddenly sat in the back of Dash’s car and ... just felt this urge to pee. Really pee. Like ... okay, she thought, thinking about it doesn’t make it any better.

Pinches got out of the car and ... well, you can read the story of how she solved the FreewriteHouse murders in @felt.buzz’s report.

2018/04/01

As they all stood outside the FreewriteHouse and let the events of the evening sink in,
Pinches recollected her former job options that she had dismissed to become a PI. Not just the suggestions her parents had made – professional snowball fighting or cloud counting – but also the ones she had thought of herself, like yodeling or appearing at Star Wars conventions as a C3PO double. Because Princess Leia didn’t look anything like her.

Suddenly and completely unexpected for everyone (so that Jenkins startled, Dash yelled “I’ll take pizzas and doughnuts, all they have!” and @mariannewest even interrupted her short yoga session) Pinches ran towards Dash’s car, opened the trunk, rummaged through empty pizza boxes, empty bottles of root beer (with extra sugar), avoided to stir up the rotting crumbs of food (because she feared it might attract Dash like a can of blood would attract sharks), and finally found what she had been looking for.

Pinches came back to the three standing in front of the FreewriteHouse – she could hear Dash’s tummy rumbling from quite a distance already –, Jenkins looked a bit skeptical at the huge bag she was carrying with her (though Pinches had found out during the last ten days that this was Jenkins’ look at pretty much everything), while @mariannewest had started talking in an encouraging manner to the plants that had been trampled by Dash as he had entered the house.

Pinches put the bag on the ground. Jenkins lifted his eyebrow as he read out loud what was written on the bag: “Star Wars equipment”.

Pinches smiled (Dash and Jenkins thought more of it as a Joker’s grin).

“My backup job plan.”

A couple of minutes later, Dash, who had sat down on the stairs, tried to figure out how on earth he would be able to fit into this tiny costume.

“What is it again, Pinches?”

“His name is Yabba the Hutt ... but you can call him Al.”

“No, I won’t!”

Jenkins breathed heavily through the dark helmet and turned to Pinches.

“Pinches, I am your father!”

“No, you’re not, Sir, definitely not, I would know that, Sir, because I didn’t have a father, I’ve had a manufacturer, who designed my oh-so-golden-shiny exterior, Sir, and he was so nice to throw me away instead of ...”

“Hold it, tin can!”

@mariannewest stepped in, two empty snail shells patched to the left and right side of her head (she wasn’t sure if that made her look like Princess Leia, but she was glad that the snails hadn’t moved out in vain), gave everyone – for the lack of lightsabers – a reed stem (Phragmites freewrites) with a huge soft seed head, and they tickled themselves happily ever after.

A few days later ... the murders had been solved, but Pinches couldn’t quite take her eye of Dash and Jenkins.

2018/04/06

Pinches frowned.

She tried hard to remember what she had learned in “Truth or lie? Three almost exciting ways to find out a bit more of something or other” and had a close look at the screen.

She was monitoring Dash and Jenkins via a drone she had bought from FreewriteVille’s one and only drone shop A Drone with a View. She had finally memorized the name of Dash’s assistant after the Jedi “incident”, how Jenkins would call it, when Jenkins had at some point thought he might be able to repair his – Jenkins / Darth Vader’s – lightsaber (which only was a reed stem, but Jenkins had an extremely vivid imagination after all) with a piece of Pinches’/C3POs skull and he (Darth Jenkins) had run after her (C3Pinches) through Princess Leia’s / @mariannewest’s garden.

Dash had only claimed that he had been suspicious of No. 4 all along, and Jenkins said that this wasn’t true.

Now it was up to Pinches to find out if Dash was telling the truth or if Jenkins’ objection was justified. She approached the screen and tried to read the facial expressions.

“Dash’s face is pretty easy to read”, Pinches thought, “he’s probably hungry.”

But Jenkins ... he was a piece of work. Pinches shook her head. Maybe it would get easier, when he would finally remove this Darth Vader helmet again.